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Towards
a UNEPO?
United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) was established by the United Nations General
Assembly in 1972 as a follow-up to the first UN Conference on Human Environment
(UNCHE) to meet the “urgent need for a permanent institutional arrangement
within the United Nations system for the protection and improvement of the
environment”. In the post-Stockholm era, UNEP has emerged as the centre-piece of
the UN’s efforts to protect the global environment. At the institutional level,
UNEP has simply been a programme, a subsidiary organ of the UN General
Assembly. Though its legal status is not that of an independent international
organization, it does not appear to have deprived this UN body of some measure
of international legal personality since it is required to fulfill certain tasks
on the international plane (such as entering into headquarters agreement with
the host country). In the preparatory stage, there was considerable caution
regarding the creation of a new international environmental institution.
The
institutional structure thrown up by UNCHE was the result of a need within the
UN system to have a specialized entity to promote international cooperation in
the field of the environment. UNEP was designed to perform a vital role in the
entire process. This new quasi-autonomous entity of Environment Secretariat
within the UN, headed by the Executive Director, was carved out to serve as a
focal point for environmental action and coordination within the United
Nations system.
Since it was
decided to be merely a programme within the UN, the enabling General
Assembly resolution described it merely as ’institutional and financial
arrangements for international environmental cooperation’. Its 58-member
Governing Council was given a mandate that includes the following primary
functions:
(a) To
promote international cooperation in the field of the environment and to
recommend, as appropriate, policies to this end; (b) To provide general policy
guidance for the direction and coordination of environmental programmes within
the United Nations system;
The Stockholm
mandate required UNEP to act as a main fulcrum, both in terms of
coordinating activities and programmes within the UN system as well as in terms
of
triggering
international environmental cooperation. As a UN programme, in terms of
hierarchy, it is responsible and reports to the General Assembly through the
Economic
and Social
Council. UNEP appears to have achieved considerable success in galvanizing
international environmental concerns. However, it was left to be just one of the
UN programmes, having been denied even the status of a ’specialized agency’
(as per Article 57 and 63 of the UN Charter) for ’environmental’ purposes on the
specious ground
that such an
’agency for the environment would result in duplication of activities and would
compound already serious problems of coordination’. It was also argued that it
made ’no sense to remove these activities from existing specialized agencies and
place them in a new agency’. It seems there was an undercurrent within the UN
system pushed by some of the specialized agencies that were not in favor of a
new agency specially designed for environment protection.
It has been
felt that UNEP’s ability to set the global environmental agenda has come to be
severely constrained by its organizational structure and unpredictable funding.
Such inherent weakness could be a product of half-hearted political support to
this international environmental institution. In spite of this, however, it
seems no mean achievement that UNEP could contribute significantly in terms of
development of both hard law and soft law. In fact, UNEP has been regarded, in
the words of the UN Secretary-General, as the ’environmental conscience’
of the United Nations.
Dilution of
UNEP’s authority
The gradual
inroads made by other agencies of the UN system in environmental matters, as a
peripheral concern within their own functional jurisdiction, also appear to have
contributed to the dilution of UNEP’s authority. It seems that, in the euphoria
of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, UNEP was not paid any prominent attention and it
was relegated
to the
background. In a way it contributed in effective ’dwarfing’ of UNEP as it became
just a cog in the machine instead of an effective environmental
conscience-keeper. Moreover, the gradual institutional clogging of the
environmental field and emergence of other high-profile actors and multiplicity
of environmental institutions has also had a negative effect on UNEP’s role.
Revitalizing UNEP
UNEP’s
Governing Council has responded to declining resources and eroding authority by
seeking to reassert the programme’s pre-eminence in the field of the
environment.
With the
adoption of the 1997 Nairobi Declaration by the Governing Council,
serious efforts were launched to ’revitalize’ UNEP. The Nairobi Declaration was
followed by the inauguration of the Töpfer Task Force by the UN
Secretary-General. The Task Force’s report was duly examined by the General
Assembly, which, in turn, gave direction for a series of institutional steps
both within the UN Secretariat as well as at the intergovernmental level. It
brought into being two forums, namely the Environmental Management Group (EMG),
for inter-agency environmental coordination within the UN system, and the Global
Ministerial Environment Forum (GMEF), for high-level policy dialogue at the
intergovernmental level. The UN General Assembly has provided an overarching
guidance to the entire process, coupled with the crucial policy direction.
In fact it was
recognized early on in the discussion on international environmental governance
(IEG) reform that any major change in UNEP’s situation, would require high-level
ministerial intervention. Thus, the launching of the GMEF represented a bold
political initiative to revive the sagging fortunes of UNEP. It was also an
attempt to regain policy coherence in the field of the environment. In the
post-Johannesburg Summit (2002) period, States are facing a litmus test of their
sincerity to grapple effectively with the problems afflicting IEG. UNEP has been
the focus of the IEG process (though it is not ’UNEP-centric’). If the main
policy options that emerged from the process, including universal membership and
a secured funding base, could be achieved, its cumulative effect will be
profound for the future of UNEP. It is expected that universal membership, as
compared to mere participation, will bring about more legitimacy as well as
authority to the work of the Governing Council of UNEP. It may also contribute
to widening of the funding base.
UNEP: A
Global Authority?
In
institutional terms, a UNEP with a Governing Council of ’universal membership’
could formally emerge as a truly global environmental forum that reflects the
wishes and expectations of all the members of the United Nations. This reform,
coupled with adequate, stable and predictable funding, could provide, in due
course, a basis for elevating UNEP to the level of a UN specialized agency
(which could be designated as United Nations Environment Protection
Organization). There is already strong undercurrent that favors such an ’up
gradation’ of UNEP as shown by deliberations at UNEP Governing Council meeting
in Nairobi (5-9 February 2007). India has also decided to support such a course
of action.
The advantages
and disadvantages of having a specialized agency for environment protection will
need to be considered in terms of the possibility of improvement over the
existing situation. The core issue in the matter remains the question of
elevating existing UNEP’s status or carving out a de novo global
environmental organization.
The history of
institution building shows that it is difficult and cumbersome to create a new
organization. Moreover, it would be a fallacy to presume that a brand new entity
such as a world environment organization (WEO) would be more effective than UNEP.
It is also important not to lose sight of the argument that UNEP is still the
closest we have come to a WEO. It worked as such during the first two decades of
its existence. Still, to impart credibility and authority to this beleaguered
entity, several elements could be considered necessary for emergence of UNEP as
a ’specialized agency’. If the ’form’ and ’perceptions’ are key
factors in determining authority of an international environmental institution,
especially in view of multiplicity of actors, UNEP would qualify for that
through the trappings of a UN ’specialized agency’ (UNEPO). This development (if
it materializes) would take UNEP closer to being what may be called a called the
United Nations Environment Protection Organization (UNEPO).
Any such
exercise will need to remain within the UN system for credibility and
wider
acceptability among States. The process, content and range of institutional
restructuring within the UN system for this purpose will depend upon the
political
will of the
sovereign states, which may consist of mergers of some existing UN departments
and programmes in the new specialized agency with UNEP at its core (UNEPO).
Elevating UNEP to a specialized agency also appears to be a pragmatic course of
action compared to creating a brand new organization with a new bureaucracy,
which may jettison UNEP. Such an approach, favored by some in the West due to
disdain for its location in Nairobi (being the only important UN institution
located in a developing country), will amount to throwing way baby with the bath
water, and hence counter-productive. As such, the future direction in this
respect will be dictated more by the political will of States how far they wish
to go in the process, how best they want to translate their international
environmental commitments into action, and how much they are willing to allow
transparency in the functioning of different international institutional
structures in order to address the global environmental challenge.
Editor’s Note:
Professor Bharat H. Desai holds Jawaharlal Nehru Chair in International
Environmental Law at School of International Studies. This feature is
excerpted from his substantive paper “UNEP: A Global Environmental Authority?”
Environmental Policy & Law, vol.36, Nos.3-4, 2006, pp.137-157.
This paper was referred to the President of the UN General Assembly as well as
the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on System-wide Coherence in
June 2006. The proposal of Professor Desai for ’up gradation’ of UNEP into a
’specialized agency’ was endorsed in the report of the High-Level Panel on 9
November 2006. It has also contributed in a “major shift” in India’s policy in
February 2007 to support such a ’specialized’ entity for the environment.
Afghanistan
Time Check : Reconstructing the Shared Past
An incident shocked the
world in March 2001, and put Bamiyan, a city West of Kabul, on the world map. A
1700 year old 55 metre high Buddha rock statue was dynamited along with his 38
metre companion at Bamiyan. The dynamiting of these 2nd century AD
statue had, in fact, been carefully filmed by the Taliban to then be beamed to
television channels across the world. It was a simultaneous attempt at the
physical effacement of memory and presence. Though this was Taliban’s most
brutal way of destroying the shared past of Afghanistan, this was by no means a
secluded case of destruction of legacy of the past in Afghanistan. On my recent
visit to Kabul, I got an opportunity to gauge the damage and reconstruction of
the Afghan past. Even prior to the Bamiyan blynamting, the
anti-Soviet war and factional wars had destroyed much of the archeological sites
and monuments of Afghanistan’s both Islamic and not-Islamic heritage. Through
the 1990s, there had been looting and smuggling of valuable artifacts. During
the factional wars between 1992 and 1996, two rockets were accurately aimed at
the Kabul Museum at Darulaman near Kabul that had been established in 1931. Much
of its rich Central Asian collection, spanning over thousand of years, was
damaged or irretrievable destroyed. Items such as ceramics, glass, gold and
wines were shipped eastwards from Rome and Alexandria and in return there was a
westward movement of ivories, spices and gems from India and silks from the Han
dynasty. According to the curator of the Museum, there must have been
specialists showing mujahidin what to rob. There were thousands of books
in the museum library. Most of the mujahidin could not read; yet all the
books with illustration of the museum’s best pieces were looted. The Museum also
lost the precious Bagram treasure of the Kushan dynasty, which was
unearthed by the French archeologists in 1939. Lack of stability and the
presence of the drug war lords in Eastern Afghanistan proved devastating for
Hadda, near Jalalabad in the east. It had thousands of stone and stucco Buddhist
stupas, which were all destroyed after 1980s Russian bombing when they
were hunting for mujahid hiding there. Beyond repair, this damage has
been done forever.
The print media in and
outside Afghanistan has been reflecting on the lack of a ’national’
consciousness amongst the Afghans, as they have been and continue to be, a
collection of various tribes. However, the notions of an Afghan identity are
germinating in the religious-cultural domain rather than the political one.
Bamiyan incident projected Taliban’s systemic promotion of a monolithic view of
history by eroding the non-Islamic symbols of Afghanistan’s past. The Persian,
Sino-Siberian, Hellenistic, Roman, Indian, Turkish, Arab and Mongolian presence
in this region, makes Afghanistan’s past a shared past rather than just an
Islamic one. At present, Afghan authorities in collaboration with the foreign
experts and agencies are making efforts to restore and reconstruction this
shared historical legacy. There are many challenges to this restoration. Bamiyan
in 2003 was declared as a World Heritage Site, the issue of rebuilding is being
debated at present. The question of ensuring security of the restoration crew
remains on the top. In 2002, at a Conference in Kabul the Afghan authorities
along with UNESCO decided that rebuilding was not a priority and the task would
involve US $ 30-50 million. The Director of the Bibiotheca Afghanica museum in
Switzerland has been arguing in favour of reconstruction. Whereas, Nancy Dupree,
an authority on cultural history of Afghanistan, has apprehensions that the
Bamiyan Buddhas will become a ’fun park’ after reconstruction. The tourists
flock into Bamiyan in any case. Besides the availability funds for
reconstruction, the ethical debate is still on.
Reconstruction within Kabul
and in North and West Afghanistan has been faster as these are unsafe but are
non-conflictual zones. A very interesting 2nd century AD Buddhist
possession of Kabul Museum is a huge black marble bowl known the ’Buddha’s
begging bowl’. It stands as a contradistinction to Taliban’s reading of history.
It was found at the shrine of Sultan Mir Wais Baba in the old city of Kandahar
in 1925. It has a lotus pattern carved on the underside. In the period between
1490 and 1500 AD two Islamic inscriptions were carved on this bowl. The first
one says that the bowl was used for serving sherbet to Muslim pilgrims and the
other later one carried the lists of rules and regulation of Kandahar Madrassa
(religious school). It is remarkable to note that this Buddhist bowl, was not
destroyed or insulted by its successive Muslim users, but kept sanctified for
sacred use. All this restored evidence is throwing up a challenge to an average
Afghan to evolve a dialogue between the Islamic self and the shared past that
will design the Afghan identity and nation.
A very promising case of
Afghanistan’s cross-cultural existence is the restoration of the Nuristan
collection. Nuristan or the ’land of light’ has a partially densely wooded
landscape in the north east of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan to the east and
the Panjshir valley to the west. This pre-Islamic civilization in the Hindukush
decayed only hundred and eight years ago. It was known as Kafiristan (land of
the kafirs or non-believers) before its conversion to Islam at the turn
of the 19th century. In 2001, most of the figurative items in wood
were chopped up by the Taliban. However, the Afghan Museum staff with help from
Austrian Afghan Society was able to restore these broken figures. These are
pieces representing ancestors, hero warriors and deities. There are also
numerous house posts, chairs of honour and figures of loving couples. Amongst
utensils, besides earthen pots, there are silver cups with metal stands. The
collection however continues to be addressed as ’Kafir Culture, Nuristan
Collection’.
One of the most important
remains from the Kushan period in Afghanistan is Kanishka’s magnificent
acropolis at Surkh Kotal, north of Hindukush. From the same place, some
limestone inscriptions in Greek script have been unearthed dating to the 2nd
century. Another area with interesting find is ancient Herat, towards western
Afghanistan. No excavation had ever taken place prior to 2005. In 2005, the
German Archeological Institute and Delegation Archeologique en Afghanistan
started an archeological project to investigate pre-Timurid Herat. In the first
2.5m of deposits, levels from 19th to 15th centuries were
uncovered. Kohandaz, a mounded area towards north of Herat has revealed a large
cemetery and fortification around two Timurid shrines. This find dates back to
the 12th and 13th centuries. The excavation is still on
here and archeologists are hopeful of reaching earlier levels.
Although, India in
Afghanistan, at present is committed to projects on
hydroelectricity, construction of bridges, roads, dams, generation of human
resource, in 2005, US $ 20,000 were donated for the repair of Imam Hazrat Ali in
Mazar-e-Sharif, north of Kabul. Hazrat Ali was the cousin and son-in-law of
Prophet Mohammad and the fourth orthodox Caliph of Islam. Genghis Khan destroyed
the original shrine and the present one dates from the 15th century.
Even though, the
reconstruction of this shared past has begun, experts both Afghan and foreign
believe that most of the preservation is in the hands of the local Afghans
themselves. With rampant smuggling of artifacts, it remains easily possible to
sell a Kushan Buddha sculpture for more than half a million US $. Given the
instability of the Karzai government; its failure to deliver peace; the poppy
war lords’ funding the militia in Jalalabad and Kandahar, all these factors have
forced the reconstruction and restoration task to remain cautiously slow. Given
the complicated socio-political matrix of Afghanistan, the re-reading of its
past will perhaps be contentious and
will go through various transitory phases.
Jyoti Atwal,
Assistant
Professor, CHS,
School of Social Sciences
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