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New
Signals For A Global Climate Change Accord
BY
KAMALA VISWANATHAN 
JAKARTA
(IDN) - A landmark conference in Indonesia has rekindled a momentous
proposal for the establishment of a World Environment Organisation
tabled at the UN General Assembly Special Session some thirteen years
ago.
In a historic declaration, government ministers and senior officials
from more than 135 countries gathered in Nusa Dua, on the Indonesian
island of Bali, pleaded for improving “the overall management of the
global environment, accepting that that 'governance architecture' has in
many ways become too complex and fragmented”.
The revived proposal is identical with a key point in the June 1997
“declaration” for a Global Initiative on Sustainable Development
issued by Germany’s Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Brazil’s President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, South Africa’s Deputy President Thabo M.
Mbeki, and Singapore’s Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.
They said “the establishment of a global environmental umbrella
organization of the UN with UNEP (UN Environment Programme) as a major
pillar should be considered.” That joint Declaration had been spurred
by a proposal at a Rio+5 Forum held earlier that year.
While that Declaration did not meet with enthusiasm at the UN Special
Session, it energized longtime advocates of such a reform and catalyzed
policymakers to acknowledge the need to think more systemically about
the defects of global environmental institutions.
In the following four years, governments introduced some new
institutions and initiated a dialogue about more fundamental changes. In
September 2002 Johannesburg hosted the World Summit on Sustainable
Development, which followed up on the Special Session of 1997 and the UN
Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, popularly known as the
Earth Summit) of June 1992.
However, according to Steve Charnovitz, an associate professor of law at
The George Washington University Law School, the idea of an
international agency for the environment is by no means new. The
attention to the environment in the early 1970s led some analysts to
propose the establishment of new agencies. In a lead article in
‘Foreign Affairs’ in April 1970, George Kennan proposed an
‘International Environmental Agency’ as a first step toward the
establishment of an ‘International Environmental Authority’.
The most comprehensive proposal, says Charnovitz, was developed by U.S.
legal expert Lawrence David Levien, who proposed a World Environmental
Organisation modelled on the practice of the International Labour
Organization (ILO) which was created in 1919. The establishment of the
UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1972 settled the organizational
question although some observers at the time viewed it as
unsatisfactory.
UNCED
It was not until a generation later, in the run-up to the 1992 UN
Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro that
dissatisfaction with UNEP and the seeming institutional change, sparked
new proposals for a firmer structure of environmental governance.
The most important proposal came from Sir Geoffrey Palmer, the former
Prime Minister of New Zealand who advocated new methods of making
environmental law, and called for action at the Rio Conference to
establish a specialised UN agency for the environment.
Palmer proposed the creation of an ‘International Environment
Organization’ borrowing loosely on the mechanisms of the ILO. He saw
an opportunity for a “beneficial restructuring” of the world’s
environmental institutions, that “would involve cutting away existing
overlaps in international agencies.”
No such action was taken at the Rio Conference which instead called for
the creation of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) and for
“an enhanced and strengthened role for UNEP and its Governing
Council” as manifested in Agenda 21.
Within a few years, new support for institutional change came from a
different direction, the international debate on “trade and the
environment” which had been revitalised in 1990 and was in full swing
by 1993.
Both camps in this debate saw the weak state of the environment regime
as a problem. The environmentalists yearned for an international agency
that could stand up to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT), which they saw as a threat to environmental measures.
The trade camp wondered whether a better environment regime might spur
the use of appropriate instruments for environmental protection rather
than inappropriate instruments such as discriminatory trade measures.
IMPORTANT STEP
Viewed against this backdrop the proposal emerging from the gathering in
Nusa Dua is significant.
The wide-ranging Nusa Dua Declaration, agreed February 26 in the closing
session of the UN Environment Programme's Governing Council and Global
Ministerial Environment Forum, underlines the vital importance of
biodiversity, the urgent need to combat climate change and work towards
a good outcome in Mexico (November 29 to December 10) and the key
opportunities from accelerating a transition to a low-carbon
resource-efficient Green Economy.
The Nusa Dua made an important step forward in the areas of chemicals,
hazardous wastes and human health. Governments agreed at an
Extraordinary Meeting to have more cooperative action by the three
relevant treaties -- the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions --
as a first step to boosting their delivery within countries.
UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said: "The ministers
responsible for the environment, meeting just over a month after the
climate change conference in Copenhagen, have spoken with a clear,
united and unequivocal voice."
"Faced with the continued erosion of the natural environment, the
persistent and emerging challenges of chemical pollution and wastes and
the overarching challenge of issues such as climate change, the status
quo is not an option and change is urgently needed," he added.
"This change starts with recognition that the way we are managing
the environmental dimension of sustainable development is currently too
complex and fragmented. Change is needed here and the ministers
signalled their determination to realize this through a political
process," said Steiner.
"But the ministers also recognized that action towards a Green
Economy -- one able to meet multiple challenges and seize multiple
opportunities -- is taking route in economies across the globe.
Accelerating this is a key element of the Nusa Dua Declaration and one
that can direct future action towards realizing the kinds of transitions
needed on a planet of six billion people, rising to nine billion by
2050," he added.
The Declaration, the first by world environment ministers since they met
in Malmö, Sweden in 2000, will be transmitted to the UN General
Assembly later this year. There governments will begin preparations for
a landmark conference in Brazil, called Rio plus 20.
Rio plus 20 will be held two decades after the first Rio Earth Summit in
June 1992, which gave birth to many of the key treaties, ranging from
climate change to biodiversity, which to date have defined the
international response to environmental challenges.
LAME DUCK
The ‘Nusa Dua Declaration’ comes at a point in time when the UN
Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) is being threatened by
erosion of its global competence because of the marginal outcome of the
Copenhagen climate change conference and the surprise decision of the
Convention’s executive secretary Yvo de Boer to step down on July 1,
2010.
De Boer announced the decision on February 18, two months after the 15th
conference of parties (COP15) to the UNFCCC in the Danish capital was
wrecked by a conflict of divergent interests of the highly
industrialised, emerging and developing economies.
As a result, the UNFCCC secretariat in Bonn has been reduced to a lame
duck – and this in run-up to two important negotiating sessions
planned in the coming months ahead of COP16 November 29 to December 10
in Mexico.
The first of the two meetings will take place April 9-11 and the 32nd
session of the UNFCCC Convention subsidiary bodies from May 31 to June
11.
Obviously keen to correct the ‘lame duck’ image, the climate change
secretariat quoted its outgoing executive secretary in a press release
on February 23: "Following the UN Climate Change Conference in
Copenhagen, this constitutes a quick return to the negotiations."
De Boer, who has expressed his preference for an Indonesia, to take up
his job, added: "The decision to intensify the negotiating schedule
underlines the commitment by governments to move the negotiations
forward towards success in Cancun (which will host COP16). This is
further strengthened by the fact that the number of countries that have
written to the secretariat with their country communications since
Copenhagen has now exceeded a landmark one hundred.”
Forty developed country Parties have so far submitted to the secretariat
information on their 2020 emission cut targets, with various base years.
These Parties represent around 90 percent of emissions from this group
of Parties.
Thirty developing country Parties have also communicated information on
their mitigation plans. In addition, another thirty-nine Parties have
provided additional information regarding the Accord. Together, all
these countries represent well over 80 percent of global energy
emissions, the statement said.
Nevertheless, UN’s climate top official is convinced that a new
climate treaty is unlikely to be agreed this year, because there is no
time for both rich and poor countries to recover from last December's
failed Copenhagen summit.
In a news agency interview, De Boer said more time was needed to set up
framework for mitigation steps as well as financial and climate change
aid that can persuade developing countries to support a new deal. The
main priority is, he added, to rebuild confidence and trust in the
process.
Developing countries need to be convinced that "there are
incentives that will allow them to act on climate change but also meet
national economic development goals", he said. "Only after
that, countries can be expected to sign up.”
De Boer said the focus should be shifted toward reaching an agreement at
the 2011 summit in South Africa, a year before the current phase of the
Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.
[Source:
IDN-InDepthNews
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