The World Adaptation Science Programme’s mandate derives from the 16th Congress of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) held in 2011, at which Resolution 18 on the establishment of the World Climate Programme (WCP) was adopted. The WCP programme contains four different pillars, one of which is the World Adaptation Science Programme (WASP).
WASP is co-led by eight international organisations:
- the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, Nairobi, Kenya)
- the World Meteorological Organization (WMO, Geneva, Switzerland)
- the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, Bonn, Germany)
- the Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland)
- the Green Climate Fund (GCF, Incheon, South Korea).
- the Global Environment Facility (GEF, New York, USA)
- the United Nations University (UNU, Tokyo, Japan)
- the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO, Paris, France)