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ENVIRONMENT: U.N. Debates Wider Leadership Role on Climate

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 11 2007 (IPS) - As climate change and global warming continue to dominate the headlines, there is a concerted move once again to revive the longstanding proposal for an expansion in the role of the United Nations in fighting environmental degradation.

The Western industrial nations, led by France, have long sought to elevate the existing U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi into a gigantic U.N. Environment Organisation (UNEO).

But most developing nations, including the 130-member Group of 77, are either ambivalent or have expressed reservations over the creation of another unwieldy bureaucracy in the U.N. system.

During a two week-meeting of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), which concluded Friday, Italy’s Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio reiterated the call for an increasingly significant role for the United Nations “in the protection of the environment.”

In the broader context of the current international dialogue on U.N. reforms, he said, “We believe that the creation of the U.N. Environment Organisation, achieved through strengthening UNEP, would be a giant first step that will lead us towards the U.N. reform, of which the establishment of a truly effective international environmental governance is a major component.”

He said he hopes the forthcoming General Assembly sessions next September “will be able to make decisions that will take us in this direction.” The European Union is expected to take the lead in any such move later this year.

Asked about the proposed UNEO, Ambassdor Munir Akram of Pakistan, current chair of the Group of 77 (G77), told IPS “The general trend in the G77 has not been very favourable.” But he admitted “there are some developing countries that support the idea.”

“I think it’s a French initiative but there isn’t a unified position on it,” Akram added.

Meanwhile, in a paper submitted to the CSD sessions, two non-governmental organisations (NGOs), namely the CSD NGO Energy and Climate Change Caucus and the NGO Transport Caucus, have jointly proposed the establishment of a new temporary U.N. agency, the International Sustainable Energy Organisation (ISEO).

“From monies saved by ending harmful energy subsidies, governments of industrialised countries should utilise half to finance sustainable energy programmes in their own countries.”

At the same time, they should contribute the other half to finance the establishment and functioning of an ISEO, initially for a period of 10 years, and to be extended for further 10-year terms, as needed, the paper said.

The primary functions of the ISEO would include: assisting countries in identifying and phasing out government subsidies for unsustainable forms of energy; assisting countries in integrating external costs in energy policy and decisions; and fund conservation and sustainable energy programmes in developing countries and assist these countries to diversify into sustainable forms of energy.

Philip Clapp, president of the Washington-based National Environmental Trust, said, “The growing threats to the global environment – from global warming, massive destruction of forests and development of remaining wilderness and exploitation of ocean life – are so large that we must consider new global institutions to address them.”

Just as trade agreements are now enforced and augmented by the World Trade Organisation, the global environment faces challenges so large and complex that existing treaty structures are proving less and less capable of dealing with them, he added.

“The new secretary-general of the United Nations (Ban Ki-moon) has already raised this issue, and I hope he makes it a priority. We do not have much time,” Clapp told IPS.

Last November, a blue-ribbon panel of world political leaders released a study calling for the radical restructuring of U.N. activities in development, humanitarian assistance and the environment.

Complaining of overlaps and redundancies in sustainable development, the panel said there were at least five U.N. entities involved in environmental issues: the U.N.’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, U.N.-Habitat, UNEP, the U.N. Development Programme and the Secretariat of various international conventions governing biodiversity, climate change and desertification.

One of the recommendations of the panel was the creation of a U.N. Sustainable Development Board.

During a conference of Citizens of the Earth in Paris last February, outgoing French President Jacques Chirac said that France was the first country to include a reference to an Environment Charter in its Constitution.

“I hope that that initiative can serve as inspiration within the United Nations and that all states will include environmental concerns in their basic laws,” he added.

Chirac, who has been pushing for the creation of the UNEO, also called for the establishment of “world environmental governance.”

In this area as in others, unilateralism leads nowhere. Just as multilateralism is the prerequisite for peace, it is the key to sustainable development, he added.

“The United Nations Environment Programme is outstanding, and I want to pay tribute to it. But it does not have adequate powers or institutional clout. We must aim to transform it into a fully-fledged United Nations agency.”

This proposed United Nations Environment Organisation, declared Chirac, will act as the world’s ecological conscience.

“It will carry out impartial and scientific assessment of environmental dangers. It will have policy-making terms of reference giving it the legitimacy to implement action jointly decided. It will lend greater weight and greater cohesion to our collective endeavours.”