"The time has come: We need a strong UN Environment Organisation"

The following article will be published in tomorrow's edition of "Frankfurter Rundschau" (27 May 2005) under the joint authorship of the Spanish Minister for the Environment Christina Narbona Ruiz, the French Minister for the Environment Serge Lepeltier and the German Minister for the Environment Jürgen Trittin:

Since the beginning of the 1970s, environmental topics have been very much a part of global politics. The institution which raises awareness for these issues worldwide is the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Despite the multitude of environmental problems worldwide, the establishment of a lean UN agency was all that could be accomplished in 1972. Since then, global environmental problems have multiplied, and although numerous international environmental agreements have meanwhile been prepared and ratified, there are still massive implementation deficits in global environmental policy.

All efforts made so far have been unable to prevent us bringing our planet closer and closer to the brink of ecological collapse: the overexploitation of natural resources continues, the alarming speed of the extinction of species and the destruction of the tropical forests persist, and we are thus curtailing the development chances of current and future generations. More than 1.2 billion people live on less than one dollar per day. 2.6 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation, 2 billion people do not have access to energy. The consequence for us is that global environmental protection and the wellbeing of billions of people have to be placed at the centre of international politics. An intact environment is a vital prerequisite for the survival of mankind and consequently a question of international security, and in this respect just as important as the fight against terrorism.

At the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 as well as at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, all states stipulated concrete and ambitious goals and measures, particularly in areas such as poverty alleviation, energy, water and basic sanitation, biological diversity, deforestation, marine pollution, closed substance cycle economy and chemical safety. One of the outstanding results of the Johannesburg Summit was the decision to significantly increase the share of renewable energies globally.

Some weeks ago UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stated on the occasion of the presentation of his report on the United Nations reform that multilaterally agreed goals and targets can be met - but only if the UN member states are willing to agree on a package of concrete, targeted measures.

Now, as we are approaching the time for the decision on the United Nations reform, we welcome very much that Kofi Annan has advocated, among other things, a "more integrated structure" of environmental protection in the United Nations. 33 years after the establishment of UNEP, it is evident that the institutional structures of the UN in the field of environmental policy do not live up to the growing challenges. This compromises the credibility of international environmental policy as a whole - despite the internationally highly respected and successful work of the current UNEP Executive Director, Professor Klaus Töpfer, who has no choice but to work under the present inadequate conditions.

The high demands of the Millennium Declaration and the Johannesburg Summit can only be met if global environmental protection is put in the hands of an international organisation with a structure comparable to that of organisations in other policy areas. The United Nations Environment Programme is at the same footing with other international organisations - let alone the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. The architecture of international environmental governance has to be adapted to the challenges of the 21st century. It is not acceptable that the institution which stands up for the survival of our planet is still given little say within the United Nations. The challenging tasks necessitate authority, especially from an institutional point of view.

The UN Summit in September 2005, which will review the implementation of the UN Millennium Declaration and the results of other important United Nations conferences such as the Johannesburg Summit, is the right point in time to eliminate the current imbalance. With the support of the heads of state and government Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero we therefore propose transforming UNEP into a UN Environment Organisation headquartered in Nairobi. This proposal is supported by a growing number of industrialised and developing countries including China.

Comparable to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the UN Environment Organisation (UNEO) will have a broader and stable financial basis and will be in a better position than UNEP to

• Develop suitable rules and frameworks to create a balance between economic globalisation and global environmental protection;
• Issue policy recommendations to the various sovereign decision-making structures of the multilateral environmental agreements, to the UN system as a whole as well as to international financial institutions;
• Make sure, as the environmental pillar for sustainable development within the UN system, that the commitments made at the Rio and Johannesburg Summits are taken seriously by the international community and properly monitored, since their implementation has to be advanced;
• Support the developing countries in cooperation with the most important development organisations, in particular through capacity building measures to promote the implementation of international, regional and national environmental policies;
• Tackle pressing environmental problems such as the loss of biodiversity, climate change, water and air pollution, environmental disasters, non-sustainable patterns of consumption and production as well as the prevention of transboundary conflicts and post-conflict management in cooperation with other international organisations, for example the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the competent bodies of the multilateral environmental agreements;
• Raise awareness worldwide for the precarious situation of the environment.

The time has come. We need a strong UN Environment Organisation.