REFORMING THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
By Felix Dodds

“To practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours.” 
Charter of the UN1

One of the key challenges that will be facing us as we prepare for Earth Summit 2002 is, ‘will governments seriously address what kind of international machinery we need to guide us through the first decades of the 21st Century.’

This chapter will try to review where we have come from, where we are, and offer some ideas of where we might go. It will not try and identify one idea but to give a series of approaches that should all be considered for 2002. 
	
Where have we come from? 

The United Nations was originally set up when 50 countries met in San Francisco in June 1945.  By October 1999 the UN membership had expanded to 185 countries.

UN Reform, it must be said, is hardly thought to be the most interesting subject, but the design of any system can have an enormous impact on the ability of the system to deliver. Not only are there many more countries than there were in 1945 but there is a considerable amount of inter-governmental fora. There are now more than 1,000 international institutions that have been set up and the need for some form of streamlining is well overdue. If you add to this the growth and influence of the ‘non governmental sector,’ here meaning all stakeholder groups, then it can easily be seen how much more complicated the inter-governmental process has become in the past 55 years.

The 1990s saw a proliferation of UN summits and conferences starting with the Rio Summit in 1992. After taking an overview at Rio the following summits dealt with aspects of Agenda 21 in more depth:

** 1994 UN Conference on Population and Development (Cairo)
** 1994 Conference on Small Island Developing States	(Barbados)
** 1995 World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen)
** 1995 Fourth Conference on Women and Development (Beijing)
** 1996 Habitat II - Conference on Human Settlements (Istanbul)
** 1996 Food Summit (Vienna)
** 1997 UN General Assembly to Review Implementation of Agenda 21
** 1999 UN General Assembly Review of Cairo
** 1999 UN General Assembly Review of Barbados Plan of Action

Most of the conferences had a five-year review built in and the relevant UN Commission looked at the implementation on a year-by-year basis.
			
The Rio Earth Summit set the scope for the active involvement of NGOS in the UN conferences and summits. This will be dealt with later in the chapter. Here I would just mention the importance of Chapters 24 and 32 of Agenda 21 dealing with ‘Major Groups’ which includes youth, women, farmers, NGOs, local government, business, academics, indigenous people, and trade unions. 

With so much going on the ability for the UN, governments, and NGOs to be able to implement, monitor or more importantly, create ‘joined up thinking’ between the processes has been greatly challenged. Sometimes there just seems too much noise and it is difficult to know which meeting or set of meetings it is best to put your work into. People are used to working on their particular area and now we are asking them to, as Gary Lawrence, previously an advisor to the US President’s Council on Sustainable Development, says, “embrace complexity” - not an easy thing to do.

Where are we?

The world has changed enormously since the 1992 Summit. We have seen globalization come to the forefront, and we have experienced the outcome of the changes in Eastern Europe, as well as the increased role of multinational companies, to mention but a few changes. For us to address these, Earth Summit 2002 needs to not only rekindle the fire of the Rio accord but to address the very serious challenges we are now facing and create the international machinery to do that appropriately.								

The UN was set up recognising the supremacy of the nation state; it now needs to factor in the impact of globalization on the system. In the last 10 years there has been an increased role for other players such as multinational corporations, NGOs, women, local government, trade unions and other stakeholders. At the same time there has been a move towards some lower levels of government - closer to the people where many of these groups have direct experience of the impacts of globalisation. 

Integrating environment and development into the UN and governmental processes has not been easy in the eight years since Rio. Joined up thinking in the UN, in governments, and in the stakeholders groups have caused lots of problems. 

Three of the key institutions that have been working on implementing, monitoring and developing Agenda 21 have been UNEP, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development and the Inter Agency Committee on Sustainable Development.
		
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) 

Since the first UN Environment Conference in 1972 we have seen the creation of the UN Environment Programme - a direct result of the Stockholm Conference. It was set up in 1973: 

“To provide leadership and encourage partnerships in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and people to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.”
UNEP Mission’s Statement from UNEP’s web site 

UNEP has had a mixed history. The annual budget of the organization is around $60 million, which makes some NGOs bigger in financial and staff terms. UNEP is not a delivery agency, rather, it is an institution that has created much of the international law that we now use. From the Vienna Convention on Ozone Depletion or the Basle Convention on control of trans boundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal, to illegal trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora (CITES), and the convention on migratory species (CMS).

UNEP provides the Secretariat for these Conventions. In addition, UNEP has rendered considerable support to the negotiation, adoption and implementation of the Convention to Combat Desertification and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. UNEP and the FAO are now in the process of catalysing negotiations for the elaboration of a Convention on the Information Exchange on International Trade in the field of Toxic Chemicals. 

The Conventions set up since 1972 now cover a wide range of topics, but all have separate staff and are housed around the world from Montreal, to Bonn, to Nairobi -making co-ordination difficult to say the least.

The UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD)

As the Earth Summit dealt with issues of environment and development it was obvious who should have responsibility for ensuring Agenda 21 was monitored and implemented.  Agenda 21 set out a whole set of changes to the institutional agenda in an attempt to ensure that the work agreed at Rio would be monitored and implemented. Chapter 38 identifies the setting up of the Commission on Sustainable development; it says:

“In order to ensure the effective follow-up of the Conference, as well as to enhance international cooperation and rationalization the intergovernmental decision making capacity for the integration of environment and development issues and to examine the progress of the implementation of Agenda 21 at the national, regional and international levels, a high level Commission on Sustainable Development should be established in accordance with Article 68 of the Charter of the UN.”2

The General Assembly met in the autumn of 1992 to debate the setting up of the Commission. It resolved that:

** The Economic and Social Council has been requested to establish a high level Commission as a functional council body;
** Representatives of 53 states have been elected by the Council for up to three year terms;
** The Commission will meet once a year for two or three weeks. It is a functional ECOSOC commission with a full-time secretariat based in New York. Care has been taken to ensure that the Secretariat has a clear identity within the UN system;
** Relevant intergovernmental organizations and specialized agencies, including financial institutions, are invited to designate representatives to advise and assist the Commission, and also to serve as focal points for the members and Secretariat of the Commission between sessions;

In creating the mandate for the Commission, governments recognized the important role that Major Groups would have in the realization of Agenda 21. There is no question that the Commission on Sustainable Development gives the Major Groups the greatest involvement in the work of any UN Commission. The CSD's mandate is:

** To monitor progress on the implementation of Agenda 21 and activities related to the integration of environmental and developmental goals by governments, NGOs, and other UN bodies. To monitor progress towards the target of 0.7% GNP from developed countries for Overseas Development Aid;
** To review the adequacy of financing and the transfer of technologies as outlined in Agenda 21;
** To receive and analyze relevant information from competent NGOs in the context of Agenda 21 implementation;
** To enhance dialogue with NGOs, the independent sector, and other entities outside the UN system, within the UN framework;
** To provide recommendations to the General Assembly through the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC);
During the first seven years of its existence it has been seen as a pioneer in many areas. 

It is important to note that there are very good reasons for this:

** It is the most recently set up UN Commission and therefore the structures it developed encompassed the approach taken for Rio;
** The CSD is a ‘political’ forum. Each year it gets between 40 and 60 Ministers of environment, development, finance, tourism, and forests to attend out of a membership of 53 countries. The Chair of the CSD is usually a Minister or former Minister;
** It has the active involvement of 200-600 representatives of Major Groups;
** It has the active, positive involvement of industry;

Some of the key successes of the CSD have been:

** Recommending that there should be a legally binding status of the Prior Informed Consent procedure (1994);
** Called for greater co-operation of the CSD with the governing bodies of the Bretton Woods institutes and the WTO (1994);introduced national reporting to the CSD and started an integrated indicators programme (1994);
** Established an Inter-Governmental Panel on Forests (1995) and an International Forum on Forests (1997);
** Set up a work programme on sustainable consumption and production (1995);
** Supported the Washington Global Plan of Action on protecting the marine environment from land-based activities (1996);
** Agreed the replenishment of Global Environmental Facility (GEF) (1997);
** Agreed the new work programme for the CSD (1997);
** Informally highlighted to governments the problems of the Multi-lateral Agreement on Investment (1997);	
** Prepared governments for the negotiations on climate change (1997);
** Set a firm date of 2002 for governments to produce their National Sustainable Development Strategies (1997); 
** Instituted the multi-stakeholder dialogue sessions (1998);
** Set up a multi-stakeholder group under Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) to look at voluntary agreements in industry (1998);
** Set up a new process in the General Assembly to discuss oceans (1999);
** Agreed new consumer guidelines to include sustainable development (1999);
** Discussed tourism for the first time bringing the issue in to the Rio process (1999);
** Development an International Work Programme on Sustainable Tourism (1999).

These are some of the successes that the CSD has managed to achieve since its first substantive meeting in 1994. One of the key lessons has been that to achieve change time is needed. In addition to the two week CSD and the two week preparatory meeting, there have been hundreds of government and Major Group hosted intersessional meetings over the past 7 years. These meetings have been crucial to developing the successes of the CSD.

The Inter Agency Committee on Sustainable Development (IACSD)

The setting up of the Inter Agency Committee on Sustainable Development was a direct result of Rio. In Agenda 21 it said:

“ To ensure effective monitoring, co-ordination and supervision of the involvement of the United Nations system in the follow up to the Conference, there is a need for a co-ordination mechanism under the direct leadership of the Secretary General. This task should be given to the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) headed by the Secretary General.”3

The IACSD is a subsidiary body of the UN Administrative Coordinating Committee (ACC), which in turn acts as the 'cabinet' for the Secretary General. The IACSD is chaired by Under Secretary General Nitin Desai and is made up of senior level officials from nine core members of the ACC - FAO, IAEA, ILO, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, WHO, World Bank and WMO. Officials from other UN bodies, intergovernmental agencies and representatives from Major Groups are able to attend by invitation. The IACSD was set up in the aftermath of Rio and asked by the ACC to focus on four areas:

** Streamlining the existing inter-agency co-ordination machinery ;
** Allocating and sharing responsibilities for Agenda 21 implementation by the UN system;
** Monitoring the new financial requirements of UN system organizations that relate to Agenda 21;
** Assessing reporting requirements that are related to the implementation of Agenda 21 and making recommendations on streamlining.

The IACSD has two sub-committees which report through it, these being the ACC Sub- Committee on Oceans and Costal Areas and the ACC Sub-Committee on Water Resources. Commenting in 1998 Joke Waller Hunter, Director of the Division on Sustainable Development, said:

 “In many ways, the inter-agency coordination system, working with the task manager, has not created a threat to those agencies (such as UNEP) at all. By not sending someone from the outside to investigate their agency, but instead inviting them to report to the CSD themselves, we have not questioned or challenged agency policies nor mandates of agencies.”4

The IACSD set up a Task Manager system for every chapter of Agenda 21.  This ensured that there was transparency in who was coordinating the follow up process.  As Joke Waller Hunter indicates the involvement of UN agencies as Task Managers of the different chapters that their work covered ensured a more co-operative approach to reviewing the work of their agency. The CSD does offer one of the few places where there is a chance to review the work of different agencies out of their own governing bodies. 

In 1997 at the UN General Assembly Special Session to Review Agenda 21 it was recognized that the IACSD had done a good job and it was agreed to:

“Strengthen the ACC - IACSD and its system of task managers, with a view to further enhancing system wide inter-sectoral cooperation and co-ordination for the implementation of Agenda 21 and for the follow up to the major United Nations conferences in the area of sustainable development.”5

The IACSD has proved a good model of how to integrate the work of different UN agencies in the follow up to a UN conference. Although there has been success there has also been opposition where some UN bodies take a less than positive attitude to the CSD, making suggestions about the work they should be engaged in or producing work programmes for them. Sometimes their attitude has been hostile, to quote one UNESCO official: “we have our own governing bodies." Although this is true, the nature of Rio in particular was to ensure that we had a more integrated approach to sustainable development. It does raise a serious question if the UN General Assembly endorses the CSD decision, which it does each year, then should a UN agency be able to just disregard a decision of the GA?

Other UN Conferences 

Space does not allow to go into these in detail, but needless to say, the UN conferences from 1994 to 1996 filled in gaps and emphasized parts of Agenda 21 in a way that it was hoped would help ensure that they would go into more depth - developing a particular area. Although population was dealt with by Chapter 5 (Demographic Dynamics and Sustainability) the Cairo Conference on Population and Development was able to set out more clearly how we might approach the stabilisation of population. The Copenhagen World Summit on Social Development did the same particularly for poverty (chapter 3 of Agenda 21), and the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equity, Development and Peace for nearly all chapters of Agenda 21 while the Habitat Conference developed the human settlements area (Chapter 7 Agenda 21). They also dealt with subjects not dealt with in Agenda 21.
					
The implementation of these Conferences was then reviewed by the relevant UN commissions on a five year cycle. The time has come to draw these threads back together and decide how in the future they are much more integrated.

Where are we going?

Architecture for the Future
One of the discussions before the Rio Summit in 1992 was concerning the institutional architecture that would oversee the implementation of Agenda 21. Three of the main ideas were:

** Utilizing the Trusteeship Council;
** Creating a Committee on Sustainable Development under the General Assembly;
** Creating a Functional Commission on Sustainable Development under ECOSOC;.

As we start the discussion for 2002 perhaps we now need to look at a broader reform agenda. 
 
1) UN Charter change to promote sustainable development

Perhaps one of the easiest ideas would seem to be to embed a change in the UN Charter so that the body as a whole is able to promote sustainable development throughout its work. Like any constitution, the ability to amend one is taken very seriously and the idea of amending the Charter may become an outcome of the UN Millennium Assembly. It has gained support from many stakeholder groups and some governments. If not, the Summit in 2002 should have it as one of the issues which it would address.
 
2) Utilizing the Security Council 

Under the Charter of the UN the functions and powers of the Security Council allow for it:

“to maintain international peace and security in accordance with the principles and purpose of the United Nations”6

The World Resources Institute (WRI) argued that this allows for issues of environmental security to be brought to the Security Council. WRI went further, by suggesting that under articles 22 and 29 of the UN Charter a Standing Committee on Environment and Development should be created which as one of its tasks would raise in the Security Council issues of environment and development that could undermine international peace and security.” It is only relatively recently that the issue of environmental security has come further up the political agenda. UNEP’s Global Outlook Report (GEO) 2000 registered, for the first time, that environmental refugees are now a greater number than those caused by conflict. The GEO 2000 report also showed other issues that might cause conflict in the future where we will see 2/3 of the world’s population by the year 2020 living in water stressed areas. NATO and other bodies are now seriously looking at environmental security issues - so should the Security Council.

The Security Council has dealt with development crisis issues and called on NGOs such as Oxfam to address the Security Council. This approach should be expanded in a co-ordinated way.
					
3) Realigning the Bretton Woods Institutions 

One of the key questions that needs to be addressed at Earth Summit 2002 by developed countries will be are they committed to ‘democratic governance and transparency within the UN system.' The 1990s have seen a shift among developing countries and the former Soviet block to democratic regimes. This has happened at the same time as there has been a move away from the UN towards the Bretton Woods institutions for discussions on finance, trade and even some poverty debate. The result of this is that the developed countries now have a greater control of the agenda through Bretton Woods institutions. The integration of the Bretton Woods institutions back into the UN is something that needs to be on the agenda for 2002. 

One reason why the Bretton Woods institutions have moved ahead is that they use the fact that they have an unequal decision making structure where the richer countries that ‘pay the bills’ have more influence. Understanding in the donor countries about the impact of the Bretton Woods institutions has been highlighted very well by the late President of Tanzania Julius Nyerere:

“I was in Washington last year. At the World Bank the first question that asked me was ‘how did you fail?’ I responded that we took over a country with 85% of the adult population illiterate. The British ruled us for 43 years. When they left, there were 2 trained engineers and 12 doctors. This is the country we inherited.

When I stepped down there was 91% literacy and nearly every child was in school. We trained thousands of engineers, doctors and teachers.

In 1988 Tanzania’s per capita income was $280. Now (in 1998) it is $140. So I asked the World Bank people what went wrong. Because for the last ten years Tanzania has been signing on the dotted line and doing everything the IMF and World Bank wanted. Enrolment in school has plummeted to 63% and conditions in health and other social services have deteriorated. I asked them again ‘what went wrong?’ These people just sat there looking at me. Then they asked what could they do? I said, ‘Have some humility.’” 7

The Economic and Social Council have been conducting a series of ‘dialogues’ with the Bretton Woods institutions. It is too early to say where these are going but the hope is that they start to bring the institutions into a more focused and accountable  relationship with ECOSOC. One of the issues here is not only related to the World Bank but also to what impact a decision by ECOSOC or the General Assembly has on UN Agencies and Programmes.

4) Trusteeship Council

The Trusteeship Council is one of the United Nation’s six principal organs and has played a vital role in the process of decolonization and overseeing the progress of trust territories to independence and self government. One of the recommendations from the Commission on Global Governance was that:

“The Trusteeship Council should be given a new mandate: to exercise trusteeship over the global commons.” 8

One of the strengths of the idea is it would be a body acting on the behalf of all nations. It would give due recognition to the importance of the environment. Its functions would, according to the Commission on Global Governance, “include the administration of environmental treaties in such fields as climate change, bio-diversity, outer space and the Law of the Sea. It would refer, as appropriate, any economic or security issues arising from these matters to the Economic Security Council or the Security Council.”9

Putting this recommendation into practice would have a drastic impact on UNEP and the CSD and could see the discussion of ‘sustainable development’ again taken apart with economic and social issues being referred to the proposed Economic Security Council or to the present Economic and Social Council, and environmental issues going to the Trusteeship Council.

Another possible way of approaching the Trusteeship Council is to have it take the place of the CSD and address the soft and hard areas of sustainable development but at a higher level within the UN. This would ensure and further the necessary integrated approach to sustainable development.  If the practice of how the CSD operates and the active involvement of capitals could be retained then it would take away the need for the CSD recommendations to go to ECOSOC and to the GA. If sustainable development is taken in its broadest sense then it could include work done at present by some of the other functioning Commissions of ECOSOC like the Social Development Commission.

5) World Environment Organization

In the preparation for UNGASS the issue of the need to create a counterbalance to the World Trade Organization became more and more obvious. In the period since 1992 UNEP had become weaker. At the Earth Council event in Rio in March 1997 the then Executive Director of UNEP, Elizabeth Dowdeswell, told Inter Press Service, that she felt 1997, the twenty fifth anniversary of the Stockholm Conference on Environment, is the year in which her organisation would be able to meet the new challenges of globalization:

''I think people are worried about globalization, and they want an international organisation that is strong enough and that has the authority to be a counterweight to the World Trade Organisation (WTO)....The challenges of globalization in the era of the WTO, are such that nations' laws to protect the environment can be superceded if they are deemed to interfere with free trade'' 10					
UNEP unsuccessfully pushed for the creation of a stronger World Environment Organisation (WGO). Other UN officials also saw the need for an environmental check against free-trade rules. James Gustave Speth, administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), told the Rio forum there is a need for :

''an effective partner at the international level to work with the WTO and other new entities. The United Nations is the logical location for such an institution, and it could be built from an entirely rebuilt, expanded and renamed UNEP. The proposed World Environmental Organisation should be ''capable of developing and monitoring international environmental agreements and promoting international environmental protection and cooperation.'' 11

The discussion on the WEO was brought to the 1997 Special Session of the General Assembly by Germany, with the support of South Africa, Singapore and Brazil.

Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, of the Federal Republic of Germany, told the Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, New York on the 23 June 1997:

“ global environment protection and sustainable development need a clearly-audible voice at the United Nations. Therefore, in the short term, I think it is important that cooperation among the various environmental organisations be significantly improved. In the medium term this should lead to the creation of a global umbrella organization for environmental issues, with the United Nations Environment Programme as a major pillar.” 12

The discussion fell on deaf ears as there had been little preparation and the financial situation in the world did not allow for the creation of such a body.

One suggestion for the WEO is to collect together under one organization, the Conventions and the Global Environmental Facility. By doing so it would enable the Conventions to have the financial mechanisms to deliver the convention built into the same institution. There are some interesting issues that would have to be addressed if this approach were to be taken. These would be:

** Should the body be set up with a universal membership?
** How can the issue that different countries have ratified different conventions be addressed?
** What relationship will this body have to the UN as a whole and to the WTO?
** What relationship will it have to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development?

If these questions can be answered adequately then finally it will have to answer the issue of focusing on environment and not sustainable development. It will strengthen greatly the environmental axis but where does that put the interplay between the environment and development agendas that Rio brought about?
A different suggestion concerning how one construct a WEO has come from the Yale Environmental Governance Dialogue. They suggest that some of the key problems that need to be addressed are:

** That there is fragmentation of the present environmental regime (UNEP, CSD, UNDP, WMO, IOC, FAO, UNESCO, and treaty organizations) and that this hampers efforts on co-ordination; 
** The organizations that we depend on internationally to deal with environmental issues have narrow mandates and small budgets;
** The location of UNEP (Kenya);
** The present global environmental governance structure is dated and needs restructuring; The Yale Dialogue came forward with some suggestions of the way forward. They suggested that a global environmental organization should have the capacity to:
** Gather data and monitor environmental indicators;
** Provide an early warning system to forecast and identify environmental disasters and societies at risk;
** Promote information and technology exchange;
** Serve as a catalytic force to focus the world community on emerging global scale pollution and resource management issues;
** Acts as a convening authority to co-ordinate global responses to environmental challenges (engaging not only governments but also civil society at large including business and NGOs);
** Offer a forum for dispute resolution;
** Establish policy guidelines to promote global responses to environmental challenges.
They argue that in the short term institutional co-ordination might be achieved through a new UN “Development and Environment Group” chaired jointly be the heads of UNEP, UNDP and the World Bank;

They suggest the new global environment organization should have a three level structure. The core function should be an “effective international response to inherently global issues.” Moreover, they propose the following:

“At the centre of this entity, we recommend that organizations responsible for the global commons - UNEP, WMO, the International Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and the International Hydrological Programme (IHP) of UNESCO be merged.” 13

They suggest a second level would be co-ordination of the Conventions without compromising the legal character of the Conferences of the Parties.

The third level would be permanent consultation links with CSD, UNDP, FAO, WHO and UNESCO and the multilateral economic and development agencies, as well as stakeholders working in the field of environment.

What is clear is the discussion on a WEO is now being addressed seriously by NGOs, think tanks and governments. There is a rich agenda of ideas on the way forward which will make it more likely that there will be progress.

6) Strengthening UNEP

Following the 1997 UN General Assembly Special Session to review Rio the Secretary General Kofi Annan established a Task Force on Environment and Human Settlements under the new UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer to draft recommendations for improving the work of the United Nations in the area of environment and human settlements.

One of the key areas it was to look at was the co-ordination of the UN Conventions in the area of environment. It had become increasingly clear that many of the conventions cover common areas and the need to have them work together has become more important. The Report did make suggestions for better co-ordination:

“The Task Force recommends that, in addition to integrating convention secretariats and convention-related issues in the work of the Environmental Management Group (EMG)....the Executive Director of UNEP should continue to sponsor joint meetings of heads of secretariats of global and regional conventions and use this forum to recommend actions to ensure that the work programmes established by the Conferences of Parties to the conventions, together with substantive support offered by UNEP, are complementary, fill gaps and take advantage of synergy, and avoid overlap and duplication. Recommendations from these meetings should be presented to the Conference of the Parties by the respective secretariats....with respect to existing conventions, approaches should include promoting co-operation among the secretariats with a view to their eventual co-location and possible fusion into a single secretariat; and in the longer term, the negotiation of umbrella conventions covering each cluster.” 14

The problems with achieving better co-ordination at times come down to the lack of political will or vested interests or a real framework for them to happen.  For Earth Summit 2002 these problems need to be faced. One way of doing this is to bring all the conventions together in one place and under one administrative system. Creating the conditions where staff involved in one convention can work with those involved in another but dealing with the same area is crucial to ensuring that there is better co-ordination and will help ensure governments and others will have a clear idea of what is actually being achieved. Another idea is to look for convention meetings to happen at the same time, in the same place and for there to be a common agenda for the meeting to be developed. Joined up thinking requires some attempt to bring people together who do not usually meet.
	
7) A Committee of the General Assembly 

One of the suggestions before the Rio Conference was that there should be a setting up of a Sustainable Development Committee of the General Assembly. Discussions then were of a UN Standing Committee similar to the Committee on New and Renewable Sources of Energy which was created after the 1982 UN Energy Conference to oversee follow up. One of the results of the 1997 Special Session was to take responsibility for this area which the Standing Committee had not dealt with adequately.

A more adventurous idea would be for one of the General Assembly committees - parts of the second combined with parts of the third, to become the sustainable development GA committee. This would require governments to commit funds to ensure that the discussion was supported adequately by capital experts in the issues and not just representatives from government missions in New York. It would also require an opening of the system to allow Major Groups a more effective involvement along the lines that the CSD has pioneered. The result though would be a ‘higher level’ discussion on sustainable development with all countries taking part, not just 53 as is the case with the CSD. 

8) UNDP and other UN Agencies

Agenda 21 was full of recommendations for the UN Agencies and Programmes15. One of the problems has been to try and ensure that these place sustainable development and Agenda 21 at the heart of their work. There has been some good work by some people in some of the UN agencies and programmes, but it is hard to see a real concerted and strategic approach being carried out from Rio. Some of the ways this might be approached beyond 2002 are:

** The IACSD to produce a report on implementation of Earth Summit 2002 each year for the CSD and for governments to review it. This will create the opportunity for holding UN agencies and programmes answerable in a forum other than their own governing council;
** The UN Development Group (UNDG) to be empowered to produce reports on implementation at the national level;
** UNDP to make poverty eradication the key to delivering their contribution to sustainable development;
** All relevant UN agencies and programmes to have the follow up to Earth Summit 2002 an item on their governing council's agendas up to 2012.
									
9) CSD Moving the Envelope Forward 

Originally the Rio Conference in 1992 wasn’t going to implement a follow up mechanism. It was in effect created by a coalition of progressive Northern and Southern Governments and NGOs.  In opposition were the US, UK, China, India, Brazil and Kenya. Many of these countries have become great supporters of the CSD since it was formed.

The CSD has moved forward the involvement of Major Groups and, as was mentioned before, it has managed to set itself up as a political forum with a high level of involvement from Ministers.

For the period beyond 2002 the need for more joined up thinking between the CSD and the other UN commissions that are actively involved in monitoring aspects of Agenda 21 and whatever comes out of Earth Summit 2002 will be very important. 

The UN Economic and Social Council has four commissions that cover areas that could work together more. These are the Commissions on Social Development, Status of Women, Sustainable Development and Population and Development. All of these commissions are serviced by the UN Department for Social and Economic Affairs (DESA). In the next phase of work these commissions plus the Commission on Human Settlement, which is a standing committee, could work for a set of common meetings.

Year	Sectoral Themes	Key Bodies	Cross Cutting Issues	Dialogue Session	
2003	Health- Aids & HIV Air Pollution	WHO, UNEP, UN	Trade, Investment, Consumption, and Production and Poverty	AIDS/HIV and Development Finance	
	Population	Commission on Population & Development UNAIDS International Financial Institutions			
2004	Tourism
Freshwater	Commission on Status of Women UNEP, UNDP, IFIs, WTO	Trade, Investment Finance Consumption and Production	Tourism	
2005	Poverty, Agriculture	Commission on Social Development, UNDP World Bank and IMF, FAO	Trade, Investment, Finance, Consumption, and Production	Poverty and Environment	
2006	Urbanization/LA21	Commission on Human Settlement, UNDP, UNCHS, UNEP, World Bank	Trade, Investment, Finance, Consumption, and Production	Trade	
2007	Summit of the Regions				

(Table 1 Possible Work Programme of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development 2003-2007)

This approach would have some very important side effects. It would not only ensure more co-ordination between the UN divisions responsible for servicing the UN commissions but it would also force government departments to co-ordinate among themselves should ensure that there is better implementation. Table 1 tries to give some idea of what an integrated approach to beyond 2002 might look like.

10) Regional Commissions monitoring implementations

Post Earth Summit 2002 there will still need to be a review of governments and other stakeholder’s implementation of Agenda 21. This could be devolved to the UN regional commissions. The commissions were under threat in the 1980s from certain countries who saw them as unnecessary institutions.

If financed adequately they have the possibility to be a very effective monitoring and implementation level. The countries that are members tend to have much more in common than at a global level in the area of economic development. Many face similar environmental problems and a structured review at the regional level with built in multi-stakeholder dialogue processes, timetables and targets to implement the agreed outcomes should ensure that developing countries would then want to see the required funds, technological transfer and capacity building released. 

The UN Economic Commission for Europe has been an effective law-maker across Eastern and Western Europe in areas such as air pollution. Other UN regions have yet to go down this path but they could. There is consideration for a Convention on trans-boundary air pollution within the area of the UN Commission for South East Asia. There could be a co-ordinated approach between the different UN Commissions where each would also work to an agreed multi-year thematic programme of work. Table 2 makes an attempt to produce a possible 5-year work programme at moving to create regional law. 

Year	Sectoral Themes to Review	Key Bodies	Cross Cutting Issues 	Dialogue Session	
2003	Transport Energy	UNEP, WHO, UNDP, WHO, FAO, UNCTAD, IFIs	Poverty, Technological Transfer, Capacity Building, Finance	Air pollution	
2004	Freshwater Forests	UNEP, UNDP, WHO, FAO, UNCTAD, IFIs	Poverty, Technological Transfer, Capacity Building, Finance	Freshwater	
2005	Agriculture Forests	UNDP, FAO, IFAD, UNEP, IFIs 	Poverty, Technological Transfer, Capacity Building, Finance	Forests	
2006	Oceans	IOC, FAO, Regional, Fisheries, Bodies, UNEP, IMO	Poverty, Technological Transfer, Capacity Building, Finance	Fisheries	
2002	Summit of the Regions				

Table 2: Possible work programme for UN Regional Commissions
	
To support this institutionally the Inter Agency Committee on Sustainable Development should convene a yearly meeting of high-level representatives from the Regional Commissions and relevant UN Agencies including the Bretton Worlds Institutions to oversee co-ordination.

This could lead to a ‘Summit of the Regions’ five years after Earth Summit 2002 to share the experiences of implementation and development of a framework of regional law.
					
The Role of Stakeholders 

The UN Commission on Sustainable has been a very important space for Major Groups to develop their relationships with the United Nations and among themselves.

The Commission on Sustainable Development has been one of the key places where stakeholders' involvement in the UN has been developed. 

In 1993 the CSD asked that the NGOs, including all major UN groups, who had been accredited to Rio, be allowed to be accredited to ECOSOC. This started a 3-year dispute where the more conservative members of the UN kept rejecting the CSD agreement on NGOs when it went to the General Assembly. In 1996 it was finally agreed that the NGOs would be written to asking if they wanted to become fully accredited NGOs. In the end 123 NGOs joined together, by-passing the normal NGO accreditation process.

The CSD has enabled Major Groups at its annual sessions to increase their involvement. This has included:

1993 	being let into informal and formal meetings and then invited to speak; 
1994 	In the national presentations they could ask their governments questions in front of their peer group 
1995 	the introduction of ‘Day on a Major Group’;
1997 	the introduction of the Dialogue Sessions - as a series of 5 half day Major Group presentations;
1998 	the Dialogues developed as an interactive two day discussion among governments and certain stakeholder groups on a specific topic;
1998 	the setting up of the first multi-stakeholder process to follow up a CSD decision (on voluntary agreements and initiatives on industry);
1999 	the Dialogues’ outcomes were given higher status, being put on the table with the Ministerial discussion and CSD Inter-sessional document for the CSD Chair’s consideration;
1999 	the setting up of the second multi-stakeholder process to follow up a CSD decision (on tourism).

The CSD has seen quite a large involvement of Major Groups in its work. Each commission meeting has had around 200-300 Major Group representatives attending at some point through the three-week period. In the 1999 CSD this grew to over 600.  The CSD has pioneered a greater involvement of Major Groups in the sessions of the Commission. None of the sessions are now closed, even the small working groups are held open for Major Group representatives to attend and in many cases speak.

The increased involvement of Major Groups in the implementation of the UN conference agreements has seen an increased involvement in the framing of the agreements. Perhaps the Habitat II Conference expanded the involvement to where the norm should be. At that Conference and it's preparatory meetings NGOs were allowed to enter suggestions of text amendments. To do this they were required to organise themselves into a negotiating block and then the UN brought the NGO amendments out as an official UN document - A/Conf.165/INF/8. This was the first time this had happened.  

The Habitat II process also had another first, Committee 2. In Committee 2 in Istanbul there was a series of half-day dialogues between stakeholder groups. The reality was that as the negotiations were going on in Committee 1 the level of participation was low and the input in to the negotiations was zero.  The idea of the Dialogues was taken up by the CSD NGO Steering Committee who wrote to the Under Secretary General Nitin Desai in August 1996 requesting his support for the introduction of Dialogues at the CSD in 1997. The General Assembly agreed in November 1996 and asked each of the Major Groups to prepare for half-day dialogue sessions on the role they have taken in implementing Agenda 21.

The CSD dialogues in 1997 were held at the same time as negotiations and were in most cases poorly attended.  They were written into the work programme of the CSD next five-year programme of action. The topic for the dialogues for 1998 was agreed to be industry and the then Director of the UN Division on Sustainable Development Joke Waller Hunter brought together the International Chamber of Commerce and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (for Industry), the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (for Trade Unions) and for the NGOs the CSD NGO Steering Committee. Under her leadership a new formula was agreed. This included the breakthrough that the negotiations would not take place during the dialogues. Each stakeholder group was to consult and produce a starting paper on the sub themes of: 

** Responsible Entrepreneurship;
** Corporate Management Tools;
** Technology Cooperation and Assessment;
** Industry and Freshwater.

These papers were to be given out as UN background papers before the CSD Intersessional in March; governments would have them to reflect on as they discussed the issue for the first time.  One of the very important by-products of this approach by all stakeholders is that it caused ‘peer group’ review inside the stakeholder group. Another important outcome was that comments, that in the past were made by a group to governments in the corridors, now could be made in a ‘creative’ forum where governments could hear the reasons for and against and challenge them.

When the dialogues started at the CSD some governments were unhappy about the idea that they had to listen to stakeholder groups and saw this as an encroachment on governmental space. The success of the dialogues in part was due to the chairing by the then Philippines Minister of the Environment, Cielito Habito, who challenged the stakeholder groups on what they were saying and caused peer group review between stakeholder groups and with governments. It caused the birth of the first really dynamic model for engaging the different stakeholders in a UN ongoing process.

The third year dialogue session was on tourism, and to focus better the NGO CSD Steering Committee suggested that the papers should be four pages and be structured by:

** Problems;
** Solutions;
** Institutional responsibilities;
** Possible partnerships.

The active involvement of Simon Upton, the then New Zealand Minister for the Environment, during the preparatory process saw the dialogues succeed again. Through his office a meeting was convened in London under the chairing of David Taylor (New Zealand government) where representatives of all the stakeholder groups were brought together at the end of March to see what might be agreed on. This was followed by a meeting chaired by David Taylor on the behalf of Simon Upton the night before the CSD to see if after consultation the agreements would hold.

The outcome from the CSD dialogue sessions was important in two areas:

1. The setting up of a multi-stakeholder group under the World Tourism Organisation to look at financial leakages in the tourism industry and make recommendations next year and preparing a joint initiative to improve information availability and capacity building for participation on tourism;
2. The agreements that came out of the two days were then used with the CSD Intersessional document and the outcomes of tourism from the High Level Ministerial to develop the final text of the international work programme on sustainable tourism;

This was an enormous leap in Major Group involvement in the United Nations. Instead
of the work and expertise of the Major Groups being part of a side show, or having to work exclusively in the corridors, we are now seeing the work incorporated into the negotiations.

There is a recommendation going to UNEP that it replicates the dialogue process for the next UNEP Governing Council in 2001. Other UN bodies and the WTO should look seriously at the approach the CSD has taken as it offers a good way to involve relevant stakeholders and to would ensure better informed decisions.

Implication of Proposals
				
The suggestions above in certain cases require some Charter amendments and so Table 3 looks at the possible implications of the suggestions in the chapter for Charter amendments, the involvement of Major Groups, and if what is proposed would create binding decisions.

Proposal 	Charter Amendment	Ability for Involvement of Major Groups	Binding Decision	
UN Charter Change to Promote Sustainable Development	YES	N/A	NO	
Utilizing the Security Council	NO	Possibly as Experts	YES	
Realigning the Bretton Woods Institutions	NO	Possibly	YES	
Trusteeship Council	YES	Possibly	YES	
World Environment Organization	YES	Probably	YES	
Committee of the General Assembly	NO	Probably	YES	
Strengthening UNEP	NO	YES	NO	
UNDP and other UN Agencies	NO	YES	NO	
CSD Moving the Envelope Forward	NO	YES	NO	
Regional Commissions Monitoring Implementations	NO	YES	NO	

Tables 3: A Review of the proposals in the chapter and their requirement for UN Charter Amendment, whether they are legally binding, and major group involvement. 16

Conclusion

This chapter has tried to outline some of the options for moving forward the international machinery but alone this will not achieve the implementation of any of the global plans of action agreed by countries. What is needed to achieve this is a ‘new realistic deal’ between developed and developing countries which both will keep to. This deal will also require a new found responsibility by other stakeholder groups regarding their role in implementing any agreement. It will require some vision, and most important, some trust.

References

1. UN Charter
2. Earth Summit ‘92 (1992) Agenda 21, Chapter 38, Institutional structure, Section 3, p231, The Regency Press, London  
3. Ibid
4. Bigg, T and Osborn, D (1998) Earth Summit II - Outcome and Analysis, Earthscan, London, p64
5. Report of the UN General Assembly Special Session Programme for the further implementation of Agenda 21 (1997), New York, UN
6 UN Charter
7. Ex President Nyerere, J (1999) ‘The Heart of Africa’, New Internationalist, London,  No 309,  pp12-15
8. The Report of the Commission on Global Governance (1995), Summary of Proposals in Reforming the United Nations Oxford University Press, Oxford, p301
9.ibid
10. Dowdeswell, E (1997) Momentum Builds for Successor to UNEP, interview by Farhan Haq for Inter Press Service, Rio
11. Speth, J G (1997) Momentum Builds for Successor to UNEP, interview by Farhan Haq for Inter Press Service, Rio
12) Kohl, H (1997) Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, UN Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations New York on the 23 June 
13) Esty, D (1998) Strengthening Global Environmental Governance, Yale Environmental Governance Dialogue, New York 
14) UN Task Force on Environment and Human Settlements (1998), Nairobi
15) Earth Summit ‘92 (1992) Agenda 21,  Chapter 38, Institutional structure, Section 3, The Regency Press, London, p231  
16) Tampier M (1996) concept adapted from The UN and Environmental Conflict, Vrije Universiteit, Brussels.

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