Do Not Doubt a Role For the UN in Climate Change
Farah Faisal Thaler, Research associate, Council on Foreign Relations | Huffington Post | January 26, 2010
Last Wednesday the UN's chief climate change official announced intentions to move forward with climate change dialogue based on the Copenhagen Accord. The announcement should be welcomed. Despite a barrage of criticism toward the UN following the Copenhagen conference, sidelining the world body and overlooking its numerous strengths would be short-sighted.
First, despite all its bureaucratic flaws and operational redundancies, the UN remains the preeminent international body for climate governance. Over the last twenty years the institution has amassed unparalleled knowledge and expertise which should not be rebuffed as a result of the arguably limited progress made at Copenhagen.
The climate change issue has in fact been on the UN agenda since 1972, initially raised (albeit tangentially) in relation to pollution control at the First United Nations Earth Summit in Stockholm. Focus on climate change as an independent issue in and of itself gained earnest traction in 1989 with the creation of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which was tasked with assessing the risk of human activity on the climate and evaluating options for adaptation and mitigation. In the past twenty years, the IPCC's work has become instrumental in consolidating the scientific evidence on climate change and, most importantly, raising the issue with policymakers through its widely recognized peer-reviewed Assessment Reports.
The UN's foremost achievement on the issue occurred a few years later when it led efforts to adopt the only international legally binding treaty that calls on countries to limit their greenhouse gas emissions to protect the climate. Still today, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate and Change and the subsequent Kyoto Protocol (which despite the lack of membership of the United States in the Protocol) retain some of the highest memberships of any major multilateral environmental agreement.
Second, UN processes are not outdated or inflexible. In Copenhagen, progress was paralyzed by the inability to gather a unanimous vote to adopt an agreement. Obstructive theatrics by countries seeking to pursue national interests turned the meeting into an acrimonious political battle that ran counter to reaching a timely and effective solution. However, although the drawbacks to reaching consensus were evident in Copenhagen, the approach has merit that enables progress in many areas, including climate change. A case in point is the work of the UN Civil Aviation body, ICAO, which led and concluded lengthy consultations and negotiations among its 190 members that will enable establishing global standards to limit the impact of commercial air travel on climate change. More impressively, the organization managed to champion a unanimous agreement that reduces the carbon footprint of commercial air travel by a 2 percent improvement in fuel efficiency. In reaching this agreement, a high-ranking ICAO official praised the "process of consensus-building and cooperation" as an effective approach. Such achievements should not go unnoticed.
Moreover, the UN is not stuck in archaic processes. After the Copenhagen conference Secretary General Ban Ki-moon committed to "streamline the negotiation process" by reexamining procedural rules so as to facilitate a more productive outcome for the next round of meetings on climate change. Such adjustments are not new to the UN. For instance, debates on the UN's work on small arms proliferation had been at a standstill because of the inability to reach unanimous agreements in some key areas; to move past the deadlock, the last major conference changed procedures so that a majority vote, rather than a consensus vote, would be enough to produce a conference agreement. This measure could be considered for the climate change conference in Mexico.
Third, the UN facilitates an inclusive dialogue on climate change. Both in practice and in principle, governance for the global commons should be based on negotiations among all (if not the majority of) constituents. In the case of climate change, decision-making should not be left to the most powerful, the most economically able, or the major polluters. Rather, it should place equal creed to the vulnerable voices - the small island states in the pacific that are facing extinction and the drought-stricken countries of sub-Saharan Africa for whom climate crisis represents a serious threat multiplier. Additionally, the value of the UN's open governance approach which gives civil society a prominent voice in major conferences, should also be recognized (even despite the logistical disarray at Copenhagen) as providing greater legitimacy to the UN's work.
Creating a new climate regime to succeed the Kyoto Protocol will be fraught with setbacks. Ensuring an effective and fair climate deal will require a multi-track approach where countries meet at formal, informal, bilateral, regional, and multilateral fora to consult and shape policy proposals. Among these various mechanisms, a role for the UN should be evident. Despite its flaws, the world body has demonstrated its leadership and expertise in helping to address the multifaceted challenges of climate change. It would be irresponsible, even imprudent, to not leverage the UN's strengths in achieving a longterm solution to climate change.
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