Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of the European Union and the European Centres in Australia, it gives me great pleasure to welcome all of you to the Open Forum on Strengthening International Environmental Governance.

The purpose of this conference is to foster discussion on international environmental governance and on the development and strengthening of international institutions to address global environmental challenges. This debate cannot be restricted to intergovernmental conferences and meetings between government officials. It also needs to embrace the academic world, the private sector, the civil society and independent think tanks.

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Today's forum focuses on the development and strengthening of international institutions to address global environmental challenges. My task is a fairly simple one - to set the scene by outlining key principles of international environmental governance. Regardless of the form that any institutional strengthening might take, these principles are central to the way we meet the challenges of global environmental change. They fall broadly into two categories: those that are central to environmental policy (substantive principles) and those that shape institutional practice (procedural principles). These principles may appear as codified statements of formal treaty law or as broader normative statements to guide practice.

The substantive principles that govern the management of the global commons and environmental challenges of common concern are generally well known even if they are at times politically contentious and sometimes poorly implemented in practice. Strengthening international environmental governance involves strengthening commitment to these principles. One of the best known statements on managing environmental harm is found in principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration and principle 2 of the Rio Declaration. It requires that in pursing their sovereign rights over resources, and environment and development policy, states have a responsibility not to cause harm to the environment of other states or of areas beyond national jurisdiction. Other principles provide further guidance for states, and indeed for other actors, on how this 'environmental harm' principle should be implemented. They also serve to widen the scope of those to whom obligations are owed in international environmental law beyond states and even beyond present generations.

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The achievements of the key UN environmental institutions and programs in opening up the system to civil society, private sector and a diversity of actors and interests should not be understated.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has had a key role in initiating, facilitating negotiations and hosting some multilateral environmental agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, Basel Convention and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. UNEP has also played an important role in the Millennium Development Goals and Reports and in the training of judges around the world to develop capacity and leadership in environmental law enforcement and compliance.

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full paper

Current Challenges for International Environmental Governance

Conclusions

• Governance is challenged at all levels by
• Self interest
• A spectrum of uncertainty
• Confused use of knowledge
• The emergence of a non-realty view of the world
• The is no guarantee that we can/will respond in time to avoid serious repercussions
• This is not doom-saying but a message from mainstream climate science
  

full pdf version 700kbs

The world is profoundly changed since UNEP came into being in 1972. Of the 114 Nations, which attended the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm only one was represented by an Environment Minister. Global environmental problems have expanded and accelerated prodigiously. I don't have time to document the litany of negative environment indicators now regularly reported on by increasing numbers of scientific bodies. We are now all aware of rapidly increasing Global Warming, biodiversity loss, collapse of fisheries, deforestation, desertification and cross boundary pollution, to identify just a few of the challenges facing the international community. Most experts agree that these are likely to become worse with rapid population increase, and massive consumption increases being experienced with the economic growth of China, India to name just the two biggest 'new kids on the economic block', joining the already profligate levels in the Developed economies.

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Dear colleagues,

I am very honoured to participate in this event. I would like to thank all the participants, the EU partners and especially the Finnish presidency for its support and leadership in organizing the Open Forum on International Environmental Governance (IEG).

The strengthening of IEG is a shared priority for the 25 EU members, as stated in june 2005 at the level of heads of states, in the common position on UNEO. The EU therefore advocates for a UN environmental organization in all the relevant international fora, although each and every EU member has its own national views and input.

France attaches great importance to the strengthening of IEG and will play a leading role in this area during its EU Presidency in 2008, taking up from the German, Portuguese and Slovenian presidencies.

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There is widespread concern that today's international institutions are inadequate to deal with the serious environmental dangers faced by the world. The foremost worry is the apparent inability of the world to tackle the problem of climate change with the urgency and seriousness it demands.

Undoubtedly, much of the anxiety has arisen because of the unilateralist approach adopted by the United States over the last several years. Conservative supporters of the Bush Administration have expressed a particular contempt for the United Nations and its various institutions, reflecting both a frustration at the unwillingness of the UN to be stampeded into decisions and a shift away from traditional diplomacy to the wilful assertion of power, perhaps best illustrated by the appointment of America's most hostile critic of the UN, John Bolton, as US Ambassador to the world body.

Australia has served as the United States' most loyal ally in this new assertion of US hegemony. But it should be kept in mind that among our own conservatives, there is a home-grown hostility towards the UN which emerged in the late 1990s in the Australian campaign against the UN's human rights system. The criticisms by the Howard Government of the UN human rights system and the calls for it to be reformed were driven by anger and embarrassment at international condemnation of Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and inability to solve the problems of Indigenous disadvantage. In the vernacular, it was a 'dummy spit'.

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Ladies and gentlemen, it falls to me to conclude this Forum and first of all I would like to thank you for your time and your interventions and also all our speakers and our moderator for their thoughtful and stimulating papers. I would also like to acknowledge the presence of many Member State ambassadors.

Now I would like to spend the last moments of this meeting to set out the EU's involvement in this issue; and the bridges we would like to establish with other nations to improve our global environment.

The reform of international governance is, for the EU, a priority, clearly linked to the UN reform agenda. A modern and well functioning UN should be able to respond efficiently to the environmental challenges of today.

The EU has actively engaged in the international environment governance discussions which took place in New York last year and we will continue those talks this year. This is the way the EU works, we encourage debate to reach mutually agreed conclusions. At the World Summit in 2005 UN members reached common conclusions that improvements are necessary in the way the UN deals with environment.

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