Sanjay Suri
COPENHAGEN, Apr 28 2006 (IPS) – Before anyone can clean up the earth and its atmosphere, an administrative clean-up might be necessary in the house of those tasked with the cleaning job, a leading environmentalist says.
That may well have to begin with the role the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) sets out for itself, Achim Steiner, who will take over as executive director of UNEP from June 15 told IPS in an interview.
But despite the wide UN umbrella, UNEP may still not be the prime agency for the job, said Steiner, who is currently Director-General of the World Conservation Union (IUCN).
The environment programme of the United Nations is not supposed to manage the environment programme of the world, Steiner said in the interview following a seminar on managing ecosystems held by the Danish government in association with the Com+ Alliance, a partnership of international organisations and communications professionals committed to using communications to advance sustainable development.
So one question we have to ask ourselves is what role the environment programme of the United Nations plays alongside institutions such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation on fisheries, on agriculture resources, on land, soil issues, alongside the World health Organisation on the whole question of health and human health, environmental health, Steiner said.
I think one of the key debates now will be what role can a specific programme within the United Nations play in an orchestra of capacities inside the United Nations family, and that is not a question that has been answered to everyone s satisfaction at the moment.
Steiner offered no blueprint for his plans for UNEP, but the organisation will clearly have the fight between different players on varying environmental issues on its hands.
We are in the middle of that conflict and that global disagreement on how to work together on these issues every day, he said. If you look at much of the environmental government and negotiation process, they are faced with many, may constraints to move forward, partly because there is a lack of consensus on how to work with one another on addressing those issues.
But on the need to do something there is little disagreement, he said. The irony is that there is actually not a great deal of disagreement in the North and in the South on what is happening, and that it is happening, and that it needs to be addressed, Steiner said.
And what you often see in international negotiations is that countries from one group or another will not agree on a particular resolution not because inside their own country domestically they actually are doing precisely that, but because they do not want to engage in international commitments.
The mother of disagreements is inevitably the North-South divide. And in this Steiner dismissed suggestions that the developed countries are more concerned about the environment than developing ones.
I have never in my last five years at the IUCN faced the problem that wherever I have travelled in the South, that government officials from presidents to ministers are in denial. That s not the problem. They are faced with many constraints, with many dilemmas, with many choices and trade-offs, and the question is can the environmental community and can the international community help them resolve these choices and dilemmas or simply add more dilemmas on to their agenda.
Many developing countries have a legitimate frustration that they have entered into more and more commitments internationally without actually having the kind of engagement from the North that was promised, he said. So why commit to more international commitments when in fact you have little to gain from it and more to lose from it if you want sovereignty and obligations.
Supporting the common but differentiated responsibility dimension, Steiner said we have to accept that you cannot ask developing countries to contribute on the same level in addressing the historical legacy as those countries that have essentially been prime factors in bringing this about, including to this day given the consumption footprints that we have.
But despite such differences, Steiner said that my great hope is that if in principle there is no great disagreement on the broader trends that we are observing, also for developing counties, the future can only bring more internationally coordinated action.
No country however large, like China, India or Brazil, will be able to cope with environmental developments in isolation, Steiner said. I think that is where UNEP can play a very significant role. That it can work towards reframing and facilitating an international agenda where the commonality of the imperative to act is actually at the forefront.
Such hope is not idealistic or naïve, Steiner said. There are many real resource conflicts, many real economic conflicts, and competing interests at play here, at the national level and at the international level, but the answer cannot simply be to allow them to exacerbate because the end result of that is going to be more environmental destruction, greater potential for domestic conflict, and also trans-boundary international conflicts, he said. And no country, no politician ultimately has that as a preferred outcome.
