Earth Summits and Multilateral Environmental Agreements

The international conferences on the environment began in 1972 with the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. This is what brought UNEP into being, and plenty of international agreements rapidly followed. But it wasn’t until 1992, when 172 nations gathered in Rio de Janeiro for the first Earth Summit – the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development – that ‘green’ became a household word and the environment entered mainstream politics. The result was a host of conventions, conferences and activities. Countries all over the world created environment ministries where there had been none, and the number of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) blossomed.

Some of the MEAs are truly international, dealing with global ecological threats like climate change or transboundary air pollution and involving a majority of the world’s nations; others, such as UNEP’s regional seas agreements, reflect the more limited geographical range of a problem and the local nature of potential solutions.

The issues that brought about this plethora of treaties have made it abundantly clear that we are all interrelated. No one country can – or should – ignore environmental issues. We owe it to ourselves, our neighbours, and now to those on the other side of the world, to enter into a spirit of cooperation in the search for an effective form of global environmental governance – one that considers the concerns of the better-off as well as of the poor, the small nations as well as the populous ones, all in balance with the long-term health of the biosphere. This is no small task, so it’s not surprising that people have trouble agreeing on and signing up to the MEAs.

And reaching agreement is really just the end of the beginning. Each of the MEAs asks its participating countries to develop specific implementation mechanisms and fulfill obligations involving reporting, training and public education, amongst other activities. So a very long list of requirements from any number of accords falls at the feet of each country’s environment minister. This is hard enough for a big country with plenty of funds and large teams of people available to do the work, but extremely difficult for a small country with a population of just a few million people and scant resources. It takes time to develop efficient ways of recording environmental trends, and even longer to turn those trends around.

A number of the MEAs have been in existence for a long time, so it’s inevitable that certain incompatibilities have arisen between them. In addition, there can be some conflict of interest or duplication of effort between one implementing body and another. So it’s time for a more holistic approach.This is why international environmental governance is one of the key themes of Rio+20, the others being sustainable development and the green economy. The environment must be recognized as central to any other issue, be it trade, politics or human rights.

It’s sometimes easy to feel that the cogs of international bureaucracy grind too slowly to get anything done, easy to become pessimistic and critical of what has or can be achieved. But we have to remember that a great deal already has been and is being done, and we have the international agreements and the people who put them together to thank for it. Find out more and join in!

TUNZA looked into it and found that there are more than 200 MEAs. Here’s a selection:

GLOBAL

Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) (1979)

Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985) and its Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1989)

Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (1989)

Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (1998)

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (1992)

Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (2001)

UNESCO Convention Concerning

the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972)

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) (1973)

Bonn Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) (1979)

Ramsar Convention on Wetlands

of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat (1971)

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) (1992) and its Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (2003)

IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) (1948)

FAO International Code of Conduct for the Distribution and Use of Pesticides (1985)

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) (1994)

International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA) (1994)

United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) (2000)

International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) (1946)

Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (GPA) (1995)

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (1982)

Marine Mammal Action Plan (MMAP) (1984)

REGIONAL

International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) (1966)

Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean (1976)

Abidjan Convention for Cooperation in the Protection and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment of the West and Central African Region (1981)

East Asian Seas Action Plan (1981)

Cartagena Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the Wider Caribbean Region (1983)

Nairobi Convention for the Protection, Management and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment of the Eastern Africa Region (1985)

North-West Pacific Action Plan (1984)

Guatemala Convention for the North-East Pacific (2002)

Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (1992)

OSPAR Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (1992)

Arctic Council (1996)

Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (1980) and Madrid Protocol on the Protection of the Antarctic Environment (1991)

Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (1979)