Jamil Ahmad 1
3 Climate Change and the 200 Agenda 54
3.4 Specific questions
3.4.2 The role of the UN Environment
Through its mandate, the UN Environment has endeavoured to serve the interna-tional community as the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, that promotes the coherent implementation of the environ-mental dimensions of sustainable development within the UN system, and that serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment. This mandate is not always easily fulfilled in today’s complex world characterized by conflicting interests and widespread narratives focusing solely on economic issues instead of integrating them with the environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development.
Nonetheless, the UN Environment has achieved some milestone results since its establishment,74 which are briefly described below.
73 UN Declaration on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 14 June 1992, UN Doc. A/
CONF.151/5/Rev.1 (1992), 31 International Legal Materials (1992) 876. For more information, see, for instance, Tuula Honkonen, ‘The development of the principle of common but differentiated responsibil-ities and its place in internaitonal environmental regimes’ in Tuomas Kuokkanen et al, (eds), International Environemntal Lawe-making and Diplomacy. Insights and overviews (Routledge, 2016) 160-183.
74 UNEP was founded in 1972 following the UN Conference on the Human Environment through UNGA Res. 27/2997 (‘Institutional and financial arrangements for international environmental cooperation’) of 15 December 1972. For more information, see, for instance, Donald Kaniaru, ‘The development of the concept of sustainable development and the birth of UNEP’ in Tuomas Kuokkanen et al, International Environmental Law-making, supra note 73, at 127-143; and Shafqat Kakakhel, ‘An overview od mile-stones in international environmental diplomacy and suggestions for improved environmental govern-ance’ in Tuomas Kuokkanen et al, International Environmental Law-making, supra note 73, at 144-159.
The UN Environment has contributed to environmental awareness building, both among state actors and the public. An appropriate example is the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body responsible for assessing the scientific knowledge on climate change and its potential impacts. Its creation as a globally coordinated scientific cooperation body was a crucial break-through for global action on climate change. Apart from academia and science, the UN Environment actively engages with civil society and youth in order to jointly raise societal awareness on environmental issues and trends.
The UN Environment has contributed to and supported the strengthening of inter-national environmental governance and law. At the time of the establishment of the United Nations, more than 70 years ago, protection of the environment was not on the international agenda. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the UN was tasked with focussing on issues of security, human rights and development. It was not until the 1970s that the environment first appeared in the UN work plan. Since then, the international community has established a large number of institutions for environmental governance and improved environmental law, both at the inter-national and the inter-national levels. This includes, but is not limited to, the adoption of multilateral environmental agreements, and declarations and other soft-law instru-ments. MEAs play a critical role in the overall framework of environmental law and complement national legislation and bilateral or regional agreements, forming the over-arching international legal framework for global efforts to address particular environmental issues. Some outstanding examples include the international con-ventions on chemicals: i) the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer75 and its Montreal Protocol76 phased out the use of substances that deplete the ozone layer, thus stopping the loss of the Earth’s protective atmospheric skin and hopefully leading to its recovery by the middle of this century; ii) the Basel,77 Stock-holm78 and Rotterdam79 Conventions established a regulatory scheme and inter-national framework for the environmentally sound management of chemicals and waste throughout their life-cycle, including their production and use, transbounda-ry movement, trade and disposal; and iii) the Minamata Convention on Mercutransbounda-ry,80
75 Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer, Vienna, 22 March 1985, in force 22 September 1988, 26 International Legal Materials (1985) 1529.
76 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, Montreal, 16 September 1987, in force 1 January 1989, 26 International Legal Materials (1987) 154, <http://ozone.unep.org/>.
77 Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, Basel, 22 March 1989, in force 5 May 1992, 28 International Legal Materials (1989) 657, <http://www.
basel.int>.
78 Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, Stockholm, 22 May 2001, in force 17 May 2004, 40 In-ternational Legal Materials (2001) 532, <http://www.pops.int>.
79 Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, Rotterdam, 11 September, 1998, in force 24 February, 38 International Legal Materials (1999) 1, <http://www.pic.int>.
80 Minamata Convention on Mercury, Geneva, 19 January 2013, not yet in force, <http://www.mercury-convention.org/>.
aimed at protecting human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury (this being the most recently adopted MEA, agreed upon in 201381).
At the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), UN member states reinvigorated their commitment to address environmental challenges by im-proving the institutional arrangements for sustainable development and by strength-ening the environmental pillar of the UN system. This included a strengthened mandate for the UN Environment Programme as well as the establishment of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA),82 which guides the UN Environ-ment as a governing body.83 At this universal forum, environmental issues are dis-cussed by the international community at the highest level.84
The UN Environment is mandated to work on a wide range of issues. The current programme of work of the UN Environment is structured around seven sub-pro-grammes: 1) environment under review; 2) climate change; 3) disasters and con-flicts; 4) ecosystem management; 5) environmental governance; 6) chemicals and waste; and finally 7) resource efficiency. To support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and climate change Agreement, the UN Environment is focusing its efforts on crucial areas supporting transformation: green economy and sustainable con-sumption and production, incentivizing investment in sustainable development and facilitating climate adaptation, mitigation and finance.
The UN Environment’s climate change sub-programme focuses on four main areas:
• Adaptation to climate change, which is crucial to reduce the vulnerability of countries and communities and to use ecosystem services as well as eco-system based approaches to build natural resilience against the impacts of climate change and to secure livelihoods.
• Mitigation, meaning immediate action to limit climate change through emissions reduction, which is essential for safeguarding sustainable develop-ment gains. Sound policy, the use and scaling up of new technologies, the extension of renewable energy sources and increasing energy efficiency are at the core of mitigating climate change.
81 128 member States have signed the convention and 28 have ratified it as of 12 May 2016. See Minamata Convention on Mercury, ‘Successful outcomes at INC7 pave the way for entry into force and COP1’, available at <http://www.mercuryconvention.org/News/INC7outcome/tabid/5049/Default.aspx> (visit-ed 25 May 2016).
82 See http://www.unep.org/unea.
83 See, for instance, Sylvia Bankobeza, ‘Strengthening and Upgrading of the United Nations Environment Programme’, in Tuula Honkonen, Melissa Lewis and Ed Couzens (eds), International Environmental Law-making and Diplomacy Review 2013, University of Eastern Finland – UNEP Course Series 13 (Uni-versity of Eastern Finland, 2014) 73–84.
84 The Second Session of UNEA (23–27 May 2016, Nairobi), considered the health and environment nexus in the 2030 Agenda under the overall theme ‘healthy people, healthy environment’.
• Climate change finance. It is crucial to foster investment in low-carbon de-velopment and to re-direct investment choices from unsustainable to sus-tainable options and portfolios.
• REDD
+
. One particularly important element of both mitigation and ad-aptation is to safeguard the sustainable use of the global forests. The UN Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestations and Forest Degra-dation (UN-REDD),85 jointly managed by the UN Environment, UN De-velopment Programme (UNDP)86 and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),87 seeks to unlock co-benefits for emission reduction, biodiversity conversation and livelihoods through sustainable forest management.Other, more specific, important initiatives of the UN Environment that contribute towards the goals under the four focus areas are:
• the 1 Gigaton Coalition, which aims at delivering annual emission savings of 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide equivalents annually through renewable en-ergy and enen-ergy efficiency;88
• the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN),89 the operational arm of the UNFCCC Technology Mechanism,90 which is hosted and managed by the UN Environment in collaboration with the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)91 and aims at promoting the transfer and scaling-up of environmentally sound technologies for climate change mitigation and ad-aptation;
• the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC),92 which aims at reducing short-lived climate pollutants, such as methane, black carbon and hydro-fluorocarbons, in order to mitigate climate change and reduce health and economic impacts of such pollutants; and
• the UN Environment flagship publications informing the policymakers of climate change: The Emissions Gap Reports,93 which help identify the gap between the emission commitments and the action needed to combat cli-mate change; and the Adaptation Gap Reports94 which identify the needs for adaptation to climate change.
In order to implement the Paris outcome and achieve sustainable development, it
85 See <http://www.un-redd.org/>.
86 See <http://www.undp.org/>.
87 See <http://www.fao.org>.
88 UNEP, ‘Join the Coalition’, available at <http://www.unep.org/energy/Portals/50177/Flyer_1Giga-ton_07.pdf> (visited 25 May 2016).
89 See <https://www.ctc-n.org/>.
90 See <http://unfccc.int/ttclear/templates/render_cms_page?TEM_home>.
91 See <http://www.unido.org>.
92 See <http://www.ccacoalition.org/en/content/about-us>.
93 See supra note 66.
94 See <http://web.unep.org/adaptationgapreport/content/adaptation-gap-reports>.
will be imperative to transform economies and societies and adjust lifestyles to the impacts of climate change – an uphill battle and a challenge of unprecedented scale.