| For WSSD one of the most crucial areas is strengthening the institutional framework for sustainable development. Why? Policymakers need to ask themselves a very simple question. If most indicators show continued environmental degradation despite a proliferation of organizations and institutions put in place to protect the environment and work towards sustainability, then logically this begs the question of whether institutions are not the problem? Have they been effective enough? How can we strengthen them to fully address the scope, magnitude and complexity of sustainable development? To effectively protect and preserve the natural environment, environmental institutions, at all levels of governance, must better reflect the link between environmental problems and the underlying economic and social issues that most likely led to them. In this respect, all aspects of the debate over institutional reform is influence by the recognition that, in an increasingly globalised economy, international environmental institutions must be able to address key social and economic issues that may not be included in their primary mandate. Without an overarching structure or process to provide guidance, one of the keys to establishing and maintaining coherency within sustainable development governance lies in the relationships between the institutions of different regimes, including, environment, trade, health, and peace and stability. The development of strong and clear complementarities and compatibilities between different international regimes and bodies of international law will both help to create, and reflect, a balance between the three pillars (economic, social, and environmental) of sustainable development. An explicit recognition of the inherent links between the economic, social, and environmental aspects of sustainable human development was evident at the first UN Conference on Environment and Development ten years ago. Yet, this recognition is still not adequately reflected in the overall architecture of the international governance system. The lack of coherency within the formal international institutional architecture reflects the high level of disagreement that still exists in regard to what would constitute an effective and appropriate approach to achieving sustainable development. The inability of the international community to agree upon a common approach to sustainable development governance is rooted, to a large extent, in disparities between the perspectives and priorities of developed and developing countries. Reducing and overcoming these disparities remains, therefore, a critical prerequisite for the creation of an effective, efficient, and equitable system of sustainable development governance. The following section looks at how to strengthen sustainable development governance from three levels, between the institutions of the three pillars of sustainable development, within the environmental governance sector itself and between the scales (local, national, regional and international). Strengthening Governance Between the Three Pillars of Sustainable Development What is the Most Effective Governance Framework for Sustainable Development? The international community, in the past decade, has expressed growing concern over the proliferation of international legal and institutional arrangements aimed at addressing specific environmental problems. This concern centers not only on establishing a functional framework for coordinated international action but also for maximising the limited resources available for environment protection. Recently, the Secretary-General of the United Nations established a Task Force on Environment and Human Settlements as part of the overall reform of the United Nations, and noted the formidable challenge facing the international community in attaining “a sustainable equilibrium between economic growth, poverty reduction, social equity and the protection of the Earth’s resources, common and life support systems.” He also concluded that experience had demonstrated the need for a more systemic approach to policies and programmes through mainstreaming the United Nations commitment to sustainable development. Many of the specific proposals put forward with this goal in mind involve reforming existing UN bodies in an effort to provide them with a broader role, for example, UNEPs Global Ministerial Environment Forum (GMEF), the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and the UN General Assembly. i. GMEF In 1999, the UN General Assembly established the GMEF as an annual, Ministerial-level forum, with the UNEP Governing Council constituting the forum in the years that it meets in regular session, and in alternate years it is to take on the form of a special session of the Governing Council. An effectively functioning GMEF could help strengthen the normative authority of UNEP. It could clarify the links between UNEP and existing instruments, such as MEAs. It would also clarify the role of UNEP in contributing to the wider sustainable development agenda. Similarly, as the G-77 has recently proposed, the GMEF could be remodelled to transcend the mandate provided the UN General Assembly and "provide general policy guidance to, and promote coordination with, the other relevant organizations in the environmental field". ii. CSD Rather than seek a more powerful mandate or higher intergovernmental status, a better approach may be to redirect the CSD toward the type of work where it could make a difference and combine it, where possible, with similar UN organizations that focus more closely on aspects of sustainable development. Rather than “bigger and broader”, the focus should be more narrowly focused on tasks that the CSD could actually accomplish and to areas where it could add value. A redefined mandate, therefore, could include the following: A more narrow and realistic focus for the CSD could be to train its focus on the functioning of the UN itself, rather than the world as a whole. A systemic approach would focus, in simplest terms, on what the UN is or is not doing; or if the UN is acting, is it adequately addressing the sustainable development aspects of any given issue area. Two of the CSD’s most notable areas of successes stem from the CSD-7 decisions on oceans and tourism, both of which led to actual changes in the manner in which the UN considered these issues. Its decision on oceans, inter alia, recommended that the General Assembly establish an open-ended informal consultative process to facilitate the consideration of matters within the GA's existing mandate. For tourism, it actually introduced the issue into the Rio process and developed an international work programme on sustainable tourism. In both examples, the CSD focused on how it could contribute to integrated decision-making by providing better consideration of the overall policy matrix. This approach for the CSD should be distinguished from the coordination role under consideration for the EMG. Governments clearly attach importance to coordination efforts that go beyond issue management and proposed actions, which strive for enhancing policy coordination across the UN system, include reporting annually to GMEF on specific issues arising from the work of the UN system in the environmental area. While a systemic approach for the CSD could overlap to some extent, its revised mandate should go beyond environmental matters to address developmental aspects as well. iii. ECOSOC ECOSOC could play a useful role in terms of providing for greater coherency and direction to all environment-related UN activities. Its broad mandate, which encompasses economic, social, human rights and other issues, could provide a basis for integrated and comprehensive institutional development because it offers scope for some adaptability. ECOSOC could attempt to develop its coordination function, which encompasses a large part of the UN system. This could involve strengthening its relationships with UN specialized agencies and strengthening its current role in promoting integrated and coordinated follow-up to major UN conferences. The political acceptance of new role for ECOSOC would be limited in light of its less than prominent role in the past. ECOSOC is not generally regarded as an effective body. The Secretary-General’s proposals for UN reform in 1997 noted that there may be a need for a long-term fundamental rethinking of the role of ECOSOC, in addition to the immediate priority of enhancing its policy management and coordinating roles. The issue of Charter revision could also arise if extensive adjustments were made to ECOSOC’s area of activity. This would be difficult if attempted, in that ECOSOC’s mandate is extremely challenging because it “competes” with the Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF and World Bank) in its task of advancing UN purposes in the economic and social areas. Furthermore, ECOSOC’s large subsidiary machinery makes it difficult for it to implement a strong coordination role. iv. A New General Assembly Committee on Sustainable Development Another option for sustainable development governance is to increase the sustainable development focus of the General Assembly, possibly through a new committee. The General Assembly debates on environment and sustainable development could provide more overall direction to the international regime, as well as highlight broad priorities and address overlaps and unclear mandates. Recent developments on enhancing complementarities among international instruments related to environment and sustainable development could be built on. One limitation is that the General Assembly’s large membership and extensive agenda may not provide an ideal basis for effective outcomes, as many of its resolutions tend to have little impact. The non-binding nature of the Assembly’s resolutions has attracted attention, with detrimental comparisons being drawn with the decision-making powers of the Security Council. UN reform proposals have tried, but so far mostly failed, to focus the Assembly’s agenda and revitalise its debates. The most prominent obstacle is that issues on the Assembly agenda usually become part of a complicated package of trade-offs, which means environment and sustainable development can “lose out” in the process. The personalities and working methods of the Assembly, for example the informal, unpredictably scheduled processes for agreeing resolutions, can also be a problem. Nonetheless, developing countries view the Assembly as a body in which their interests are fairly represented, which could help build acceptability of reinforcing the Assembly’s role. It also has the power and legitimacy to coordinate economic and social institutions outside the environmental sector. Sustainable Development Law There is a strong need for coherency and complementarity between international environmental law, emerging sustainable development law, and the wider corpus of international law. Whatever dispute settlement, enforcement, or judicial mechanisms that exist or that are emerging to support international sustainable development governance, they must be able to work in close coordination with other international organisations, courts, tribunals, and also the wider nongovernmental community. For example, the GATT/WTO system when it was first established as the trade regime it was wrongly considered as a special regime de-linked from other rules of international law, including international environmental law. It is in fact this de-linking of the trade regime that represents a large part of the current challenge for the architects of international law. Strong arguments can be made in support of the current system of institutional monitoring, a system that has, one should add, been relatively successful in terms of achieving compliance and avoiding disputes. At the same time, there is no technical or specific reason why a system of judicial enforcement could not complement, rather than replace, the current monitoring system. This could be done either (1) by injecting a stage of third-party adjudication, based on the rule of law (not power-politics), into current compliance procedures, or (2) by providing for a distinct process of judicial settlement when compliance procedure have failed to resolve a matter. Without a judicial branch of international sustainable development law there is a danger that a two class society of international norms will develop based on those that can be judicially enforced, such a WTO rules, and those that can not. Judicial enforcement of international sustainable development law would help ensure that sustainable development norms do not become second tier norms. The lack of compulsory universal, or semi-universal, enforcement or dispute settlement mechanisms within international environmental law and sustainable development law is the result of a political decision on behalf of states that will not be resolved by institutional reform. Judicial settlements have not happened because states are reluctant to grant jurisdiction to courts and tribunals that would allow states and or non-state actors to challenge their environmental policies or conduct. Until such point in time, if ever, that the political will to exists to establish an international judicial organ, with both compulsory and universal jurisdiction, the purposes of international sustainable development governance may be well served by strengthening concern for the environment within other international regimes such as trade (WTO dispute settlement mechanisms) and peace and stability (UN Security Council) in the context of the environment. Strengthening Coordination Within the Environment Sector Interlinkages between Multilateral Environmental Agreements at the Regional and National Level In recent years, attention has focused on improving inter–agency coordination at the global institutional level, mainly as a result of the UN Secretary–General's proposals for better issue management and the 1998 Report of the UN Task Force on Environment and Human Settlements. Several of the Task Force's recommended actions pertain either directly or indirectly to the growing number of linkages among environmental conventions. While efforts to enhance synergies at the global level must continue, challenges and opportunities for enhanced coordination at the regional and national levels also need to be addressed. Examining the dynamics of these two scales is important for a number of reasons. First and perhaps foremost, abundant natural linkages exist in ecosystems having boundaries within and across the sub–national, national and regional levels. This geographic grouping offers promising scales to implement agreements using a synergy approach and can achieve visible as well as tangible results on the ground. Second, implementing global multilateral environmental agreements often requires regional frameworks and cooperative action plans to specify how global agreements can be applied to the contextual particularities of a geographic or ecological region or sub–region. Such frameworks and action plans are elaborated regularly in the scope of regional or sub–regional intergovernmental meetings, such as the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment, the Asia–Pacific Ministerial Conference on Environment and Development, the ASEAN Senior Officials on the Environment or South Pacific Environmental Cooperative Programme. They may also result from the negotiation of specific arrangements designed to apply global multilateral environmental agreements to a given region, or to protect a threatened resource in a given area. The same applies to the national level in the sense that global and regional agreements require action plans (NAPs) and strategies that provide guidance on how environmental commitments will be implemented sub–nationally and locally. Third, although there are worthy avenues to establish synergy and mutual support among global multilateral environmental agreements (e.g. Rio Conventions), most agreements are regional in scope, such as the various environmental conventions negotiated under the auspices of the UN regional economic commissions or sub–regional organisations and programmes (e.g. ASEAN, SPREP, SACEP). There are also interesting avenues and possible synergies to pursue across regional and sub–regional arrangements. Fourth, many of the administrative problems experienced at the global level also surface at the regional and national levels in the form of coordination and conflicting institutional roles, communication failures, duplication, etc. For effective implementation to take place it is important to address any existing deficiencies that may impair proper and effective environmental management. Further information: Please contact UNU/GEIC: Jerry Velasquez jerry@geic.or.jp or visit the GEIC website http://www.geic.or.jp/interlink/ or UNU/IAS: W. Bradnee Chambers chambers@ias.unu.edu. Clustering of Multilateral Environmental Agreements A fundamental starting point for environmental law and policy is science. The bio/geophysical relationships between sectors, substances and the inter–relationship of ecosystems, and activities that multilateral environmental agreements seek to protect or regulate, provide an obvious organising principle for their coordination. From this starting point policymakers could ensure greater effectiveness and cost efficiency of multilateral environmental agreements by initiating a process to strategically group MEAs together according to their scientific and natural relationships. A suggested grouping could be the following: - Conventions related to biodiversity (possible sub–clusters are regional, sea, etc) - Conventions related to oceans and seas - Conventions related to fresh water, forests and lands - Conventions related to the atmosphere - Conventions related to chemicals and hazardous wastes Pragmatic work programmes could be devised within each grouping based on common functions such as capacity development, technology transfer, education and awareness raising, and information dissemination and reporting. Such clustering should consider more effective modalities for future international negotiation, scientific assessment, and international–regional–national implementation and coordination. There is no one single approach to the strategic integration, or clustering, of MEAs that is likely to present the most beneficial or practical option because each clustering effort should be aimed at resolving a specific problem or weakness in the current system. The most promising way to approach the clustering of MEAs appears to be a pragmatic combination of approaches. In each case, it would need to be assessed which elements or functions of which MEAs can reasonably be integrated. The clustering of MEAs is best understood as a step-by-step process rather than as an objective in itself. As a first step, structures for co-ordination between MEAs can be established and/or elaborated and diversified, including joint meetings of convention bodies and secretariats, memoranda of understanding, joint implementation of common activities, communication networks, routines and structures etc., where appropriate and feasible. Such co-operative arrangements might then evolve over time leading to more formal structures of co-ordination. Further information: Please contact UNU/IAS: W. Bradnee Chambers chambers@ias.unu.edu or UNU/GEIC: Jerry Velasquez jerry@geic.or.jp Strengthening Governance Between Scales (Local, National, Regional, International) National Frameworks for Sustainable Development Strategic planning frameworks for sustainable development are an effective method of identifying the priorities, compromises, and trade–offs that countries must take account of in order to achieve sustainability. Such frameworks should measure progress and set priorities. They should also serve to identify, analyse, and help show how best practices can be adapted in pursuit of the socio–economic and environmental goals outlined in Agenda 21. As an example of how such frameworks could be constructed UNU has formulated three strategic frameworks that focus on China, India, and Indonesia. The frameworks were country driven and took into consideration specific country factors that are inherent to large developing countries. These include the tremendous population pressures that can give rise to deforestation and soil erosion as well as the natural resource endowments of each country. Many of the key recommendations put forward in the sustainable development frameworks formulated within UNU projects have centred on the need to create more effective, integrated, and transparent national institutions. Such institutions are required to develop the kind of broad packages of policy instruments, including economic instruments, which are essential to sustainable development. These institutions are also crucial in terms of reconciling economic development and environmental priorities within large countries with diverse populations. This is even more so the case given the additional pressures that are caused by rapid globalisation. The effectiveness of these integrated national institutions will depend, to a large extent, on their capacity to establish positive partnerships with national and international private sector interests and also upon their ability to engage civil society and community actors in a constructive manner. This is because some of policy reforms directed towards sustainable development are controversial nature such as raising prices, closing polluting factories, accepting international agreements and prohibiting farming or grazing in degraded ecosystems. Without popular support for these reforms, changes will be difficult and well designed. The effectiveness of these institutions will also depend on their success in terms of coordinating the work of various ministries and agencies in order to reduce the overlaps and contradictions that exist between them. Their effectiveness would also be enhanced if they prove capable of taking advantage of any possible synergies that exist between various ministries and agencies. Further information: Please contact UNU/IAS: T. Palanivel palani@ias.unu.edu or http://www.ias.unu.edu/research/sdf.cfm Subsidiarity and Environmental Decision–Making The principle of subsidiarity, which calls for decisions to be made and implemented at a level appropriate to the problem they address, should be facilitated in environmental management and governance. Ecosystems are best defined, understood and protected at the regional or local level rather than the global level. The level and type of decisions taken have to match the scale of the challenge or issue. This has long–term implications for the empowerment of communities and their ability to decide for themselves those aspects that affect their everyday lives. Creating an environment that facilitates such subsidiarity is a challenge for local governments, stakeholders, and for those responsible for global decision–making as well as regional and national implementation. Further information: Please contact UNU/GEIC: Jerry Velasquez jerry@geic.or.jp or visit the GEIC website http://www.geic.or.jp/interlink/ or UNU/IAS: W. Bradnee Chambers chambers@ias.unu.edu |