The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has made a strong effort to place its own activities more positively into UN peacebuilding missions in recent years. These attempts may reflect on the recent shift of UNEP’s attention toward the interaction between environment and conflicts. Traditional UNEP engagements in UN post-conflict activities have tended to focus on the impact caused by wars or civil unrest. However, today, UNEP realizes that environmental degradation itself could be a significant factor causing civil unrest. This recognition shift is brought about partly by (1) the influence of the Toronto Group, an academic school that emphasizes the impact of environmental damage on conflicts, (2) UNEP’s experience with post-conflict operations in Kosovo, and (3) the recent international trend in which peacebuilding has become a broader concept covering more underlying causes of the conflict.