A conference in Paris took steps towards creating a UN body with powers for policing nations on environmental issues.
At the instigation of French President Jacques Chirac, a conference on global ecological governance was held in Paris, February 2 and 3. At “Citizens of the Earth,” sixty countries were represented by leaders from government, science, business, and non-governmental organizations, among which were Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maatai, climatologist Jean Jouzel, Apple chairman Steve Jobs, and primatologist Jane Goodall.
Chirac pushed for a new UN environmental body to replace the existing UNEP, and which could evaluate ecological damage, point to countries guilty of it and police them. The proposal included making a safe and protected environment a fundamental human right. The Paris conference ended Saturday with 46 countries backing Chirac, including most of Europe and North Africa , Chile and Ecuador , Burkina Faso and Cambodia. Notably missing from the supporters were the United States, China, India, Russia and Brazil, some of the world’s largest polluters and emerging economies.
The conference took place at the same time as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which delivered a bleak report blaming humans and their carbon pollution for severe global warming and issuing a warning that this phenomenon will likely continue for a thousand years.
Exactly how this new proposed body would go about enforcing environmental agreements is unclear. Several of the leaders present pointed to the failure of environmental agreements and institutions to create real change. The guidelines put forward by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol have failed to be met by several of the countries who ratified it. One of the world’s largest polluters, the United States, never even endorsed this pact. Alternative proposals suggested at the conference included expanding the powers of the existing U.N. Environment Program, taxing governments and businesses for actions that hurt the environment and labelling products according to how ecological they are. Chirac himself has suggested that American exports could be taxed for carbon, if the U.S. does not sign global climate accords. Typically, Washington has made the argument that any measures proposed to reduce global warming should not come at the expense of economic growth.
The first meeting of those countries backing the Chirac´s proposal will take place in Morocco.
This article was published Tuesday, February 6, 2007.
