THE - - EARTH SUMMIT WE
I
!.I 1
he eyes of the world a r e o n Brazil t h i s month. Expectations are for a major breakthrough i n international politics driven by the strongest agent for change in recent history-the environment. But will this Earth Summit deliver an Earth Charter that is more
U
~
I THAN A MESSAGE
breakthroughs as long as the current international infrastructure remains. The sponsoring United Nations is little more than a forum for discussion and negotiation. Cumbersome, overpriced, and underfunded, the UN offers neither administration nor enforcement of any agreements. The UN Environmental
addresses the
Program has a small budget and staff and no authority, which demonstrates that the UN does not highly value the Earth Summit. Rumors abound that the enviromnental office will close after the conference unless the conference dictates otherwise. This meeting is just the beginning of a process, but it has been billed as an epic event that will produce a landmark global agreement to save the planet. Who will man-
ance? The UN
rates? And, most of all, can it overcome the same thwarted less am-
there can be no
0013-936W92/0926-1077$03.00/0 0 1992 American Chemical Society
entrenched in-
Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 26, No. 6, 1992 1077
terests that monopolize its philosophy. The revolution in world politics has eluded the UN. Although the U.S.-Soviet competition n o longer dominates, everything else remains the same. Outside the UN the world is recognized as a single system; what happens in one place affects people elsewhere. Yet the UN looks i n w a r d ; it is s u c h a bloated, clumsy organization that, if it were a business, it would be in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. With a new secretary general this year, Egypt’s Boutros BoutrosGhali, many hope the UN will undergo a needed overhaul. But its budget prevents it from addressing more than a few of the pressing problems on its agenda. Its broad range of activities encompasses almost everything international, from major peace keeping to political brush fires. It has no real set of priorities. Long-overdue reforms would require rooting out deadwood and recruiting a staff chosen on merit. But the UN culture does not permit that: The new secretary general was chosen to satisfy Africans who claimed it was their turn for leadership. In an age of science- and technologydriven planetary problems and solutions-and even extra-planetary ones-it is difficult to believe that the current leadership can be sufficiently in touch with the 21st century to reorganize and establish an agenda that would allow the UN to actually do something. In T i m e magazine (February 3 , 1992), Bonnie Angelo likened the UN structure to a 1945 model home onto which rooms have been grafted for long-forgotten purposes. These rooms-agencies-in many cases retain full staffs with heads who have been there for 15 to 20 years. The tenets upon which the organization was founded should have shifted with time to match the external environment, but much of the 1945 organization remains intact. How can one more enormous set of agencies added to this dinosaur provide the attention and priority that environmental problems deserve? The UN was founded to keep peace through an international forum for discussion and negotiation. It usually fulfills that role well. An added purpose was to centralize global information gathering and perform charitable activities for the less fortunate. The UN, however, was not set up to handle duties that affect national sovereignty, such as
financial tasks. Affiliated organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade were established to do that, with focus on financial markets a n d power balances. Even those institutions need reforming to meet the environmental challenges of the next decades. No rational nation-state would abrogate any of its sovereignty to an organization whose nature is political and that whittles down societal concerns to the least common denominator. The United States, for example, easily resists pressure from the Earth Summit to submit to either of its major objectives: carbon dioxide ceilings and large financial contributions to Third World countries to help them reduce greenhouse gases. An organization of 166 nations whose structure no longer represents the real world-Japan and Germany do not sit as permanent members of the Security Council, for example-will find it difficult to i m p l e m e n t a n d enforce mechanisms and standards for environmental controls. An organization that grants staff authority based solely on politics, not competence, at a time when brilliance is needed to navigate a maze of challenges in a life-or-death situation, cannot possibly carry out its mandate. An organization dominated by older men and an old-boy network in a world where women control much of the environmentally relevant powerreproduction, farm work, and wood cutting in Third World countriesand where young people are being asked to make some of the most difficult sacrifices, does not measure u p . A n d a n organization whose membership does not even include all major forces such as multinational corporations, international financial institutions, and international public interest groups does not represent reality. The UN needs more than restructuring, overhauling, a n d more money. It needs a new ethos, a new modus vivendi to reach beyond its current scope to include matters associated with sustaining the planet. An organization staffed by lawyers whose vision is limited by fragmented, detailed thinking cannot cope with the large systems and complex interrelationships that global environmental problem solving requires. A n e w international structure seems appropriate now. The nationstate and anachronistic perceptions
1078 Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 26, No. 6,1992
of sovereignty impede reform. If we must suffer 17th-century institutions that have outlived their usefulness i n global matters, such as the environment, then let us build a new structure to deal with such global matters, one that includes all international actors in legitimate roles alongside the nation-states. After all, the budgets of some international companies far exceed those of many countries. That power remains unrepresented i n international affairs. Lester Brown, i n State of t h e World 1992, suggests that the end of the Cold War offers an opportunity for restructuring national priorities. I suggest it is an opportunity for international organizations to do the same. Brown claims that the Environmental Revolution depends on redefining security. Because current financial aid from rich nations to poor ones is mostly for military assistance, international organizations could divert these destructive expenditures into constructive, environmental ones. The UN is not in any position to do this. It is time to create a new organization w i t h stronger international governance that can take effective international action on problems that transcend boundaries. If it means supplanting the United Nations, so be it. Sources French, H. F. “After the Earth Summit: The Future of Environmental Governance”; Worldwatch Institute: Washington, DC, March 1992; paper 107. French, H. F. In State of the World, 2992; Brown, L., Ed.; W. W. Norton: New York, 1992. Sand, P.Lessons Learned in Global Environmental Governance; World Resources Institute: Washington, DC, June 1990.
Judith T. Kildow received a B.A. degree in political science f r o m Grinnell Coll e g e a n d a Ph.D. f r o m T h e Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. S h e i s an associate professor of ocean policy in the Department of Ocean Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specializing in environment, technology, and policy issues. She has served on several US.National A c a d e m y of Sciences National Research Council boards and committees, and was a member of The National Presidential Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere.
