Transforming governance

and institutions for a planet

under pressure

The 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development must become a major stepping stone towards introducing a stronger institutional framework for sustainable development. We urge decision makers to seize this opportunity to develop a clear and ambitious roadmap for institutional change and bring about fundamental reform of current sustainability

Summary of key points and policy recommendations

• Strengthen international environmental treaties:Governments must engage in structural reforms in how international environmental negotiations are conducted and treaties designed. Present and future treaties must rely more on systems of qualified majority voting in specified areas.
• Manage conflicts among multilateral agreements: International economic institutions must advance transitions to a sustainable economy, including by multilaterally harmonized systems that allow for discriminating between products on the basis of production processes, based on multilateral agreement. Global trade and investment regimes must be embedded in a normative context of social, developmental, and environmental values.
• Fill regulatory gaps in international sustainability governance: New or strengthened international regulatory frameworks are needed in several areas, including on emerging technologies, water, food, and energy.
• Upgrade UNEP: Governments need to engage in negotiations for the up-grading of UNEP to a specialized UN agency, along the lines of the World Health Organization or the International Labour Organization.
• Better integrate sustainable development policies within the UN system: Governments need to support overall integrative mechanisms within the UN system that better align the social, economic and  environmental pillars of sustainable development.
• Strengthen national governance: New policy instruments are a promising complement to regulation if carefully designed. But they are not panaceas.
• Streamline and strengthen public–private governance networks and partnerships: The CSD and other bodies need a stronger mandate and better methodologies for the verification and monitoring of partnerships. Despite the growing role of non-state actors, there is still a strong need for effective and decisive governmental action.
• Strengthen accountability and legitimacy: Novel accountability mechanisms are needed, including mandatory disclosure of accessible, comprehensible and comparable data about government and corporate sustainability performance. Stronger consultative rights for civil society representatives in intergovernmental institutions should be introduced.
• Address equity concerns within and among countries: Equity concerns must be at the heart of the institutional framework for sustainable development. High consumption levels in industrialized countries and in some parts of the emerging economies require special and urgent action. Financial transfers from richer to poorer countries are inevitable, either through direct support payments for mitigation and adaptation programmes or through international market mechanisms, for example global emissions markets.
• Prepare global governance for a warmer world: Global adaptation programmes need to become a core concern of the UN system and governments

Strengthen international environmental treaties

• state precise goals, criteria and benchmarks for assessing progress;
• are designed to be flexible and adaptable to changes in the problem and context;
• have formal procedures to ensure new scientific information is taken up quickly; and
• systematically collect information about the effectiveness of the treaty and review this information regularly.

Governments can also speed up treaty negotiations by conducting them within existing institutions and by breaking down problems into smaller negotiation packages. Negotiators can sometimes sacrifice substance and stringency to reach ‘shallow’ but inclusive agreements that can be built on later; e.g., through  framework-plus-protocol approaches, tacit-acceptance procedures for amendments, and formalized mechanisms that help develop soft law agreements into hard law. Such measures will lead to an incremental improvement of the system of international environmental agreements. We urge governments to draw on the lessons of  past treatymaking exercises to improve their functioning.

While incremental change is important, it is not sufficient. More transformative reform is needed urgently. Introducing a stronger reliance on qualified majority voting would be a positive step, since political systems that rely on majority-based rule are quicker to arrive at far-reaching decisions. At the international level, experiences with qualified majority voting are rare and will need to be restricted to clearly specified areas to ensure the support of all countries. One route is the double-weighted majority voting developed in the treaties on stratospheric ozone depletion, which accept majority decisions yet also grant veto power to North and  South as groups of countries.

Manage conflicts among multilateral agreements

It is particularly important to manage conflicts between economic and environmental treaties, with reforms of the institutional framework for sustainable development brought in line with the ideal of the ‘green economy’.  Environmental goals must be mainstreamed into the activities of global economic institutions, while global trade and investment regimes need to be embedded in a normative context of social, developmental and environmental values. Discriminating in world trade law between products on the basis of production processes is critical, if investments in cleaner products and services are to be encouraged. Such discrimination should be based on multilateral agreement to prevent protectionist impacts.

Fill regulatory gaps in international sustainability governance

Global water governance also needs a stronger and more coherent multilateral framework, since it remains the remit of several UN agencies and civil society organizations. Global food governance must be strengthend as well. Regulatory challenges here include international management of food safety and nutrition, the coordination of climate change adaptation in food systems, limits on commodity speculation, and standards to guide private regulation such as certification and labeling schemes. Furthermore, energy governance requires strong oversight by global bodies whose activities are currently dispersed and poorly coordinated.

Upgrade UNEP and UNCSD

At the same time, it is important to increase the integration of sustainable development policy within the UN system and beyond. The UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) was created to fulfil this role, but its political relevance has remained limited. Governments must take action to support mechanisms within the UN system that will improve integration of the social, economic and environmental pillars of sustainable development. An upgraded, strengthened CSD that includes meaningful participation from all branches of government, is one route to consider.

Strengthen national governance

Streamline and strengthen public–private governance networks and partnerships

Labelling and certification schemes can advance sustainable development by enabling markets to support environmentally sound business practices. To be effective, these need multiple stakeholders, appropriate national regulatory frameworks, built-in accountability mechanisms and consumer demand. Governments play a crucial role through regulations that create incentives for certification, focused procurement policies, legitimization of measures and involvement in monitoring sustainability effects. International organizations can also play a powerful role in catalyzing novel forms of private and public–private governance.

Novel mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) can contribute to sustainable development when they are seen as supplementary to, rather than a replacement for, governmental action. To ensure equitable distribution of benefits and to minimize the risks associated with them (e.g. to indigenous people or biodiversity), international, national and local bodies must have strong institutional oversight. Governments must work towards improving institutional capacity, increasing representation of local stakeholders, changing the uneven monitoring of claimed benefits, and rebalancing global and local benefits.

New types of transnational cooperation among local public authorities (e.g. cities) are becoming important and many such authorities have taken significant action towards addressing the causes and consequences of global environmental risks. Governments must provide a political mandate that recognizes their diverse contexts and guides practical action on the ground as well as supporting collaboration and developing local capacity and financial resources.

Despite the growing role of nonstate actors, there is still a need for effective and decisive governmental action, both at the national and intergovernmental level. Governance beyond the state can be a useful supplement but still requires governmental support.

Strengthen accountability and legitimacy

While greater transparency and information disclosure can empower citizens and consumers to hold governments and private actors accountable as well as providing incentives for better sustainability performance, transparency does not always deliver on its promises. Disclosed information is often inaccessible, inconsistent or incomprehensible. Governments and private actors  must ensure that disclosure obligations go beyond ‘business as usual’ to stimulate a change in existing unsustainable practices.

Address equity concerns within and among countries

Poor and marginalized communities are most vulnerable to global environmental change but seldom have a voice in policymaking. Relevant processes should therefore promote participation of the poor in policy preparation, implementation, monitoring and adaptation.

At the  international level, equity and fairness need to be at the heart of strong and durable international regimes. Equitable progress towards globally sustainable development requires greater action by the richer nations. In particular, governments and societies in industrialized countries need to accept that global environmental change has fundamentally increased global interdependence and (further) transformed the international system. Also the rapidly industrializing countries in the South need to actively determine their role and position on sustainable  development governance and to direct their development pathways towards a green economy.

Overall, financial transfers from richer to poorer countries at unprecedented levels are inevitable, either through direct support payments for mitigation and adaptation programmes based on international agreement or through such mechanisms as global emissions markets. Novel financial mechanisms like transnational air transportation levies for sustainability purposes could also contribute.

The organization of global funding for sustainable development lacks consistency and inclusiveness, with most funding agencies having different interests, rules and general policies. Policy coherence is often weak. Governments and funding agencies need to revisit existing funding mechanisms to increase policy coherence and strengthen the voice of the recipient countries.

Prepare global governance for a warmer world

At the global level, the institutional framework seems ill prepared to cope with the consequences of massive global change that will affect such major systems as food, water, energy, health and migration, and their interactions. While massive changes, for example in sea level, may not be imminent, future dangers can be minimized if institutional reform is planned and negotiated today. Global adaptation programmes thus need to become a core concern of the UN system and governments.

Conclusions