Kenya: Calls to Upgrade UNEP Intensify

By Henry Neondo

NAIROBI---The Coordinator of the Nairobi-based Pan African Climate Justice Alliance Mr Mithika Mwenda Wedneday joined voices that call for the upgrading of the UNEP into a fully fledged UN agency. 

According to Mithika, the environment pillar is the weakest among the three pillars that form sustainable development. Other pillars include social and economic pillars. 

According to Izabella Teixeira, Brazilian Minister of Environment, sustainable development is not achievable without a strengthened global environmental agency.

Speaking on Wednesday at the 12th Session of the Governing Council of the UNEP, Teixeira said among the many issues to be tackled in Brazil in June during the Rio+20 Conference will include discussions that could reach a deal  to either strengthen or upgrade UNEP.

In Nairobi Tuesday, the EU head of delegation to the Governing Council urged for the upgrading the Environment Programme of the UN into a full-fledged agency. 

Currently, decisions by the ministers of environment are not binding to the international communities and are subjected to a small secretariat at the UN headquarters in New York. The final shapes of their discussions have to be verified by the UN General Assembly which holds later part of the year. 

According to Mithika such an arrangement has left the environmental pillar to be the weakest pillar of the three pillars of sustainable development agreed upon in Rio de Janeiro 20 years ago. 

He said UNEP need to be given clout like the WHO to have the final word on matters touching on the environment. 

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said currently, discussions are ongoing to weigh options. “The question is which legal framework will be the best way forward.

He however said discussions will be concluded in Rio. In Nairobi, an overwhelming number of delegates have expressed views that the environmental pillar needs to be strengthened.

 Meanwhile, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Wednesday announced that Brazil, with one of the fastest growing economies in the world, will host World Environment Day 2012 (WED) on 5 June.

This year's theme ‘Green Economy: Does it include you? invites everyone to both assess where the Green Economy fits in their daily lives and evaluate whether development through these pathways towards a Green Economy can deliver the kinds of social, economic and environmental outcomes needed in a world of seven billion people, climbing to over nine billion in 2050.

Brazil had previously hosted WED in 1992, on the eve of the first Earth Summit, when world leaders, government officials and international organizations met to refocus, recalibrate and deliver a route map towards sustainable development.

“In celebrating WED in Brazil in 2012, we are returning to the roots of contemporary sustainable development in order to forge a new path that reflects the realities but also the opportunities of a new century,” said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director.

“Three weeks after WED, Brazil will host Rio+20 where world leaders and nations will gather in order to design a future that takes sustainable development from theory and patchy success to the locomotive of transformational change—a pathway that can grow economies and generate decent jobs without pushing the globe past planetary boundaries,” he added.

With a country of 200 million people, Brazil is the fifth most populous nation in the world and has the fifth largest land mass on the planet with 8.5 million square kilometers

In recent years Brazil has taken enormous steps to tackle issues such as deforestation in the Amazon through enforcement efforts and monitoring initiatives by the Brazilian government.  

Indeed by some estimates, Brazil recently realized one of the biggest greenhouse gas emission reductions in the world as a result of its achievements in reducing deforestation rates.

According to UNEP’s Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication, the country is also at the forefront of building an economy that includes recycling and renewable energy and the generation of green jobs.