January  2017

THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE ENVIRONMENT (Summary)

Jacques Baudot

There are global issues that, to be addressed with a chance of success, require an international and intergovernmental organization. For two reasons: first, because they involve all nations, and, second, because agreements among all states, notably in the form of treaties, are indispensable to the solutions of the problems they raise. The protection of the environment is such an issue. 

At this point, the Organization of the United Nations, particularly its General Assembly, is the only international intergovernmental organization having the mandate and the legitimacy to be the forum for negotiations on these problems of global scope. And, this fact is recognized by the international community. Since the Stockholm conference of 1972, it is within the framework of the United Nations that debates and decisions concerning the health of planet Earth are taking place. 

Hence a first question: what assessment can be made of the action of the United Nations regarding the protection of the environment?

It has certainly contributed to raise the awareness of the seriousness of the threats facing humankind after two centuries of treatment of the Earth as a commodity. It has also achieved a number of successes, for example regarding the protection of the ozone layer, through the Montreal treaty. But, on the whole, the United Nations has failed to stop and reverse the deterioration of Man’s habitat. The very complete and very objective annual reports of the United Nations Programme for the Environment (UNEP) leave no doubt in this regard: it is the very future of humankind which is now at stake. The inability of the international community to adopt the measures that would limit global warming and its devastating effects epitomizes this failure. And there is little evidence that 2015, the year when a new Kyoto protocol is supposed to be finally agreed upon, will bring a sufficiently radical change of attitudes and policies.

The second question is why such failure?

Two explanations, sometimes invoked, lack pertinence:

• The Organization would lack information, knowledge and technical and administrative competence to be an efficient forum for negotiations on complex issues. Its Secretariat, made of international civil servants, would be excessively burdened by bureaucratic rules and constraints and hampered by the lack of initiative associated with careers offering comfort and stability. Such image, which is part of a very strong ideological current exalting the virtues of the private/corporate world and the defects of the public/governmental domain, has no objective basis. The United Nations, as well as most other organizations of the United Nations system, provides efficient services to its Member States. It has no difficulties attracting the best experts in different fields. On matters of the environment, as well as on other important issues on the international agenda, seldom one would hear delegations seriously attributing their problems in reaching an agreement to the shortcomings of the secretariats servicing them. That would mean endowing international civil servants with a power they do not possess.
• Even more frequent is the allegation that a General Assembly made of 194 members legally equal and disposing of one vote each, without regard for their real power and weight in world affairs, is, by nature, incapable of reaching agreements and decisions on issues involving strong national interests. This view gave credence to expressions such as “tyranny of the majority” and to calls for the adoption by the United Nations of a weighted voting system similar to those of the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. In reality, since the end of the 1980s, consensus is the dominant and accepted mode of operation of the General Assembly. The fact is that nothing of lasting significance is adopted, or even seriously debated, without the consent of the most powerful members, and nothing that these same members want is for long left out of the international agenda. In particular, the failure to reach an agreement on measures to limit the emissions of CO2 cannot in good faith be attributed to the quasi universal membership of the United Nations.

More convincing explanations might be found at four levels of analysis: the link that has been established between issues of the environment and issues of development; the decline of the role of the United Nations in economic and social matters; the characteristics of the diplomatic culture; and, the political philosophy in which the Organization is immersed.

Immediately after the conference of Stockholm, entitled United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, the activities of the United Nations on the environment and on development (meaning the efforts to bring the poor countries up on a ladder where the richer countries occupy the top echelons) became linked substantively and politically. Whether or not such linkage was unavoidable or justified is a question beyond the scope of this Note, but it occurred at a moment of emerging doubts on the viability of the prevailing model of development and progress (for environmental and other reasons), and also on the eve of a deliberate attempt of the developing countries to use their economic assets (oil and other commodities) to reshape the distribution of power in the world. The result was that the protection of the environment, which is par excellencean issue of universal concern, became entangled in the North/South dialogue cum confrontation, and, in the agenda of the General Assembly, environmental problems were, and still are in 2014, treated under the item “sustainable development.” 

This subordination of global environmental policies to development issues had all the more detrimental consequences that, starting in the mid-1980s and continuing today, the United Nations experienced an overall decline of its role on economic and social matters. Besides a reduction in real terms of the resources allocated by the Organization to this sector, a number of programmes created in the 1960s and the 1970s, notably on transnational corporations, science and technology, natural resources, energy, taxation, distribution of income and wealth, or even rural development, were suppressed or marginalized. Under the influence of neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologies, market forces and market “laws” became the “only game in town.” Economic development became essentially the reduction of poverty in the developing countries. Social development became human development, the emphasis being on individual well-being and no longer on social structures and institutions. As long advocated by some major powers, the United Nations is now focused on peace-keeping, on humanitarian assistance and, to a lesser extent, on human rights. In such a context, there is little possibility that serious consideration be given to  one of the essential conclusion of the Rio Summit, namely that patterns of production and consumption be drastically modified to reduce their negative environmental impact. The current emphasis on the promotion of “green economies” is a step in the right direction, but, alas, dramatically insufficient.

A third explanation of the incapacity of the United Nations to address effectively the crucial environmental issues of our time is to be sought in some of the characteristics of the diplomatic culture. For it is the diplomatic culture that prevail in the United Nations, an organization that has no element of supra-nationality and of which the Secretary-General is only the “chief administrative officer.” The United Nations –if it is necessary to underline this fact – is an inter-governmental institution, functioning through the cooperation and via the representatives of its Member States. It would be wrong to deny the role of the Secretariat. Especially in the past it had some important initiatives, but at present, in an atmosphere of rejection of the values that founded the international public service, the Secretariat of the United Nations, though a principal organ of the Charter, is definitely subservient to Member States. Diplomats, not idealists or technocrats, shape UN policies, and these diplomats share a common culture. Four aspects of this culture are not particularly helpful in addressing global threats such as the degradation of the health of planet Earth:

• First, environmental problems are indeed global and diplomats think in national terms. Globalism, general interest, the common good are evidently part of the ethos of international organizations, but the duty of the diplomat is to see these notions in the light of the national interests and national policies that he is mandated to defend and promote. It sometimes happens that the national interest, as determined by the political leadership of a nation, overlaps with the general interest of humanity, as defined by the internationally recognized texts and by the unquestioned intellectual and moral authorities of the time. Then, if the country or countries have influence on the international scene, advances occurred as the diplomatic culture, with its great and indispensable qualities, is put at the service of the common good. At least regarding most pressing environmental issues, this has not happened in the first part of the 21^stcentury.
• Second, environmental consciousness and policies imply a concern for the future, a long term vision of the conditions for life on the planet….Diplomats are of course as much capable as anybody to understand this, but it remains that most of them are subjected to short term constraints and limitations: they are not always “specialized” in a subject, like the environment, or any subject: rather they are, they have to be sort of  “jacks of all trades”: they move, usually every three or four years, from post to post, from multilateral to bilateral diplomacy; and, most importantly, in all democratic regimes diplomats have to defend policies defined by their superiors who are changing according to national political developments and who, even if representing stable political majorities and parties, have mental and emotional horizons shaped by electoral considerations. In such overall context, diplomats and their political masters tend to attach a greater importance to the reaching of an agreement than to the substantive content of such agreement. And this expedient short-termism is exacerbated by the current role given to the governing by “communication”.
• Third, the diplomatic culture is, by necessity, made of compromises. This often bring good results in traditional matters of war and peace, in territorial disputes, in trade issues and even in matters of international cooperation for “development”, as conceived since the 1950s and the 1960s. But, on matters of the protection of the environment, meaning in fact the protection of our planet and even the survival of humankind, compromises are often failures. They are compromises with the general interest, compromises with the basic interests of future generations. They are, for many conscious citizens of the world, new crimes against humanity.

And yet, the diplomatic culture is most important. One cannot imagine a world where force would be the dominant form of relation between human beings, between communities and nations. What is to be done, with urgency, to promote an international cooperation able to address effectively the ecological crisis that threaten all of us?

( for the rest of the piece, most important update is the Paris Agreement of December 2015; also the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, adopted by the GA in September 2015. But, neither of these achievements are putting in question the thrust of this Note).