DEVELOPMENT-U.N.: Bonn Hopes To Host Desertification Secretariat

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ramesh Jaura

BONN, Sep 11 1997 (IPS) - Germany has offered to pay about 1.2 million dollars a year in additional contributions for an unlimited period of time, if Bonn is chosen as the permanent seat of the United Nations desertification secretariat.

State secretary in the federal ministry of economic cooperation and development (BMZ), Wighard Haerdtl, told diplomats here Thursday that this sum would be in addition to Germany’s regular contributions to the secretariat’s budget.

This additional payment will be for an unlimited period of time. The permanent secretariat will also be given a rent-free office space without any time restrictions, Haerdtl said.

The remarks came as Germany, Canada and Spain braced themselves for the first conference of parties to the Convention on Combating Desertification (CCD) on Oct. 3 in Rome.

The conference will decide on the location to which the convention’s interim secretariat in Geneva should be moved. The choice facing 102 nations, which have ratified the convention, is between three cities: Bonn, capital of West Germany before reunifica tion, Murcia in Spain and Montreal in Canada.

They will have detailed offers on the table from the three. “A close look will show however that ours is not only the best offer in terms of additional financial contribution as well as infrastructural and organisational assistance, but also that Bonn h as the best logistics,” BMZ’s Hans-Peter Schipulle told IPS Thursday.

Schipulle, who heads the BMZ’s department for environmental affairs, said the German government would bear the moving costs not only of the interim secretariat but also of the staff. It would also pay for furnishing and equipping the secretariat and staf f residences.

While Montreal was the seat of the secretariat of the bio- diversity convention and listed its proximity to the United Nations in New York as an asset, Bonn had several other important advantages, Schipulle said.

The desertification secretariat will be housed in ‘Haus Carstanjen’, the building where the secretariat of the U.N. framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) and the United Nations Volunteers have been located since last year.

Proximity to the UNFCCC secretariat will ensure excellent coordination. Besides, Bonn’s closeness to Brussels, headquarters of the European Commission of the European Union, and other European national capitals will provide synergetic advantages.

“Equally important is that Bonn is much closer to Africa than Montreal,” says the city’s Lord Mayor Baerbel Dieckmann.

In less than two years the parliament and government ministries now in Bonn will move back to Berlin, capital of reunified Germany. Bonn will be depleted of much of the pelf and power it acquired in four decades of post-war divided Germany.

Murcia, located in south eastern Spain’s own desertified area, has no U.N. organisation already situated there and is not directly accessible, facts that seem to weigh against its choice as the permanent HQ for the secretariat, it is argued.

What is expected to make the Canadian offer less attractive to the conference in Rome is the fact that its additional payments and rent-free office space for the secretariat are confined to a limited period of time.

“Our offer is not for five or ten years, but for an unlimited period of time,” said Schipulle. Germany also argues that Bonn is already developing into a Centre for International Cooperation — with focus on North-South relations.

State secretary Haerdtl told diplomats Thursday that Germany was providing 30 percent of its bilateral official development assistance for projects to combat desertification.

Programmes under way in Africa, Asia and Latin America comprise a total volume of 2.3 billion marks (about 1.4 billion dollars at current exchange rates), Haerdtl added.

Already backed by North-Rhine-Westphalia’s state premier Johannes Rau and mayor Dieckmann, several non-governmental organisations in Bonn now support the city’s bid.

They include the North-South Informal Group Bonn, linking the Bonn/Cologne chapter of the Society for International Development, the Gustav Stresemann Institute and the Global Cooperation Council/North-South Forum.

The Group is headed by Uwe Holtz, professor of development studies at the Bonn University, who chaired the Bundestag parliamentary committee for economic cooperation for two decades until three years ago. “Hosting the permanent seat of the desertificati on secretariat will be yet another win-situation for Bonn,” says Holtz.

Bonn already has a role as a U.N. City, a status it acquired when U.N. Volunteers executive coordinator Brenda Gael McSweeney moved her headquarters from Geneva in July 1996 and, a month later, when the UNFCCC’s executive secretary Michael Zammit Cutajar moved his secretariat into the city.

Around the same time, the U.N. Information Centre, headed by Axel Wuestenhagen was set up in Bonn. The city has already hosted offices of the International Labour Organisation and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees for some years.

Keen to host the desertification convention secretariat, the German government has been canvassing for support particularly among African countries threatened by the problem.

Desertification thrives on indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources, aggravated by acute poverty and population explosion which has been the bane of the continent. The CCD, which came into force in December 1996 after 50 of the parties to the tre aty ratified the convention

BMZ parliamentary state secretary, Klaus-Juergen Hedrich, this week also urged his visiting Finnish counterpart Kirsti Lintonen to support the Bonn bid.

The BMZ is headed by Carl-Dieter Spranger, who belongs to the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister of chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union.

Both Spranger and his state secretary Haerdtl, backed by foreign minister Klaus Kinkel — who belongs to the third partner in the ruling coalition, the Free Democratic Party — have also been systematically canvassing for Bonn.

Germany is expecting that its concerted support to combat desertification over the years will also weigh in favour of the conference of parties to the CCD to opt for Bonn as the permanent home of the desertification secretariat.