UNDP recognizes healthy biodiversity and ecosystem services, including soil fertility and water provisioning, as the foundation of human wellbeing and sustainable development. It sees nature-based solutions as essential solutions for tackling multiple developmental challenges, be they land degradation and desertification, climate crisis, inequality and poverty, insecurity and migration.  UNDP’s Ecosystems and Biodiversity Programme adopts an approach to bringing the development agenda to biodiversity discourse enables it to engender increased public, business, and government support for biodiversity conservation and sound ecosystem management, broadening the support base necessary for achieving global biodiversity goals.  UNDP, as a convener, mobilizes global, national and local level actors, governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and communities to communicate the value of biodiversity for it to be integrated in national and local development, and sector and fiscal planning processes and practices. UNDP has 300 country level terrestrial and marine ecosystems and biodiversity projects in 120 countries, including sustainable land management projects.  These combined with a set of global projects, such as the Biodiversity Finance Initiative, Nature for Development Programme, Green Commodities Programme, linked to country level work, connects people on the ground to the national, regional and global decision makers and influencers, as well as, fostering exchange and learning between communities, landscapes, governments in different countries and continents.  
 
The Vertical Environmental Finance Unit is organized into five substantive technical teams corresponding to the five areas of work above. Each area of work is led by a Principal (PTA) or Senior Technical Advisor (STA), who supports and guides a team of Regional Technical Advisors and Specialists (RTAs/RTAs).  The regional teams are based in regional hubs/regional service centers (Addis Ababa, Istanbul, Bangkok, and Panama) from where they support UNDP’s country offices and partners in their region. As well as being a member of a technical team, each RTA/RTS is also a member of a regional team, which consists of RTAs/RTSs from all technical teams working together under the leadership of a Regional Team Leader (RTL).  
 
RTSs have global responsibilities in their area of specialized technical expertise but are deployed from Regional Hubs, normally close to the countries to which they provide most support. The RTS for Ecosystems and Biodiversity works under the overall supervision of the PTA on Ecosystems and Biodiversity.  RTSs have a secondary line of reporting to the Regional Team Leaders for the countries to which they provide support. The RTS will be based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and is expected to travel frequently. RTSs may be periodically redeployed, in accordance with capability, consent, and due process, to a different regional hub as needed.