The Environmental Management Group was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in paragraph 5 of its resolution 5 3/242 of 1999 on the basis of proposals by the Secretary-General and the report of a United Nations Task Force headed by the Executive Director of UNEP, Mr. Klaus Topfer. All the agencies of the United Nations system, secretariats of the multilateral environmental agreements, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) are members of the Environmental management Group. UNEP is to provide the secretariat for the Environmental Management Group. The key points of the Group's mandate are coordinated approaches, information exchange, promotion of joint action by United Nations agencies and synergy among and between the activities of the United Nations agencies on environment and human settlement issues. It is to function through issue-management groups to be set up for dealing with specific issues in a time-bound manner.