Let's build a world environment organization

Global environmental crises, from vanishing biodiversity and degrading forests to collapsing fish stocks and climate change, will not be resolved without some tough thinking about international governance.

The way the world has evolved its response to the unfolding challenges has become a bewildering and perhaps confusing array of institutions, agreements and treaties, which are in urgent need of reform.

That urgency has been given momentum by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy through the lens of climate change.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon they have underlined that we must overhaul environmental governance and make use of the momentum provided by upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen to move toward creating a "World Environmental Organization".

Other world leaders have adopted a similar tone, albeit on the sidelines of the recent UN Summit on Climate Change and the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh.

What the world is waking up to is something many ministers of environment have known for some time - that solving environmental problems and seizing emerging opportunities will prove elusive without political clout and effective institutions.

International organizations charged with addressing the environmental pillar of sustainable development have a welter of mandates - but all too often their hands are tied for lack of sufficient funding or the authority to deliver on them.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which is mandated as the global authority for the environment, has one of the lowest annual budgets among UN bodies - less than the cost of a new Boeing 737.

A lot of the funding that is available for the environment is often channeled through facilities and funds that are disconnected from the very agency requested to set the global environmental agenda.

The problem is compounded by the fact that most of the hundreds of treaties meant to solve global environmental problems have separate secretariats, which makes cooperation among the collection of bodies, to put it mildly, difficult.

It is also a drain on scarce funds - a recent independent study estimates the costs of separate secretariats are four times higher compared to organizations that have all their related treaties under one roof. Resources could be better deployed for the countries to address the challenges.

For developing economies with scarce human and financial capacity, it is a particular challenge in terms of costs, the sheer complexity and time-consuming nature of the current landscape.

From 1992 to 2007, for example, more than 540 meetings linked to 18 international environmental treaties were held. These meetings have generated over 5,000 decisions upon which countries are required to act.

There is an urgent need for an environmental organization within the UN system with the influence to realize change and to stand side by side with strong organizations such as the World Trade Organization and World Heath Organization that are the cornerstones of the social and economic pillars of sustainable development.

History has proven that strong international institutions are a precondition for building any successful international cooperation. The global financial crisis and the collaboration through G20 and the International Monetary Fund are recent examples.

A planet of more than 6 billion people, which will have 9 billion people by 2050, requires governments to plan for tomorrow, otherwise tomorrow will plan itself.

If that planning is to be serious enough to resolve persistent, systemic and emerging environmental crises and if governments now accept that a low carbon, highly resource efficient green economy is the only way for the world to survive, let alone thrive in the 21st century, then strengthening the international environmental governance system must be part of the package of enlightened reforms under active and worldwide debate.

Stefania Prestigiacomo is Italy's minister for Environment, Land and Sea, and John Njoroge Michuki is Kenya's minister for Environment and Mineral Resources. The authors are co-chairs of UNEP Consultative Group of Ministers or High-level Representatives on International Environmental Governance.

(China Daily 10/30/2009 page9)