Environment, Europe, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines

ENVIRONMENT: Is There a Need for a New Global Agency?

Julio Godoy* - Tierramérica

PARIS , Jan 12 2007 (IPS) - Environmentalists are divided over French President Jacques Chirac’s proposal to create a new United Nations Environment Organisation (UNEO).

Some believe it will be useful for facing up to the challenges posed by global environmental deterioration, but others see it as a redundant proposal and a political maneuver by Chirac before the French general elections due in April and May.

Chirac proposed creating the UNEO on Dec. 12 in Paris, after a meeting with the organizing committee for the International Conference on Environmental Governance, which the French government is hosting in February.

According to Chirac, this conference, to be attended by representatives from about 60 countries, and from many international and non-governmental organizations, should present “an inventory of the situation of the global environment and its alarming degradation, and present priority political proposals that are internationally acceptable.”

The Paris conference should also, according to Chirac, “clearly state that a large number of countries want a UNEO with the material resources to act and ensure respect for certain rules that are essential for the future of the biosphere.”

Among the countries participating in the conference on Feb. 3-4 will be emerging economies, such as South Africa, Brazil, China and India, which according to unofficial sources are opposed to the creation of a UNEO.

Although Chirac proposed the creation of a UNOE as early as 2002, at the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York, the precise duties of the new institution, other than those already undertaken by existing multilateral bodies, remain in the dark..

Existing bodies include the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the various secretariats responsible for oversight and administration of international standards like the Kyoto Protocol or the Convention on Biological Diversity.

“Creating a new international agency for environmental protection is superfluous. There are sound proposals for environmental policy, but the centres of power lack the political will to apply them,” Catherine Reymonet of Friends of the Earth told Tierramérica.

Together with a large number of other French environmentalists, Reymonet recently wrote a public letter to Chirac, taking him to task for the discrepancy between his pro-environment speeches and the policies he has implemented while in office.

Among other things, Reymonet reminded Chirac of his constant championing of European subsidies for intensive agriculture, and his government’s failure to come up with a transport policy to reduce the use of fossil fuels and, consequently, emissions of carbon dioxide, and to prioritise collective transport, by train for example.

Michel Noblecourt, editor-in-chief of Midi Libre, one of the Le Monde group of newspapers, said that Chirac’s proposal was part of his campaign leading up to the elections in April for a new president and parliament.

“Environmental protection has become a key issue in the electoral campaign,” Noblecourt wrote in the paper’s editorial on Dec. 13, one day after Chirac’s meeting with the conference organizing committee.

“Every candidate’s dream is (to appear to be) the perfect defender of the environment… Beware of campaign promises,” the analyst warned.

But although Chirac, who was first elected president in 1995 and re-elected in 2002, can stand for the presidential election in April and May 2007, his chances of winning are very low, due to his age – he was 76 on Nov. 29 – and his low popularity rating.

Under Chirac, France has struggled to fulfil its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as set out in the Kyoto Protocol, and to reduce nitrates in water sources to meet European Union standards.

Some analysts take the view that the existing international environmental organizations, including UNEP, are working well and only need determined support from political circles, especially in industrialized countries like France.

But other groups of activists disagree. “The U.N. doesn’t have a specialized agency for the environment; UNEP is only a mediating body, without financial means and legislative powers,” Susan George, head of the Transnational Institute, an anti-globalization group, told Tierramérica.

“The world needs a solid, legitimate and democratic international institution, to prevent wars over energy sources, privatization and the alarming degradation of the environment,” she said.

UNEP sources in Paris contacted by Tierramérica declined to comment on Chirac’s proposal.

In George’s opinion, “sooner or later, a global organization for the environment will be created.”

“At the international level, environmental competencies are very dispersed and weak, which makes its present governance inconsistent, lacking a global vision, fragmented and opaque, with neither authority nor legitimacy. With everybody in charge of it, the environment is really protected by nobody,” the activist concluded.

(*Julio Godoy is an IPS correspondent. Originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)

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