Amid growing concerns about the inadequacy of today's inter-governmental structures for effective global environmental co-operation, member states of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will convene in Kuala Lumpur July 14-15 to recommend needed reforms.
Convened by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the ASEAN Secretariat, Office of the Science Adviser to the Prime Minister of Malaysia and the Centre for Global Sustainability Studies at Universiti Sains Malaysia (CGSS@USM), the deliberations form part of preparations for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development ("Rio+20," 4-6 June 2012, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).
Says Zakri Abdul Hamid, Science Adviser to the Prime Minister of Malaysia: "ASEAN countries increasingly recognize that their medium to long-term economic interests will be jeopardized unless environmental protection is linked with economic development. A green economy, however, relies on a functioning governance framework.
"The international environmental governance framework currently in place no longer serves the interests of governments."
Developed over the course of 40 years, since the establishment of UNEP in 1972, "the challenges have outgrown the system," says Dr. Zakri.
"The system in place has evolved piecemeal, with governments responding to individual environmental challenges with a plethora of multilateral environmental agreements, including the Convention on Biodiversity, the Climate Change Convention, conventions dealing with hazardous waste and chemicals, and others."
"The result is unnecessarily high overhead cost, as each convention maintains its own administrative system, scientific committees and holds meetings separately."
Adds Dr. Zakri: "Countries mostly affected by environmental change, such as developing countries in Africa and Asia and other small countries with constrained resources, suffer most and become disenfranchised within the system."
Inefficiencies also arise through the non-alignment of global environmental policy and finance. This asymmetry has led to the creation of multiple funding mechanisms, the largest being the Global Environment Facility, which sets its policy independently from UNEP, the global voice for the environment.
Focus on negotiations of multilateral environmental agreements, often watering them down to the lowest denominator, has also resulted in an implementation gap at the national level.
Says Raman Letchumanan, Head of Environment Division at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta: "The absence of strict enforcement mechanisms, as exist in other international regimes, such as the international trade regime, often left countries with few incentives to comply with their obligations."
Dr. Raman stresses that "developing countries are also hampered in fulfilling their obligations due to their lack of capacity and the lack of political will. The system is simply too fragmented for under-resourced countries to be able to follow up decisions taken at Conferences of Parties of multilateral environmental agreements and to be able to identify all the differing access criteria for environmental funding."
In light of the scale of environmental change and in the absence of strict compliance and enforcement mechanisms within the environmental field, the participation of civil society in decision-making would help close the accountability and implementation gap.
However, civil society has mere observer status at the international level without being able to make its voice count in policy-making processes under UNEP and multilateral environmental agreements.
Thus, the current international environmental governance system no longer caters to the needs of countries, prompting governments and the international community to use the momentum of the Rio+20 Conference to reflect on their achievements and to initiate needed transformative reforms.
At their meeting, ASEAN countries will map out the links between a green economy and environmental governance and to suggest reforms that would better meet their needs.
One such reform under consideration is a proposed World Environment Organisation, equipped with the combination of international incentives and penalties as necessary to create an effectively functioning system. Such an organisation would complement structures in place to govern economic activities.
Says Bradnee Chambers, UNEP's Head of Environmental Law and Governance: "A World Environment Organisation would set the global environmental agenda based on the decisions of a governing body with universal membership, on a democratic basis."
This Organisation would enhance the system-wide coherence of environmental polices by supporting Conferences of Parties, clustering the administration and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements thereby freeing funds from administration to policy implementation.
It would be closely aligned with the Global Environment Facility to ensure funds are channelled towards the policy goals, supported by a strong mechanism for civil society participation and multi-stakeholder consultation.
And it would help ensure increased country-level support for the implementation of agreed commitments through capacity building of the institutions, laws and stakeholders in developing nations.
"It is only through a clear break with the past that environmental degradation can be decoupled from economic development and the shift towards a green economy be achieved," says Dr. Zakri. "Success would be reflected in developing countries leapfrogging into a green economy rather than proceeding on the unsustainable brown economy path developed countries followed."