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17 - Justice in global environmental negotiations: the case of desertification
- from Part IV - North–South concerns in global contexts
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- By Bo Kjellén
- Edited by Jonas Ebbesson, Stockholms Universitet, Phoebe Okowa, Queen Mary University of London
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- Book:
- Environmental Law and Justice in Context
- Published online:
- 28 June 2009
- Print publication:
- 19 February 2009, pp 333-348
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Summary
Experiences from Chairing the Negotiations of the Desertification Convention
This chapter is based on the practice of diplomacy, rather than academia, and it is not intended to break new theoretical ground. It is an effort to draw some conclusions from practical experience as an active participant in negotiations on sustainable development over the last fifteen years. More particularly, it deals with the 1994 UN Convention to Combat Desertification in those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa (Desertification Convention), where I served as chairperson of the UN committee that negotiated the Convention.
Some people might say that the Desertification Convention is not really an environmental instrument, but rather a multilateral treaty on development cooperation. However, the borderlines are not very clear, since the Desertification Convention is one of the three conventions established in connection with the Rio Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. Together with its sister conventions on, respectively, climate change and biodiversity, it is part of a major effort to tackle global environmental problems in such a way that the effort of reducing poverty in developing countries and secure equitable growth is not hampered. In fact, the UN World Commission on Environment and Development, known as the Brundtland Commission, in its 1987 report, Our Common Future, not only launched the concept of ‘sustainable development’, but also brought environment and development closely together through its insistence not only on inter-generational equity but also on intra-generational equity.
Foreword by Bo Kjellén
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- By Bo Kjellén
- Bert Bolin, Stockholms Universitet
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- Book:
- A History of the Science and Politics of Climate Change
- Published online:
- 03 May 2010
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2007, pp ix-x
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Summary
As a climate negotiator in the early 1990s I have a strong recollection of the impact of Professor Bolin's statements to the International Negotiating Committee for the Framework Convention on Climate Change. When the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented its findings there was silence in the room: here were the facts, the certainties and the uncertainties.
We were all part of a process in which national interests and national instructions governed our actions and limited the rate of progress. We were all painfully aware of this, and we were also on a learning curve. As diplomats and generalists, most of us had limited knowledge of the substantial issues of climate change, but here we had the opportunity to listen to one of the most prestigious experts, speaking in clear language, devoid of academic jargon. Furthermore, we realised that Bert Bolin, as a former scientific adviser in the Swedish Prime Minister's office, had a thorough knowledge of the political process, its possibilities and limitations.
All this enabled him to set high standards for the work of the IPCC from the beginning, creating a scientific backstop to the negotiations which in my view has had a decisive impact on the relative success of the process. The IPCC is not only a venue for interdisciplinary science, it is also a meeting-place for researchers and Government officials, thereby facilitating the inevitable process of multilateral bargaining on the terms of legally binding international instruments.
7 - A Personal Assessment
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- By Bo Kjellen, Ministry of Environment Stockholm, Sweden
- Edited by Irving M. Mintzer, Stockholm Environment Institute, J. Amber Leonard, Stockholm Environment Institute
- Foreword by Michael J. Chadwick, Stockholm Environment Institute
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- Book:
- Negotiating Climate Change
- Published online:
- 01 June 2011
- Print publication:
- 29 September 1994, pp 149-174
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Summary
Prologue
An unusually heterogenous group met in the new Westfields Conference Center at Chantilly, VA, outside Washington, DC, in February 1991. There were diplomats and climate experts, people from capitals and permanent UN delegations, old hands at multilateral negotiation as well as newcomers. They came from almost a hundred different countries, with divergent objectives and negotiating goals. And there was considerable uncertainty in the air.
Nonetheless, in the late afternoon of May 9, 1992, just fifteen months Later—as Chairman Jean Ripert of France concluded the negotiation and received well-deserved applause—many of the negotiators had become friends and would regret the unavoidable separation. Group dynamics had worked wonders throughout the many negotiating sessions and late-night drafting meetings. It was a special human experience and an example of what multilateral negotiation can achieve, if the conditions are right.
One reason for our success was the structure of the negotiations: they took place within the general framework of preparations for the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), sometimes called the Earth Summit, working under an implied pressure to produce a Convention before the Rio Conference in June 1992. With that sense of urgency came an overriding concern for the global environment and the conviction that important issues, critical to the future of mankind, were at stake. Without pressing the argument too far, even the most experienced or cynical negotiators had to be sensitive to this kind of reasoning.