Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Making Multilateral Environmental Agreements Work for the Poor

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Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) are the preferred tool of the international community to address environmental issues that cross national borders. The first MEAs were agreed in the early 1900s, and since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment many more have been negotiated. There are now over 700. Unfortunately, progress in negotiating MEAs has not been matched by tangible progress in improving environmental quality in developing countries. Preparatory assessments for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development revealed that few advancements had been made in the priority areas of water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity over the past 30 years. This raises two questions. Why is progress towards sustainable development so slow? And how can we make MEAs more effective as a tool for sustainable development?

This article offers a bottom-up, agent-focused analysis of the challenges of implementing MEAs in developing countries to try and answer these questions. It argues that MEA performance in developing countries can be enhanced in two ways. First, MEAs cannot lose sight of the need to reduce poverty while fostering environmental protection. Second, broadening participation in MEA design and implementation will reinforce their potential. It offers six recommendations on short-term, feasible improvements that will enhance MEA effectiveness in developing countries.

This bottom-up, agent-focused analysis is intended to supplement current top-down approaches that assess the challenges facing MEAs from a global policy perspective. Top-down recommendations address challenges such as balancing centralization and flexibility in global environmental governance, inadequate financing for sustainable development and the contradictory tendencies of international trade/finance regimes and environmental regimes. However, such global recommendations neglect national-level variation in capacity to implement MEAs, and ignore the challenges facing environmental practitioners in developing countries. This article aims to redress this imbalance.

Broad participation in decision making is a prerequisite for sustainable development. The bottom-up, agent-focused approach also identifies the key stakeholder groups that should be involved in MEA design and implementation. It analyses the barriers to broad participation from the perspective of developing country civil servants, non-governmental organization (NGO) advocates, business leaders and environmental scientists, who must all fight for access to international decision-making forums. Their exclusion is integrally tied both to achieving sustainable development and the disappointing performance of MEAs.

Addressing poverty

The causes of poverty in developing countries are complex and multifaceted. The data, however, are clear: over one billion people live on less than US$1 per day. MEAs alone cannot adequately address the causes and effects of poverty. A real commitment to poverty eradication must tackle macro-structural global inequalities, including unbalanced trade regimes, developing country debt and unequal representation in global governance organizations. However, MEAs do have potential. They can support sustainable development as long as they keep sight of the need to reduce poverty while enhancing environmental protection.

Poverty creates unique challenges for successful MEA implementation. First, MEAs must overcome the negative perception that they only provide solutions to protect the environment whilst reducing access to environmental resources and services by people already struggling for their livelihoods. Second, developing country governments are reluctant to allocate precious funds to implementing MEAs when wealthier industrialized countries are slow to fulfill their own environmental commitments.

Developing country scepticism about MEAs reflects the gaps, both real and perceived, between the agendas of environmental protection and poverty eradication. The design and implementation of MEAs must directly address these gaps and recognize the links between poverty eradication and environmental protection in poorer nations.

Recommendation 1:
MEA motivated environmental protection schemes should acknowledge the importance of poverty and should direct accrued monetary benefits back to local communities.

Challenges facing environmental ministries

National governments are the interface between the international arena, where MEAs are negotiated, and local communities, where MEAs are converted into action. They, therefore, play a crucial role in facilitating MEA implementation. National governments, however, are not unitary actors with perfect information. A country, led by its environmental ministry, may sign MEAs without an awareness of the full complexities of implementation. The environmental ministry must then coordinate and compete with the economics, finance, energy, agriculture, forest, fisheries and foreign affairs ministries in the complex process of converting an MEA into tangible programmes.

Many developing country governments lack coordination between ministries. Few governments establish a national task force for each MEA and there may not be systematic lines of inter-ministerial communication for information sharing. For example, in the Philippines, coordination between the ministries of energy and environment is minimal, so public discussions conducted by energy officials on new technologies do not take into account their harmful effects on the environment.

MEAs can also cause internal power and resource struggles between government ministries. Sometimes the implementing agency is assumed to receive training opportunities and financial and technological benefits from MEA secretariats and/or international agencies like the World Bank or the Global Environmental Facility, and is accused of not sharing resources. Finance ministries can also exert power over other agencies and impede access to funds needed for MEA implementation.

Developing country environmental ministries often suffer from a high turnover of professional staff. Government ministry organizational structures inhibit the advancement of mid-level professionals, provide few opportunities for upgrading skills and offer low salaries. There is little to support the career path of an environmental bureaucrat. For example, federal or provincial level civil servants in Argentina have had no promotions or salary increases for 12 years. As a result, environmental professionals leave government service and seek opportunities in the private sector or international organizations. Government agencies then rely on new inexperienced staff, with limited knowledge of MEA goals and requirements.

Recommendation 2:
Government cabinets should formalize existing ad hoc MEA national coordinating committees. Such political support at the ministerial level will improve coordination, assure the commitment of relevant agencies to their responsibilities in MEA implementation and compliance, and enhance the retention of experienced professional staff.

Excluded local government

All international initiatives and agreements require local action. Local government is important for facilitating such action to support MEAs. The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development first acknowledged the critical implementing role of local government by agreeing that "because so many problems and solutions being addressed by Agenda 21 have their roots in local activities, the participation and cooperation of local authorities will be a determining factor in fulfilling its objectives" (Agenda 21, Chapter 28).

Despite this recognition, local government is still working to establish formal and effective links with the United Nations (UN), and to secure acknowledgement of its key role in global development. Establishing the UN Advisory Committee of Local Authorities (UNACLA) in January 2000 was an important first step in this regard. UNACLA aims to strengthen dialogue between national governments and local authorities and is the first formal advisory body of local authorities that has been attached to the UN. UNACLA is a significant step forward, but local government continues to have little institutional influence on the UN system. During international debates such as the World Summit on Sustainable Development, local government was excluded from the official negotiation process. Instead, it was included as one of the nine major civil society groups.

This lack of UN recognition inhibits meaningful local government participation in MEA negotiations. It is also short-sighted given that local government is best placed to assess what can realistically be achieved at local levels and to identify what resources and tools are required for implementation. The problem is compounded by a shortfall in the resources and autonomy assigned to local government by national governments. Local governments are often expected to accept responsibility for implementing MEAs, which they were not party to negotiating, without additional human, financial or legislative resources. MEAs, therefore, become unfunded mandates. For example, the South African Biodiversity Act (a response to national ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity) contains onerous administrative and implementation obligations for local government, with no mention of where the resources to fulfill these obligations will come from. South African local government is short of funds and skills, so the result will undoubtedly be local inaction.

Recommendation 3:
Echoing the recommendation of the Local Government Declaration to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the UN and the international community should "recognize that local government is an equal sphere of government, vital to the success of sustainable development and good governance, and not a non-governmental or sectoral group." National governments should also "work with local governments and their national and international associations in order to strengthen local government’s capacity, competencies and resources (including local leadership development) [to meet] the challenges of sustainable development and urbanization" and to "involve local government as equal partners in action-oriented national sustainable development strategies and alliances."

Southern NGOs

Over the past 20 years, NGOs have grown to hold a unique position in global governance. Many policy makers feel NGOs are the only way to link the global with the local and provide a democratizing influence on international politics. NGOs have an important role to play, but overly optimistic assessments of their potential ignore their role as political actors.

NGOs are not uniformly distributed across the globe. Developed country NGOs often dominate international forums. They can access funds more easily and obtain the visas needed to attend international conferences. They have more staff and resources to lobby on environmental issues. In contrast, NGOs in poorer countries like Brazil, India and South Africa tend to focus on domestic poverty and environmental issues. Other developing countries have few NGOs. For example, Iran’s isolation from the rest of world after the Islamic Revolution disempowered Iranian NGOs as actors in international politics, and there were no Iranian NGOs at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The situation is changing and Iran now has more than 500 environmental NGOs. Some 44 members of Iranian NGOs participated in the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development.

NGOs are viewed as representing the millions of local communities around the globe in multilateral environmental politics. Relations between NGOs and local communities are, however, complex. In many rural and urban centres, practitioners distinguish between NGOs and social movements and feel NGOs are disconnected from the people they claim to represent. At worst, NGOs are used to infiltrate and gather information on local communities. NGOs may also come into conflict with other community-level actors over the distribution of scarce funds. As international agencies abandon state channels for disbursing funds, NGOs may increasingly act as rent seeking gatekeepers. For example, NGOs linked to the UN have monopolized most Global Environmental Facility financial resources in Zimbabwe.

NGOs are often expected to monitor state agency implementation and enforcement of MEAs. This can be constructive, generating public pressure on government agencies to fulfill their mandates. Power imbalances can, however, limit effective monitoring. Governments can censor information produced by NGOs or suppress NGO activities. Government agencies may also absorb NGOs by employing their staff. For example, in Mexico in the early 1990s, the small number of NGO practitioners working on climate issues were hired to organize the social participation section of Mexico’s environmental agency.

Recommendation 4:
Continue and increase involvement of NGOs and social movement groups, especially from under-represented areas, in multilateral environmental politics. The NGO sector should also develop a code of conduct, to be enforced by peer monitoring, to prevent it becoming disconnected from the communities it serves.

The absent private sector

Developing country private sector actors are strikingly absent from multilateral environmental governance forums. This has three negative consequences for MEA effectiveness. First, private sector resources that could help meet sustainable development goals are untapped. Second, other stakeholders do not benefit from information held by the private sector. Third, developed country industry groups dominate private sector inputs on MEA design and implementation.

Climate change politics in the Philippines offers an instructive example. There is currently a growing gap between energy demand and supply in the Philippines. Decisions are, therefore, being made on new energy supply capital investments. From a sustainable development perspective, these decisions should reflect the environmental goals of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. Unfortunately, there has been little dialogue between the energy and environmental sectors. For example, firms engaged in energy production in the Philippines are rarely invited to meetings regarding project development under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol. They, therefore, have few opportunities to articulate their needs, and multinational participants in the international climate debates dominate inputs on the opportunities and challenges of the CDM project approval process.

Recommendation 5:
There should be consistent developing country private sector engagement in international, national and local sustainable development initiatives. As a condition of participation in environmental forums, developing country private sector actors should promote environmental issues within regional and global trade alliances.

Empowering southern scientists

Developing country scientists struggle to participate in multilateral environmental decision making due to a lack of research funding and the contribution that they can make to the policy process. In recent decades, government research funding, which is already limited compared to industrialized country research funding, has significantly declined. For example, the annual government budget allocated to the University Abdou Moumouni of Niamey in Niger (the only university in a country of 11 million people) was approximately US$12 million in 1985 and less than US$6 million in 2004. International collaborations offer some additional sources of funding. However, new technologies for collecting environmental data, such as remote sensing, are also replacing field research by developing country scientists.

A second challenge facing developing country scientists and policy makers is the lack of publicly accessible data on environmental quality. Few centralized institutions serve as clearinghouses for environmental data or coordinate research with policy demands. Correspondence between scientists and those translating MEA goals into local programmes is, therefore, often lacking. For example, in South Africa, the Durban local government has contracts with private research firms because local university research institutions do not work on topics relevant to local planners.

Recommendation 6:
Increased investment in developing country scientific research and increased engagement of southern scientists in international politics is needed. To this end, national governments should compile publicly available, issue-specific databases of local expert consultants. These can improve communication among research scientists and between scientists and government policy makers.

About the authors
This article was written by the 2004 Watson International Scholars of the Environment: Ramon Abaya, Philippines; Leilani Duffy, Samoa; Fassil Kebebew, Ethiopia; Prosper B. Matondi, Zimbabwe; Wanjiru Mwatha, Kenya; Debra Roberts, South Africa; Aissetou Dramé Yayé, Niger; Syamak Moattori, Iran; Pablo Filippo, Argentina; Pablo Torres-Lima, Mexico; and Simone Pulver, United States. The group has decades of experience in national ministries, local government, environmental advocacy organizations, research institutes and universities working on MEAs on desertification, biodiversity, climate change, wetlands, waste and fisheries.

Further information
Simone Pulver, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, 111 Thayer Street, Box 1970, Providence, RI 02906, United States. Fax: +1-401-8639733. Email: simone_pulver@brown.edu. Web: www.watsoninstitute.org/project_detail.cfm?id=2.

On the Web
A database of international environmental agreements is available. The Tiempo Climate Cyberlibrary maintains a listing of websites related to Multilateral Environment Agreements.

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