Recent years have seen intense intergovernmental deliberations on issues’ concerning governance in the field of environment. Their aim has been to address the role of the institutions that provide platforms for international environmental cooperation. There are two main lines of enquiry: the role of regime-specific institutions that cater to sectoral regulatory frameworks (popularly known as multilateral environmental agreements or MEAs); and the role of institutions that are established to follow up on global environmental conferences or a specific environmental task. Most of these institutions reflect intergovernmental consensual process. However, there are concerns about their proliferation and there is a growing cacaphony of calls to ‘bring coherence to the fragmented landscape of MEAs, intergovernmental bodies, UN system entities and other international organizations’ (Sha Zukang (2011)’ Legal and policy dimensions of sustainable development: expected contribution of Rio +20’, Environmental Policy and Law, 41(6), pp. 244-246, at p. 245). In fact, the need to bring order to environmental governance has assumed great importance and urgency if environmental cooperation is to be achieved. This paper explores, in particular, the role of the United Nations Environment Programme and its potential for conversion to a specialized agency of the UN.