The pursuit of nature conservation was central to the scientific section of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) from the outset. In order to build a network of expertise and practice, UNESCO supported the establishment of a non-governmental organisation, the fledgling International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN). This small core of non-governmental actors found itself thrown into the arena of global politics and was forced out of its conservation niche. In August 1949, UNESCO and IUPN jointly convened a global conference on ecology and education. The genesis and progress of this conference highlighted the growing prominence of environmental issues and the increasing reciprocity between these issues and questions of nutrition, development and health in the immediate post-war era.