The UN is the world's foremost intergovernmental body, but too often the outcomes of long, heated, expensive debates and negotiations result primarily in commitments for new rounds of debate, conferences and preparatory committees. The "high-level open-ended" working groups to reform and streamline the UN are actually "never-ending" working groups consuming thousands of hours and hundreds of millions of dollars of additional costs. To achieve sustainable development at the global level, to implement Agenda 21, a more effective, democratic, transparent, accountable and binding system of global decision-making and governance are needed. From the Brundtland Report, the Stanley, Ford, and Hammarskjold Foundations reports, from Our Global Neighborhood, the report of the independent Commission on Global Governance, and from experts in our survey, this conviction has been repeated time and time again.
The authors of the INTGLIM report believe the fate of the UN, not just the CSD, is dependent upon successful reform and improvement in the UN decision-making procedures. But, the key to UN reform is not just changing or improving the ways UN bodies make decisions, or better coordination between the maze of different and overlapping governing boards of the UN system. Nor are the key reforms needed just in the decision-making processes between governments. Perhaps the most important need of all is to change decision-making processes within governments. Too often, a government's position in one forum is contradicted or cancelled out by the same government's actions in another international forum. Often finance, environment, agriculture, commerce and foreign ministries of individual governments all have different policies on the same issue.
This, as stated above, is further complicated by having separate and independent governing boards for most international organizations, governors who do not feel obligated to coordinate or integrate overlapping international responsibilities. The governments loudest in complaining about bloated bureaucracies, overlapping mandates, duplication of programs, and financial waste are themselves most responsible for waste and inefficiency.
The CSD can make important contributions to achieving more efficient, democratic, accountable global decision-making. It is, in fact, central to its mandate in monitoring and promoting the implementation by the UN system and governments of Agenda 21. The DPCSD has already demonstated progressive, innovative and efficient administration and bureaucratic leadership.
The CSD already incorporates the involvement of regional political and economic organizations, such as the EU, in more effective ways than other intergovernmental bodies. Regional and international organizations are not allowed to negotiate directly in the UN, only representatives of nation states. Thus a representative of the government who is the current 'president' of an international organization conducts the negotiation rather than the most qualified expert, responsible civil servant or diplomatic leader of the international/regional organization. This often reults in inadequate representation.
The INTGLIM report also found strong support for some of the innovative mechanisms used in the CSD: the NGO-Government Dialogues, panel discussions with representatives of governments, NGOs and UN officials, and other informal procedures. There were calls for the inclusion of NGOs in working groups, drafting groups and informal sessions. There was hardly a difference between NGOs, governments and UN staff opinions on this issue. However, NGOs would like to see more "hearing" type mechanisms used in the CSD, and more mechanisms which might employ multi-partite or stakeholder representation principles.
Development of limited global environmental and economic governance has been increasingly advocated in recent years by intellectuals, international civil servants and, more significantly, government officials.
"The approach is founded on the widespead perception that existing national and international institutions and international law are inadequate to the environmental [and economic] challenges facing the globe." Porter and Brown page 155
The essence of the global governance argument is that the step-by-step processes of international decision-making (environmental, economic, peace and security) which must often be ratified by national governments, are simply being eviscerated by the fast-developing forces of disintegration, environmental collapse, and economic crises caused by rapid forces of globalization.
"The second principle of the [global governance] approach is that the absence of an effective enforcement mechanism remains a cardinal weakness of the present system." Porter and Brown page 155
INTLGIM Recommendations
Politically speaking, the CSD was seen by many of the experts we interviewed as still exerting greater influence than other ECOSOC commissions, due in part to its High Level Segment. While other commissions sometimes have trouble in securing the right attendance at the level desired, the CSD's High- Level Segment has been frequented by many ministers and other high-ranking officials. However, respondents believed that the CSD is too dominated by participants from environmental ministries and organizations. This severely limits the effectiveness of the CSD, since the participation of all economic sectors is vital to success in achieveing sustainable development. Economic and financial ministers are especially important, since economic measures are involved in every part of the follow- up to Agenda 21 and because without financial arrangements the process will come to a fast halt.
Limiting the issues
Finding ways to involve financial and economic ministers in the work of the CSD was one of the most important issues raised by the experts in the survey. There was general agreement that limiting the issues discussed at the CSD was the only way to increase participation from these officials.
"This is a key question, maybe even the most important one. Unless the department of finance weighs in, nothing real happens. And so I think we should engage them on the economic instruments question and environmental cost accounting, for instance. We should have them say: 'OK, let's see if we can work with this. Let's test one way of taxing, see if it works and evaluate.' If you give them something to work with, that might engage them." Peter Padbury
"Sessions should be focusing on certain issues, and if that issue happens to be financing, then the finance minister is supposed to be there. The environment minister should certainly not stay home, because he has to influence the finance minister. But as long as the subjects are too broad, the economic and finance ministers will not show up." Frits Schlingemann
"By addressing issues that they find important. By giving more attention to a reform of fiscal policies, then you are at the heart of the work of the ministers of finance. There are two ways: just make sure that the issues are addressed in the finacnial fora, where the ministers feel at home, or bring them here. We are working with the interim committees of the Bank and the IMF to see if next year we could have a meeting back to back where we bring these ministers together. The fact that we have a chair now who is a development minister, is a good sign." Joke Waller-Hunter
"Economic and finance ministers are only useful when there is a big discussion on new financial matters that is actually moving towards a decision. Otherwise there is no need for them being here. It is imperative though that we have the right ministers here for the right discussion." Felix Dodds
"They have to feel political pressure and I think that if some big (Northern) countries would set a precedent, that would help." Inji Islam
Involving national level policy makers
Another advantage of having a limited number of issues being dealt with at one time is that not only during the High Level Segment, but also during negotiations, countries will be able to send to the CSD the most qualified representatives, knowledgeable of the situation on the national level, and working on national implementation. The NGO representatives were the ones who stressed that this issue was of the utmost importance.
"The ideal delegation would have people on it from different departments, but that's hardly possible,so many countries rely on foreign relations people who are based in New York and who don't know what's going on at the country level and the way of implementation." Chee Yoke Ling
There are a number of weak points in the relationship between government departments in the capitals and the UN: the UN process is confusing, its documents are too abstract, there is no time for consideration and evaluation, and the diplomats in New York are too overloaded with work.
It is very important to coordinate the flow of information going from New York back to the national level, and from the ministries to the departments.
The governments we spoke to noted mostly practical problems in involving the national level policy makers, as it would increase the need of funds directed towards CSD participation immensely.
Selected proposals
However, this way of working on a draft has to be approached with caution. The input generated might be too big too much. Also, there is a big risk of excluding those who do not have any access to the right computers. Lastly, there is the question of who gets access to this computerized drafting process.
INTGLIM Recommendations
Interagency coordination and the task manager system were hailed as one of the important successes of the CSD in its first four years. Whereas other processes, such as national reporting, not have turned out as well as hoped initially, the task manager system, out of sheer necessity to facilitate follow up to a broad document such as Agenda 21 with so few people, has proven to be very effective. The Inter-agency Committee on Sustainable Development (IACSD) was established in October 1993 by the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC). The role of the IACSD is to identify major policy issues relating to the follow-up to UNCED by the United Nations system and to advise the ACC on ways and means of addressing them so as to ensure effective system-wide cooperation and coordination in the implementation of Agenda 21, the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and other UNCED outcomes and their follow-up. One of the functions of the IACSD is to coordinate system-wide response to the work of the CSD.
To effectively implement these functions, task managers have been appointed from the organizations of the United Nations system. They are responsible for inter-agency coordination, catalyzing joint initiatives, identifying common strategies, preparing reports to the CSD and information exchange under specific areas of Agenda 21, the SIDS and the work program of the CSD.
DPCSD is the task manager for matters related to consumption patterns, combating poverty, finance, transfer of environmentally sound technology and cooperation, role of major groups and decision making structures, energy (SIDS) and tourism (SIDS) in conjunction with the World Tourism Organization. DPCSD is also the task manager for such agencies as UNCTAD for trade and environment; UNFPA for demographic dynamics; UNESCO for science and education; UNDP for capacity building; UNEP for athmosphere, toxic chemicals, hazardous wastes, desertification and biodiversity; HABITAT for human settlements and solid wastes; WHO for health; FAO for land management, forestry, sustainable mountain development and agriculture; UNIDO for biotechnology; IAEA for radioactive wastes; ACC Sub-Committee on Water Resources; ACC Sub-Committee on Oceans and Coastal Areas for oceans and all kinds of seas; ICAO for air transport (SIDS); UNDHA for maritime transport (SIDS); and ITU for telecommunications (SIDS).
"We have seen efforts in the past few years in incorporating an impressive body of individual experts and public and private organizations, whereas the designation of task managers has considerably expanded the overall capability of a multilateral body to cooperate." Henrique Calvacanti
However, there are some problems with relying on the system to take upon certain parts of your operating mechanism. A dissenting view from Greenpeace International official Cliff Curtis,
"DPCSD is, in my view, in spite of having a limited number of people allocated to it, far too dependent on the international agencies that it is trying to coordinate. Joke Waller-Hunter has taken a technical decision by saying: 'These are their reports, we are not responsible for them, we're not going to change it.' And in my view, that's a failure, because you are undermining quality."
When confronted with this opinion, Nitin Desai, Chairman of the IACSD, responded:
"What we try to do is encourage more contact between the bureau of the CSD and the task managers... We have now gone so far as to ask them to present the reports themselves, no longer pretending that they were our reports. Of course, it says 'CSD' on the cover, but for all practical purposes it is a report from another body, so why not have that body present it? Then we can take it a step further and say: 'Why don't you interact directly?'....We interact and in the end I do accept responsibility for what comes out. Quite some times we change things. The end product of the CSD is not the task managers' reports, it is the decision that the CSD makes. And the task managers' reports serve a couple of purposes in this. First they serve a certain internal purpose... Second, they serve a certain reporting purpose... There is an increasingly strong set of recommendations that comes from this source and we hope that governments find this useful, as a starting point of their own work." Nitin Desai
Mr. Desai touches very rightly on the other trend that could be discerned from the comments that people made about the task manager system. The Special Session can be a good opportunity to evaluate the merits of the reports that are being produced by the task managers and to decide whether or not they should be used to their fullest potential, i.e. to let the task managers come up with a set of recommendations that could be used as a starting point of negotiations.
By assigning the task managers the responsibility for coming up with concrete recommendations, ready for negotiations, rather than presenting their reports in the first two days, after which the Secretariat has to decide what will come up for discussion, the process of negotiations will quicken and time during the annual sessions will be used more effectively.
"It [task manager system] needs to be refined in the sense that in the future we would like to see not just reports but reports ending in very concrete recommendations, although they have taken a big step towards that end this year. Their recommendations and draft decisions should be the center of the discussion during the CSD." Nitin Desai
Felix Dodds even took it a step further:
"Task managers should not just make reports and statements, they should be much more involved and have a seat at the table." Felix Dodds
"My preference would be to continue the development of the task manager system and make them fully responsible for implementation. To bring their experience back to the CSD." Joke Waller-Hunter
INTGLIM Recommendations