The United Nations Environmental Programme - Coursework Example

Extent and Effectiveness of United Nations Environmental Programme in Its Mission to ‘Provide Leadership and Encourage Partnership in Caring For the Environment’ Introduction The United Nations Environment Programme (2014:1) was established in 1972 with the goal of advocating for the environment and sustainable development within the UN organ. The objective was for UNEP to offer not just leadership but also be a catalyst and educator for protection of environment. UNEP functions are based on the framework of encouraging, collaborating, offering precautions, and advocating for sound management of the global environment. However, critics of UNEP argue that it has weak legal, political, and economic frameworks, which do not ensure strong responsibility of the organization in developing and enforcing of novel environmental policies not just at global levels, hamper its effectiveness (Armstrong, 2004:247). Furthermore, they argue that the bureaucratic nature of UNEP makes it to lack the will to ensure that governments and business activities adhere to sound environmental management (Knight, 2001: ch 3). Other scholars like Moore & Pubantz (2005:ch 8) have criticized current UNEP approaches as more of scare tactics that are based on disinformation particularly from some of its non-governmental movements, such that its environment protection measures often tend to be driven by strong feelings and sensationalism rather than scientific facts. Thus, the aim of this paper is to evaluate the extent in which UNEP has been effective in its mission to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment. This paper seeks to show how UNEP mission to offer leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment is hampered by the lack of strong legal and regulatory instruments, coupled with the clash between sovereignty, corporate interests, and civil society demands. Discussion During the early years after its formation, UNEP played a critical leadership role in the development of the international environmental governance. The agency has often initiated and catalyzed not just global but national environmental concerns by raising popular awareness through education and acting as a facilitator. UNEP has constantly engaged with numerous global accounting and investment bodies in coming up with integrated environmental reporting measures along with indicators, which reflect the main resource utilization risks, that individual nations face (Brown & Jensen, 2009: 28). The organization has been the major driving force for private sectors across the globe to engage in sustainable investments. More so, UNEP has played a crucial leadership role behind the 1987 Montreal Protocol that seeks to limit materials that destroy the planet Ozone Layer, and ever since its inception the agency has ensured that industrialized nations have not just stopped reducing but halt production of a significant amount of the ozone-depleting materials (Louka, 2006:347). This form of leadership has also been effective when it comes to pushing for global scientific acquisition and exchange of environmental management standards, particularly in appraisals of appropriate environmental knowledge like directing of technical aspects of global environmental programmes. However, most of UNEP leadership efforts are projected through its NGO programme particularly the Civil Societies, like the Division of Policy Development and Law, which has been instrumental in advancing UNEP as the chief agency in setting global environmental agenda. This effort is what Kennedy (2007:155) asserts to be the notion of honourable impulse, whereby different entities collectively put into effect their individual agency towards a common good. However, the effectiveness of UNEP leadership role has been tainted by its weak mandate and restricted capacity-building capabilities, especially in enforcement of agreed commitments (Biermann & Bauer, 2005: 9). Critism centres on its perceived overemphasis that international environmental destructions are mainly due to rich nations, such that measures are often instituted and driven by western nation’s particularly western European nations. Notably, UNEP often focuses on additionality principle without actually assessing the individuals nations ability to obtain funding on their own and whether the project to be funded can attain actual emission reductions. As Karns & Mingst (2009:522) points out, UNEP environment regimes have focused so much on ‘No significant harm’ principle, whereby individual states initiatives are made in a way that they do not factor other states position as they lack general externalities, instead of ‘Good neighbour’ principle whereby countries cooperate to address common environmental concerns. Therefore, when it comes to evaluating the extent and effectiveness of UNEP in encouraging partnership in caring for the environment, two questions are often raised. The first one is whether individual nations ought to be left to apply agreed the initiatives based on their own freewill but with an obligation to reporting procedures that are anchored in a real deliberation process, even though the downside will be slow progress? As observed by Archer (2001:67), although UNEP like all other UN agencies does not function within a political vacuum, as its institutional outline and mandate mirrors the fears of individual governments. UNEP environmental protection policies are largely based on voluntary approaches rather than mandatory enforcement and reporting. Therefore, they do not focus at complementing UNEP works especially in providing leadership, and this presents the agency the dilemma of enforcing mandatory requirements, hence resulting in duplication of strategies (Stoeva, 2009: 119). This is made worse by the lack of strong legislative measures in which all nations within its jurisdiction can account and explain how the environment protection and sustainability regulations they have signed to has impacted on not just on the environment and not simply on their economy. For instance, UNEP initiatives which sought to make nations to voluntary offer explicit but informed consent in the importation of hazardous chemicals faced massive challenges, since most developing countries were still importing without issuing consent. Therefore, it was only after the passage of the mandatory Rotterdam Convention was UNEP able to take charge in preventing highly toxic chemicals to be released into the environment (Hoffman & Rumsey, 2007:78). The second questions regards whether UNEP should allow individual governments to be the ones who draft standards for compliance and reporting in order to offer nations the chance to complete a set of what they agree to achieve and pegged on mutual trust, or should drafting be based on causal relationship. In allowing voluntary drafting of protocols and environmental protection measures, UNEP faced obstacles in terms of ascertaining the outcomes. It has become difficult for UNEP to attain a global environment protection framework due to the clash between sovereignty, corporate interests, and civil society demands. Thus, critics argue that in greenhouse gas emissions cut debate, no substantial pollution cuts has been attained globally since the agency does not have a core foundation which can ensure that it enforces the principles agreed under the numerous environmental protection declarations (Tiberghien, 2013:202). For instance, under the Clean Development Mechanism, projects that are funded under the program are those that do not seek to attain actual emission reductions, or are halted due to severe pressures from civil societies, while others are meshed in uncertain scientific knowledge. In particular, the Guardian newspaper reports that around two thirds of the projects under the clean development mechanism do not signify real emission cuts, since they do not use clean technologies or they can get funding by their own even without UNEP assistance (Vidal, 2008: 4). The argument is that UNEP has focused so much on additionality such that the agency is not able to substantiate definitively whether a project or factory they intend to fund can be able to offset the emissions targets, and in most cases, the projects applying for funding are already complete when UNEP finally issues them with funding approval. As such, the Guardian observes that despite Billions of dollars being spent on such initiatives, UNEP has allowed gaps in the programs such that energy companies in developing nations have taken advantage to file false claims that they are experiencing emission reductions, in order to get more credits for their projects even though they do not qualify (Vidal, 2008: 5). The extent of UNEP efforts to encourage partnerships is constantly limited by nationalistic agendas especially civil organizations, which view UN to be either some form of ‘neo-colonial’ projections of power, or it seeks to interfere with their way of life. This perception is compounded further by the assumption that UN perception of natural order is only rooted in Western nation’s notion of law (Kennedy, 2007:270). It is such assertions that has made conservative US governments to be particularly weary of ratifying UNEP agreements and conventions such as Rio protocol or Kyoto convention as they perceive such conventions’ to be undermining the power and influence of US leadership. UNEP sustainable development initiatives are often perceived to be against the conservative way of life particularly of private ownership in terms of cars, farmlands, family homes, or travel choices. Nowhere is this more apparent than the New York times report which showed indigenous groups in US are against UNEP programs like Rio Declaration, since the convention seeks to ensure that national and local governments work towards measures that seeks to conserve energy through enforcement of social based initiatives like public transportation and open spaces (Kaufman & Zernike, 2012: 5). Such efforts that seek to encourage cooperation through enforcement of individual based measures are often perceived to be enforcement of big-government proposals against personal rights. Murphy (2004:343) points out that such outcome are due to UNEP inability to conduct practical awareness-raising efforts so that communities and local people have sufficient knowledge on the outcomes of the conventions, particularly on how the conventions would not affect individual rights and duties. Furthermore, the competitive nature between emerging economies like China on one hand and US on the other hand is becoming more acute, such that the effectiveness of UNEP in guiding agreements like e greenhouse gas emissions is hampered by the increase in multi-polarity and competition (Karns & Mingst, 2009:532). For instance, in terms of enforcement of Kyoto, protocol UNEP hands are tied without full US participation, and if UNEP is to offer leadership in any successor agreement it should ensure that both China and US agree on a substantial cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions. However, Murphy (2004:342) observes that such outcomes arises from the agency ineptitude in coming up with with a universally accepted framework that defines how to deal with the commonalities, the modus operandi for sharing responsibilities, as well as lack of a framework on tackling over-exploitation in climate change initiatives. As such, UNEP just conducts essential but per-enforcement restricted environmental policies that are mostly implemented through multiparty talking-shops rather than through concrete laws and regulations (Karns & Mingst, 2009:533). Conclusion This paper observes that the major obstacle that faces UNEP in its global environmental leadership role is the lack of sufficient mechanisms for measuring, monitoring, and enforcement of agreed initiatives and conventions. In particular, UNEP lacks the principles that will hold individual governments and businesses accountable to internationally agreed environmental standards, and this is mainly due to concerns regarding sovereignty and the variations between commercial interests and environmental concerns. Nevertheless, the paper argues that for UNEP to be effective in providing effective partnerships, it should seek to raise the level of transparency in a manner that each individual nation understands its obligations under the agreed agreement, and then making performance reporting to be a rule instead of an exception. Therefore, UNEP should mainstream the reporting requirements not necessarily by enforcing regulatory pressures, but through numerous types of legal directives. This will then ensure that agreed environmental protections programs and sustainability programs are implemented in a credible manner. Secondly, for UNEP to offer effective leadership in major environmental concerns like global warming, it needs to shift to multilevel governance structures. The agency should place more efforts towards regional and local civil society organizations in order to deal with the present debate between universal responsibility and maintenance of national sovereignty. Accordingly, UNEP should seek to push member’s states to strengthen its current legal framework and policy instruments, in order to ensure that its policy is more effective. Furthermore, the agency should shift from its current overemphasis of absolute funding and investments in technologies, and instead start to focus more on lifestyles patterns. Since getting cooperation from national government level is proving to be problematic, then the focus should be on policy changes that seek to transform economic activities and individual consumption patterns such as bioengineering and smart cities. List of References Archer, C. (2001). International Organizations (Vol. 1). London: Psychology Press. Armstrong, J. D. (2004). International Organisation in World Politics (The Making of the Twentieth Century). London: Palgrave Macmillan Limited. Biermann, F., & Bauer, S. (2005). A World Environment Organization: Solution Or Threat For Effective International Environmental Governance? London: Ashgate Pub. Brown, O., & Jensen, D. (2009). From Conflict to Peacebuilding: The Role of Natural Resources and the Environment (Vol. 1). London: Earthprint. 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