04 Feb Chirac Calls for a New World Environmental Organization
President Chirac of France announced yesterday that France and 46 nations will begin deliberations to replace the United Nations Environmental Programme with a more powerful world environmental body. Coming on the heels of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent report on climate change, Chirac called for “the transformation of the UNEP into a genuine international organisation to which all countries belong, along the lines of the World Health Organisation.” Chirac also apparently is calling for environmental protection to be enshrined as a fundamental human right.
Ideas for creating a World Environmental Organization have been kicked around for many years. (See here for one of the better discussions of the pros and cons of such an organization.) I doubt the case has been made, yet. The problem of climate change is not the lack of a centralized international organization, but rather the lack of commitment among key states (read China, India, the U.S., and Russia) to the reduction of greenhouse. Unless someone can explain how the organization can foster such commitments, I doubt Chirac’s proposal will amount to anything.
Thanks for the link to the Charnovitz paper which, while it does indeed discuss the pros and cons of such an organization, concludes by ‘explain[ing] that while some of the arguments for a WEO are not convincing, compelling arguments do exist for a WEO.’ In an essay from the latest issue of Boston Review (Vol 32, No. 1; available online, this issue has a handful of articles about global warming) Nicholas Stern notes that ‘Climate change is a global problem, and solutions will require coordinated action by rich and poor countries, based on a shared vision of long-term goals and mutually reinforcing approaches at the national, regional, and international level. With a globally shared vision, policy can then reap the benefits of joint action and global markets for the lower carbon technologies that will be necessary. Action need not be anti-business or anti-growth—in fact, failing to act is anti-growth, since it risks the future of growth itself. A transformation of global infrastructure and an investment in energy, transport, buildings, and agriculture offers new opportunities and markets. But these markets can only be created at scale if an effective global response is realized. Climate change is the biggest market failure the… Read more »
I don’t see the existance of the required political will. More likely, Chirac just wants to show he’s “doing something” on the issue.