Relevant UN entities in New York

2.1 The Secretary-General

The United Nations Charter⁴ established six principal organs of the United Nations:

the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice, and the Secretariat.⁵ The UN family naturally is much larger, encompassing 15 agencies and several programmes and bodies.⁶

The present UN Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon considers climate change as one of the top priorities for action and he has a climate change support team to assist him in this work.⁷ The Secretary-General engages in higher political level work and is regularly in contact with the world’s leaders. Two main ad hoc initiatives in the field may be mentioned in this context.

Firstly, the High-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, co-chaired by Prime Minister Zenawi of Ethiopia and Prime Minister Stoltenberg of Norway. The Group was launched in February 2010 and it submitted its final report to the Secre-tary-General in November 2010.⁸ The mandate of the Group was to consider dif-ferent possible finance streams, public, private, traditional and innovative, to scale up long-term financing for mitigation and adaptation strategies in developing coun-tries, focusing on the sources of funds. The work was guided by the political com-mitments contained in the Copenhagen Accord.⁹

The Advisory Group concluded that it is challenging but feasible to meet the goals of the Accord. According to the final report of the Group, funding will need to come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, includ-ing alternative sources of finance, the scalinclud-ing up of existinclud-ing sources and increased

4 Charter of the United Nations, 26 June 1945.

5 Ibid. Art. 7.

6 For a UN organizational chart refer to, for instance, <http://www.un.org/en/aboutun/structure/index.

shtml> (visited 30 March 2011) and for a more extensive description of the UN system’s structure, see, for instance, Tadanori Inomata, ‘Building Institutional and Managerial Foundation for Environmental Governance with the United Nations System – Towards a New Governance Structure for Environment Protection and Sustainable Development’, in Tuula Honkonen and Ed Couzens (eds), International En-vironmental Law-making and Diplomacy Review 2009, University of Joensuu – UNEP Course Series 9 (University of Joensuu, 2010) 45–64.

7 Refer to <http://www.un.org/sg/priority.shtml> (visited 30 March 2011) for the list of his priorities for action.

8 Report of the Secretary-General’s High-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, 5 November 2010. The report as well as other further information on the work of the Group, including the Terms of Reference of the Group may be found at <http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/climatechange/pages/

financeadvisorygroup> (visited 21 February 2011).

9 Decision 2/CP.15 ‘Copenhagen Accord’, in Report of the Conference of the Parties on its 15th session, UN Doc. FCCC/CP/2009/11/Add.1 (2010), Addendum. The Copenhagen Accord contains, among others, a political commitment of approaching 30 billion USD for 2010–2012 and a goal of 100 billion USD a year by 2020. See para. 8 of the Accord.

private flows. Grants and highly concessional loans are crucial for adaptation in the most vulnerable developing countries, such as the least developed countries, Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Africa. Strong commitments to domestic mit-igation and the introduction of new public instruments based on carbon pricing are important for mobilizing climate financing, both public and private. Instruments based on carbon pricing are particularly attractive because they both raise revenue and provide incentives for mitigation actions.

Secondly, the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability which was launched in Au-gust 2010 must be mentioned. The Panel has met several times already. The Panel will deliver input to inter-governmental processes, including preparations for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio 2012), and the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC. In its work, the Panel has a strong emphasis on climate change, but it is not limited to it, as the scope is much wider. These other areas include food, water and energy security and poverty reduction. The mandate of the Panel is for 18 months and the Panel is to finish its work by the end of 2011.

The Panel is co-chaired by President Tarja Halonen of Finland and President Jacob Zuma of South Africa.

The final report of the work of the Panel will be published and it will include analy-sis and recommendations. In the course of its work, the Panel will create platforms for discussion to generate input to its work. Given the Panel’s special focus on climate change, the Panel may also prepare additional policy briefs in ways to best address the climate negotiations process, taking into account its own time schedule^.10

2.2 Relevant parts of the UN Secretariat

Several parts of the UN Secretariat are particularly relevant to the work on climate change. In the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA),¹¹ the Division of Sustainable Development¹² in particular is important; but the UN Forum on Forests Secretariat and the Population Division, for example, also handle issues rel-evant to different aspects of climate change. DESA has a specific working group on climate change, which convenes regularly to exchange information and joins working efforts of different divisions of DESA.

2.3 UN specialized Agencies, Funds and Programmes

Many of the UN specialized Agencies, Funds and Programmes have worked exten-sively on climate change issues and are also represented in New York. These include,

10 Further information on the work of the panel, including its composition, mandate and summaries of discussion that have already taken place may be accessed at <http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/cli-matechange/pages/gsp> (visited 21 February 2011).

11 See <http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/index.html> (visited 30 March 2011).

12 See <http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/csd/csd_index.shtml> (visited 30 March 2011).

inter alia, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN Development pro-gramme (UNDP), and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). They have a considerable focus on climate issues, the work being conducted according to their own priorities and programmes of work.

As the work regarding climate change is somewhat spread out within the UN, coor-dination of the work and representation is an important aspect. The UN Chief Ex-ecutive Board for Coordination (CEB)¹³ is a high level UN coordination forum established by the Secretary-General. Its work includes climate change and the Mil-lennium Development Goals (MDGs).¹⁴ In addition, the CEB High-Level Commit-tee on Programmes (a mechanism for system-wide coordination) has a working group dedicated to climate change.

The Secretariat of the CEB is located in New York and it has taken the lead in the UN system-wide coordination efforts in, for example, the previous Climate Change Conferences of the Parties. They continue their efforts for a common unifying view for the UN system. The CEB Secretariat convenes the higher level officials of the UN entities regularly to coordinate in order to better deliver as one UN. The UNFCCC Secretariat naturally services in different ways the negotiation process in particular;

but in the wider UN system there are numerous UN entities that are important, for instance in the implementation phase of the outcome of the negotiations.

2.4 UN General Assembly

Returning to the principal organs established by the UN Charter, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in its recent 65th session (2010) dealt with, among many other matters, sustainable development issues. Its agenda item regarding sustainable devel-opment included, among others: protection of global climate for present and future generations of humankind; implementation of the UN Convention to Combat De-sertification¹⁵ and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD),¹⁶ so covering all of the so-called Rio Conventions.¹⁷ The UNGA adopted corresponding resolutions regarding each of the three Rio Conventions.¹⁸

13 The CEB has its own website containing further information regarding its work; see <http://www.unsceb.

org/ceb/home> (visited 21 February 2011).

14 See <http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/>.

15 UN Convention to Combat Desertification in Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and or Deserti-fication, Particularly in Africa, Paris, 17 June 1994, in force 26 December 1996, 33 International Legal Materials (1994) 1309, <http://www.unccd.int>.

16 Convention on Biological Diversity, Rio de Janeiro, 5 June 1992, in force 29 December 1993, 31 Inter-national Legal Materials (1992) 822, <http://www.biodiv.org>.

17 UNGA Agenda A65/251 (17 September 2010), Item 20 ’Sustainable development’: d), e), f). By ‘Rio Conventions’ are meant conventions which were created at the United Nations Conference on Environ-ment and DevelopEnviron-ment (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

18 UNGA Res. 65/159; UNGA Res. 65/160; and UNGA Res. 65/161 (2011).

2.5 Economic and Social Council

The Economic and Social Council¹⁹ and its functional commissions, in particular the Commission on Sustainable Development and the UN Forum on Forests, may also be mentioned in this context. The work conducted within the ECOSOC contributes to different dimensions of climate change whereby different functional commissions report to the ECOSOC. As a central body regarding development policy, it also aims to carry out development commitments that have emerged from different UN con-ferences and summits, including the implementation of the MDGs.