The Roads from Rio

Lessons Learned from Twenty Years of Multilateral Environmental Negotiations

Pamela Chasek, Lynn M. Wagner, Pamela Chasek, Lynn M. Wagner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136450884
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Environmental Law
• Index: Law

At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, popularly known as the Rio Earth Summit, the world's leaders constructed a new "sustainable development" paradigm that promised to enhance environmentally sound economic and social development. Twenty years later, the proliferation of multilateral environmental agreements points to an unprecedented achievement, but is worth examining for its accomplishments and shortcomings.

This book provides a review of twenty years of multilateral environmental negotiations (1992-2012). The authors have participated in most of these negotiating processes and use their first-hand knowledge as writers for the International Institute for Sustainable Development's Earth Negotiations Bulletin as they illustrate the changes that have taken place over the past twenty years. The chapters examine the proliferation of meetings, the changes in the actors and their roles (governments, nongovernmental organizations, secretariats), the interlinkages of issues, the impact of scientific advice, and the challenges of implementation across negotiating processes, including the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention to Combat Desertification, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Commission on Sustainable Development, the UN Forum on Forests, the chemicals conventions (Stockholm, Basel and Rotterdam), the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the Convention on Migratory Species and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

1

An Insider’s Guide to Multilateral Environmental Negotiations Since the Earth Summit

Pamela S. Chasek and Lynn M. Wagner

The year 1992 was a time of phenomenal flux and fluidity in the international community. The Soviet Union disintegrated, taking with it the Communist alternative to the market economy and ending the Cold War, which had dominated international politics for four decades. Yugoslavia fragmented into five new states and war erupted. Twelve European countries signed the Maastricht Treaty creating the European Union, a milestone in political and economic integration. China signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. There were earthquakes in Turkey, Nicaragua, and Indonesia, and devastating hurricanes in Florida and Hawaii. An oil tanker, the Aegean Sea, went aground near Spain, spilling 80,000 tonnes of crude oil. Rigoberta Menchú, an indigenous Guatemalan woman, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Egypt’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali was elected as the first UN Secretary-General from Africa. As the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia collapsed, their territories splintered into new states and between 1990 and 1992 UN membership had grown by twenty to reach 179. Amidst all of this turmoil and change, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) convened in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, marking the largest ever gathering of heads of state and government to promote economic development, reduce poverty, and preserve and protect the earth’s ecological systems.

The Earth Summit, as the conference became known, presented the first post-Cold War test of whether the international community possessed the will and the wisdom to create a new system based on cooperation to develop sustainably and improve the human condition. As UNCED Secretary-General Maurice Strong pointed out in 1992, “This is the first time in history that the leaders of all countries of the earth will assemble to make decisions that will literally shape the future of the world” (Shabecoff 1996, 129). It was a chance for the United Nations to prove that it could be an effective force in defining a new form of global peace. And it was the first significant opportunity for the North (industrialized countries) and the South (developing countries) to elaborate on how they might combine economic and social development concerns with those of environmental protection as governments struggled to operationalize the concept of sustainable development. Despite the euphoria immediately following the Earth Summit that a new “partnership” had been struck between North and South, Maurice Strong acknowledged that only time would tell whether it would produce historic changes in the way the human community ordered its affairs; the conference itself, he said, was only a beginning (Strong 1992).

Indeed, the Earth Summit marked a number of beginnings: the creation of new institutions for sustainable development, including the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development; the signing of two new environmental treaties—the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity; and the adoption of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Agenda 21, and the Forest Principles.¹ The Earth Summit was also the first UN conference to firmly embrace the participation of representatives from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), business, and industry. Agenda 21 created the concept of “Major Groups”—Business and Industry, Children and Youth, Farmers, Indigenous Peoples, Local Authorities, NGOs, the Scientific and Technological Community, Women, and Workers and Trade Unions—whose participation was recognized as necessary to achieve sustainable development.

The Earth Summit also launched a new era in the creation of international environmental treaty regimes, which redefined the nature of global environmental governance and multilateral environmental negotiations. Leading into the June 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE), also known as the Stockholm Conference, many of the approximately 200 global or regional environmental treaties that had been registered with the United Nations and other international organizations at that point were bilateral or did not establish governing bodies or requirements for regular meetings. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was created as a result of the decisions taken at the Stockholm Conference and stimulated new activities in the international environmental arena, but twenty years later, leading into the June 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, multilateral environmental accords remained focused on preservation or conservation, usually of a specific media, such as oceans, or specific fauna (UNEP 2007).

The organization of UNCED stemmed from two United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions. In 1983, UNGA passed a resolution (38/161) on the “Process of Preparation of the Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond.” This resolution established the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). Chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway, the WCED came to be known as the

“Brundtland Commission” and delivered in its 1987 report, Our Common Future, the most cited definition of sustainable development: development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (WCED 1987). Subsequently, UN member states adopted UNGA resolution 44/228 in December 1989, calling for a global meeting to devise integrated strategies that would halt and reverse the negative impact of human activities on the physical environment and promote environmentally long-term sustainable economic development in all countries. Under the masterful leadership of its chair, Singapore Ambassador Tommy Koh, the UNCED preparatory committee undertook two years of intensive preparations and negotiations, in which the international community acknowledged the interaction between society and bio-physical problems as well as the global nature of environmental problems and their solutions.

Together, the agreements launched at the Earth Summit constituted a blueprint of a global partnership for achieving sustainable development. Among its many recommendations for the promotion of a new global sustainable development paradigm was a call for the development of additional international environmental law through the process of multilateral negotiations. In Chapter 39 of Agenda 21 (International Legal Instruments and Mechanisms), the participating states agreed that there was a need for “further development of international law on sustainable development, giving special attention to the delicate balance between environmental and developmental concerns” (United Nations 1992, 281). With this in mind, Agenda 21 recommended the negotiation of a number of new international conventions and protocols that would further the integration of environment and development in the international system. This recommendation triggered what could be referred to as an explosion of interest in multilateral environmental negotiations. Following UNCED, the number of multilateral environmental agreements and organization of meetings to discuss global efforts to redress these problems has expanded, with the total number of environmental agreements now reaching over 1,000 (data from Mitchell 2002–2011).

The negotiation of multilateral environmental agreements, and follow-up negotiations to further their development and to assist in their implementation, has become a prominent characteristic of the twenty years since the Earth Summit. Since 1992, seventeen new global environmental agreements have been adopted (see Box 1.1), in addition to twenty-one new protocols or amendments to existing global treaties (see Box 1.2). Under the 1979 Bonn Convention on Migratory Species, fifteen new memoranda of understanding on the conservation of specific species have been concluded. In addition, nearly one hundred regional treaties, protocols, and amendments to existing regional treaties or protocols have been concluded in the twenty years since 1992. And these numbers do not even include agreements to establish regional environmental or conservation institutions or commissions, to manage shared watercourses, or to address nuclear waste, transport or safety issues. Furthermore, many of these and other conventions and protocols adopted before 1992 convene regularly scheduled meetings of their governing bodies, which negotiate resolutions and decisions related to the implementation of the agreements, creating an ever increasing number of days that are scheduled annually to negotiate sustainable development issues.²

Box 1.1 Multilateral Environmental Agreements Concluded: 1992–2012

1992	United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
1992	Convention on Biological Diversity
1994	International Tropical Timber Agreement
1994	United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, particularly in Africa
1995	Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of December, 10 1982 relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks
1996	International Convention on Liability and Compensation for Damage in Connection with the Carriage of Hazardous and Noxious Substances by Sea
1998	Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade 2001 International Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage
2001	Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants
2001	Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels
2001	International Convention on the Control of Harmful Anti-Fouling Systems on Ships
2001	International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
2004	International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments
2006	International Tropical Timber Agreement
2009	Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships
2009	Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing
2009	Statute of the International Renewable Energy Agency

BOX 1.2 PROTOCOLS AND AMENDMENTS TO EXISTING TREATIES: 1992–2012

1992	Copenhagen Amendments to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer
1992	Protocol to amend the 1969 International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage
1992	Protocol to amend the 1971 International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage
1993	Amendment to Annex I and II to the 1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter
1993	Agreement to Promote Compliance with International Conservation and Management Measures by Fishing Vessels on the High Seas
1994	Agreement relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982
1996	Protocol to the 1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter
1995	Amendment to the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal
1997	Montreal Amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer
1997	Kyoto Protocol to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
1999	Beijing Amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer
1999	Basel Protocol on Liability and Compensation for Damage Resulting from Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal
2000	Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity
2000	Protocol on Preparedness, Response and Cooperation to Pollution Incidents by Hazardous and Noxious Substances
2003	Protocol to the 1992 International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage
2003	Protocol on Civil Liability and Compensation for Damage Caused by the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents on Transboundary Waters to the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes and to the
1992	Convention on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents
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