Environmental multilateralism at a crossroads. What next?

Seismic shifts are underway

Seismic geopolitical shifts are underway, with some States withdrawing or threatening to withdraw from Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), funds, organisations, prorgammes and processes. We are witnessing a fallout from significant funding cuts. 

These cuts are not only being made by one country. They reflect a shift in priorities in several countries, such as to direct more funding towards defence spending by drawing upon overseas development assistance (ODA) budgets. This shift does not appear to be having negative domestic political consequences.

These changes are rapid, and they have profound implications for the United Nations (UN), and multilateralism, with impacted parties having to adjust and adapt in quick time. MEAs, such as those on biodiversity, climate, chemicals and wastes, desertification and world heritage, do not exist in isolation from the broader system. They are a part of it.

In addressing the effectiveness of MEAs, including efforts at better integration and the breaking down of the silos within, between, and across clusters of conventions, we also need to zoom out, to look at what is happening geopolitically and discuss what this means for MEAs. 

UN reforms 

The UN Secretariat has produced a document titled ‘UN80 structural changes and programmatic realignment’, (‘the UN document’) which is a response to these challenges. While marked as ‘strictly confidential’ it was posted to LinkedIn and extensively quoted in several media articles. The UN document sets out a range of possible (non-attributable) suggestions for making changes within the UN, which the UN Secretary General is now taking steps to advance.

The UN document, prepared by longstanding UN senior officials, is quite critical of the UN, with references to overlaps, inefficiencies, and fragmentation, amongst many other stated failings in the system, which it says challenges the UN’s legitimacy and effectiveness. Such challenges have been known of for some time; with this UN document laying them out bare. It is surprising that this document comes out only now.

In my view, it’s a disappointing document that is focussed on across the board cost cutting, mainly through suggesting the merging entities and the relocation staff and offices, without any strategic overarching logic. Many of the proposed mergers will require the approval of multiple governing bodies. 

Meeting the UN’s geopolitical and financing challenges should be taking place within the context of a broader strategic focus – to first articulate where we need the UN and why, where it delivers effectively and has a comparative advantage, where it is not needed and so on. But that is absent from this document.

UN reforms and MEAs

The UN document does include a few references to one MEA, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and makes other refences that are of relevance to other MEAs. These references include to:

• integrate the UNFCCC into UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which I assume is shorthand for merging the Secretariats (and would require decisions of both governing bodies). It doesn’t make much sense to me.

• consider whether the UNFCCC CoP (Conference of the Parties) in its current form should be discontinued, which is something I have written on before.

• revisit the frequency of intergovernmental meetings, but with no reference being made to how many UN staff attend meetings or the class of travel.

I am a strong supporter of the UN, multilateralism and the MEAs. But it’s incumbent upon all of us, including those of us who have worked both within and outside of the UN, and know the system from multiple perspectives, to help advance critical thinking on how to create a more effective and efficient system. 

My focus in this short article is on MEAs and there are three areas I’ll focus on, namely the:

• MEA CoP cycle,

• Synergies between MEAs, and

• Frequency of intergovernmental meetings and attendance at meetings.

The endless cycle of CoPs

There are an estimated 1,400 MEAs, which includes bilateral and regional agreements, with perhaps 20 main global treaties, and I will focus most of my remarks on just three of them, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UNFCCC, and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD, commonly know as ‘the Rio Conventions’, given their association with the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992.

We need the Rio Conventions and other MEAs. Through them we agree what needs to be done, monitor our progress, or lack thereof, and mobilise financial resources. They also catalyse action, such as national plans, legislation, and research, and improve cross-border cooperation. CoPs are an important part of this process. But are CoPs being overdone?

The UNFCCC works on an annual CoP cycle, with the CBD and UNCCD meeting every two years (leaving aside the many subsidiary body meetings). Other MEAs, such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), meet on a three yearly CoP cycle.

Each of the Rio Conventions has an impressive history of CoPs, high-level events, and side-events, and have adopted a vast array of decisions, protocols, goals and targets. If success were measured by these achievements, then each of the Rio Conventions may be seen as having an impressive record. But is this the right measure of success?

As the graph line for the size and scale of each CoP is trending up, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), UNEP and others tell us that the state of our biodiversity, climate and land is trending down. The two graphs are moving in opposite directions.

In the last three months of 2024 over 100,000 people attended the CoPs of these three conventions. Assuming an average cost of $5,000 per participant it equates to a collective investment of $500 million into three meetings, leaving aside the value of people’s time. Was this the best use of that scale of investment of time and money? Were the outcomes worth it? 

While we see the trend lines for CoPs going up, and for the state of the environment going down, we do not collectively pause to reflect upon the effectiveness of what we are doing, rather we continue to double down with the cycle of ever-expanding CoPs.

It’s become a bit of a competition between the conventions, which one can attract the most Heads of State, Ministers, participants, side events and more. The narrative of ‘this is our last chance’ has been overused and lost its resonance. We all recall Aesop’s Fables and the Boy Who Cried Wolf. When the wolf did finally appear, the villagers had stopped listening. 

This is not a criticism of the States that host CoPs. They make a significant financial commitment and put in a huge diplomatic effort to host such meetings. Rather, we seem to be collectively stuck on a treadmill that we seem unable to get off. 

Changing the CoP cycle

Do we need to maintain the current CoP cycle? In my view, we do not need to persist with the current cycle of CoPs. We could start by moving UNFCCC CoPs from an annual event to once every two years and for the CBD and UNCCD CoPs to move from meeting every two to every three years. The savings would be significant. Would it negatively impact implementation? I doubt it. In fact, the oppositive may be the case. Why not give it a try?

We also need to ask ourselves if there are other ways forward. Do we need to continually debate and negotiate new decisions on so many topics? Might it be possible to limit negotiations to critical issues requiring a collective decision and action? 

We know that we need to influence the food, energy, and finance worlds. Can we hold CoPs in direct partnership with the global entities responsible for leading on these issues, and possibly bring the three Rio Conventions together for this purpose?

And other questions concerning consensus decision making, compliance processes, and the multilateral financial institutions, most particularly the Global Environment Facility (GEF), amongst many others, could be added to the mix. All issues for future reflection. 

UN’s global authority for the environment 

We wonder why the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) is not the global environmental authority in the UN it is meant to be; but how can the UNEA hope to compete with these massive CoPs. We can look to convene Heads of State at milestone CoPs, such as the adoption of the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Outside of that cycle, we should use the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and the UNEA to convene high level events, if additional high-level meetings are needed.

Further, we should ask why the GEF, a financial mechanism, has now has taken to having its Assembly bring “together ministers, government officials, business leaders, environmentalists, leaders of international agencies and environmental conventions along with representatives of youth groups, civil society, and Indigenous Peoples to discuss solutions to ensure a healthy planet with healthy people”, which appears to directly overlap with the role of the UNEA.  

The GEF is to take its direction from the MEAs it serves, and it should in my view be taking strategic direction from UNEA, which could also review its performance and effectiveness. I have written on the GEF and UNEP and UNEA before, but that is a topic for another day. 

Synergies between MEAs

It’s important to break down silos and to work across conventions – MEAs, human rights, transnational organised crime, health and more. However, we need to move beyond the generic synergies debate. I was invited to multiple meetings on synergies during my 11 years in the UN, including eight years as CITES Secretary General, many of which in my view were unproductive. I see they persist, with heads of agencies and conventions being brought together at most CoPs and the UNGA and the UNEA. These provide great group photo opportunities and good fodder for social media posts but what real purpose do they serve? We need to move on from this generic synergies’ discussion. It is not productive. We need to reorientate our effort and make better use of our limited financial and human resources.

There have been tangible and successful efforts at achieving synergies and we need to focus our discussions on tangible proposals. Areas of success that stand out to me are:

• amalgamating the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Convention Secretariats in 2013 and the holding of joint and back-to-back CoPs. This was State led, with kudos to Switzerland for being a driving force behind this reform.

• the creation of the International Consortium on Combatting Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) in 2010 bringing together five agencies from within and outside of the UN to tackle wildlife crime. This was agency led and subsequently fully endorsed by States.

• taking a One Health approach, which is now enshrined into the recently concluded Pandemics Agreement, which is likely to be adopted by the World Health Assembly in May 2025. This is one that has been both State and agency led.

Synergies at the national level 

Based upon my observations working within and outside of the UN, the real challenge is synergies at the national level. We see silos within and between national agencies with the people responsible being quite territorial regarding their convention or part of a convention. This is where we need to invest more of our efforts, not at endlessly convening the MEA Executive Secretaries and other UN staff to meet and discuss the same issue amongst themselves in multiple venues. 

Frequency of UN meetings and attendance at meetings

The UN Secretariat document refers to revisiting the frequency of intergovernmental meetings. I agree with that, but it should be expanded to include reducing the number of UN staff attending meetings and revisiting the class of travel of UN Staff.

In 2009 when working at UNEP the organisation sent 100 staff to the (failed) UNFCCC Copenhagen Co15. UNEP had no role in the negotiations and could not even enter the same room as the negotiations. Several staff were there ‘tracking the negotiations’. Why? IISD Earth Negotiation Bulletin provides the same service. Assuming a cost of $5,000 per staff member, that was an investment of $500,000, leaving aside the value you could place on staff time. It was not a wise investment. I know things have changed since, but we need to see UN agencies and convention Secretariats further review why they need to send staff to meetings.

Political appointees [2] to the UN are entitled to travel Business class (and in limited cases First Class) irrespective of the duration of the flight. All other UN Secretariat staff – Directors, Professional and General Service – can fly Business class if the journey is over 9 hours in duration (or if a multi-leg journey is 11 hours or more). At the same time, we see senior staff from Government agencies flying the same routes in economy.

And there is a perverse incentive built into the system, with UN staff accumulating all the air miles earned through their work travel for personal use. I was a CEO in government at the State level in Australia in the late 1990s. The Premier’s department did a deal with the airlines to centralise the air miles earned by government staff, which they used to offset the costs of travel. That was over 30 years ago, and I am sure many other governments have done likewise. Couldn’t the UN do something similar, possibly to offset carbon emissions from staff travel? 

It’s 2025. We are in the midst of a climate crisis and the UN faces a financial crisis. Given these two challenges, it’s perhaps time to revisit the class of travel allowed for UN staff and related benefits.

Critical thinking needed

Over recent years we have heard calls from within the UN and elsewhere for transformative change. However, amongst the MEAs, including the Rio Conventions, what we tend to see is more of the same, and it does not appear to be working when measured against the environmental outcomes. We seem to be stuck on a treadmill. 

Massive geopolitical shifts are now underway, including with financing. What are the implications for these critically important global agreements? The time has clearly arrived to reflect upon whether we are on the right track in how we are implementing MEAs. Critical thinking is needed; to come up with tangible and practical ideas on how to make MEAs more cost effective and impactful, and to better utilise the UNEA. Through this article, I’ve tried to offer a few suggestions to help stimulate a debate. 

As a community that is deeply interested in environmental sustainability, let’s draw upon our collective experience and expertise to map out possible ways forward. If not someone else will do it for us – and in that case we run the risk of the baby being thrown out with the bathwater.

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.