A service of the International Council of Environmental Law -toward sustainable development - (ICEL)

A service of the International Council of Environmental Law - toward sustainable development - (ICEL)



Saturday, July 2, 2011

EU: Preparations for Rio+20

The European Commission released a Communication on 20 June titled: "Rio+20: towards the green economy and better governance." In relation to improving governance, the Commission states that:

There are several options to strengthen sustainable development governance within the UN. One is to reinforce the role of [UN/ECOSOC] on sustainable development, with equal weight given to the economic, social and environment pillars. An alternative approach would be to upgrade the [UN/CSD] to a more permanent body with extended functions...
...
Building on the recommendations of the UNEP Nairobi-Helsinki process aimed at strengthening international environmental governance, UNEP needs to be reinforced. This could be achieved in several ways: i) enhancing UNEP within its current mandate; ii) strengthening UNEP with new tasks and responsibilities; iii) creation of a global multilateral environmental organisation, for example transforming UNEP into a UN Specialized Agency (such as the ILO). The latter option, which would entail the adoption of a legally binding treaty, would be the most promising way forward to improve international environmental governance and make progress towards global sustainable development...
...
As part of the strengthening of international environmental governance, the work on streamlining and reinforcing the MEA system needs to be accelerated. While respecting the autonomy of different MEAS, their administratio ncan be substantially streamlined, and overlaps reduced...
...
Reinforced capacity building for the environment is neeeded with the UN. this should include strengthening environmental expertise and green economy awareness with the UN country teams to promote mainstreaming in country programmes, increasing the range of expertise in UN/UNEP regional offices, and developing a system-wide framework for capaicity building for MEA implementation. The capacity to monitor the global environment should also be strengthened...

No comments:

Post a Comment