By Najib Saab, Issue 17, March-April 1999

Amidst more than one dozen international environmental initiatives that mushroomed in the aftermath of the Earth Summit in 1992, the leading role of the main international environmental agency, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has often been downgraded and confused. During its first twenty years (1972-1992), UNEP was the international environmental power behind major global initiatives. This led to the establishment of international conventions that, for the first time, set controls and regulations to a variety of industrial and development activities affecting the environment. The conventions which now guide the global environmental action were all initiated by UNEP: Desertification, Climate Change, Ozone, Biodiversity, Regional Seas, Basel Convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal, and many others.

UNEP was established after the 1972 UN Conference on Human Environment, held in Stockholm, to be the environmental voice of the United Nations. Its objective was to provide a forum for the international community to discuss environmental problems and set policies and strategies, coordinate environmental work within the United Nations and help developing countries formulate and implement sound environmental policies in the context of sustainable development. UNEP's first executive director, Maurice Strong, a Canadian, had a vision of the agency as the environmental conscience of the international community and a centre of excellence that initiates model programmes worth to be followed and multiplied.

UNEP attracted people's imagination and placed environment as a priority on the global agenda. Dr. Mostafa Kamal Tolba's leadership during 1974 - 1992 characterized all UNEP's activities with vigor and commitment. It also witnessed launching and signing of the most outstanding international environmental conventions. Dr. Tolba earned the respect and appreciation of the world at large for his insight and enthusiasm. He was known as a defender of the rights and interests of poor countries, so they would not be victimized by any international agreement. He was behind the incorporation of financial and technical assistance to poor countries in environmental conventions, to help them implement them without hampering their development agendas.

On its tenth anniversary in 1982, UNEP initiated the concept of linking environmental work to sustainable development. Caring for the environment aims at making development and the livelihood of people sustainable. Acting on UNEP's initiative during its eleventh session in 1983, the United Nations established the World Commission on Environment and Development, headed by Norway's prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. In 1987, the committee issued its famous report Our Common Future, which stressed the need to modify development trends in such a way as to avoid the consumption of natural resources to the extent of depletion, calling for a "marriage of economy and ecology."

UNEP suggested convening a United Nations conference on environment and development in 1992, to set the institutional framework for linking development requirements to environment conservation. This would also be an occasion to celebrate UNEP's twentieth anniversary. UNEP's governing council proposed preparing for the conference and forming its secretariat. The idea was hijacked at the UN headquarters in New York, where other UN agencies lobbied to snatch the conference away from UNEP's authority and put it under the umbrella of other UN programmes dealing with development. At that time, environment topics had started to be tempting to international agencies concerned with development, as their traditional programmes started to lose direction and common sense. Technical cooperation based on dispatching an agricultural "expert" from Kenya, for example, to provide consultation in Sudan, and another "expert" from Sudan to assist Kenya in a similar field proved to be a flop. International development agencies had to devise new ideas to stay in business and ensure survival. Just then environment emerged as an alternative topic capable of attracting people's imagination as well as international funds.

A settlement was reached that the United Nations Conference on Environment and development (UNCED), known later as the Earth Summit, be directly under the supervision of the UN Secretary General, and a special independent secretariat was created. This is where hijacking UNEP's leading role actually started. Nonetheless, under the leadership of Dr. Tolba, UNEP accepted the settlement, with a conviction that results can be channeled to the benefit of the environment and poor countries. During the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, UNEP requested sufficient finance to help poor countries implement environmental conventions, so that they would not become victims of "sustainable development", inasmuch as they became victims of "sustainable underdevelopment". The Earth Summit was expected to establish an environmental fund administered by UNEP, which also proposed the formation of a joint governing council for UNEP and UNDP, leading to their integration, thus uniting environment and development under one UN agency. Nervous about the possibility of another giant UN body being created, the World Bank pursued the formation of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) as an independent fund shared by the World Bank, UNDP and UNEP. But the World Bank emerged as the dominating partner.

Again, UNEP's role was hijacked by depriving it of real control over funding and thus limiting its role, as it was the weaker party of the GEF partnership. Instead of establishing a joint governing council for UNEP and UNDP, the Earth Summit established an independent secretariat in New York known as the Committee for Sustainable Development (CSD), with no substantive competence or authority. And to avoid creating a coordinating committee for the environmental work of UN agencies under the leadership of UNEP, the environmental issues listed in Agenda 21 were haphazardly distributed among existing agencies. Hence, issues were dispersed, responsibilities lost, and the effectiveness of environmental work disintegrated amid an inter-agency strife for prestige. Examples of duplicated projects and repeated reports with environmental topics are abound in Lebanon and the Arab countries, where different agencies wage open struggle and hidden cold wars to be in the limelight, with initiatives often limited to propaganda-oriented schemes.

GEF domain was restricted to biodiversity, climate change, ozone protection and the biodiversity aspects of regional seas. Important topics related to the Third World, such as desertification control, water resources and industrial pollution, were dropped from environmental assistance programmes, as they were not considered global priority issues. UNEP had suggested that every international environmental convention should control its own fund to finance its projects, ensuring that implementation of the convention can be focused and monitored. However, the establishment of CSD in New York and GEF in Washington was seen by independent observers as a way to shift international environmental decision-making from the Third World, since it was impossible to transfer UNEP headquarters from Nairobi.

When UNEP launched its drive to link environment to development in1982 under the heading of sustainable development, and later initiated the Earth Summit in 1992, its goal was to integrate environmental aspects in the activities of all international organizations concerned with development. However, these initiatives were hijacked, UNEP's mission was distorted and the programme was deprived of its leading role to coordinate and manage environmental work at the international level. This culminated with a weak UNEP leadership after 1992, that gave up UNEP's role gradually, until the organization was about to lose its credibility.

The twentieth session of UNEP's Governing Council, convened in Nairobi last February, was a turnaround. Ministers and high ranking heads of delegations from over 100 countries endorsed, again, the leading role of UNEP on top of the international environmental work, recognizing the need to focus global initiatives related to environment. An increased budget of $ 120,000 was accepted, in addition to more pledges for special projects, at a time when other agencies are reducing their budgets. The biggest achievement of the Council was the establishment of the Environmental Management Group, a high level political body consisting of ministers of environment from all regions of the world, to support UNEP in forging sound global environmental policies and enhance its role as the world's coordinating environmental body, giving its voice more political clout. The new Executive Director, Dr. Klaus Toepfer, was convincing in promoting a common vision, a new profile and a clear view, contributing to the creation a strong corporate identity for UNEP. He succeeded in convincing the Council to endorse his plan to revitalize UNEP, strengthen its leading role to manage international environmental work, increase its budget and support its regional activities.

UNEP needed this revitalization process, in a world characterized by globalization of economy, markets, products and communications, because the repercussions of this globalization trend on the environment are dramatic. A strong world coordinating environmental body is essential, as the success in avoiding conflict and tension in the future requires equal success in developing globalized environmental policies.