ELIZABETH DOWDESWELL
United Nations Under-Secretary General
and Executive Director, UNEP
With all the inevitability of a ticking clock reaching its
appointed hour, so the signal of climate change has sounded its arrival.
The hundreds of climate scientists involved in the preparation of the
science assessment part of the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) report agreed that 'The balance of evidence suggests a
discernible human influence on global climate'. This statement, contained
in the second IPCC Assessment and adopted in Rome in December 1995, is
perhaps the most dramatic and far reaching statement in the most
authoritative description of present and future climates, and the
consequences and costs of climate change ever made. Although widely
anticipated - after all, predictions of greenhouse gas induced climate
change have been around for 20 years - the brief unambiguous statement
induces shock. We are embarking upon uncharted waters where the balance of
uncertainty has switched from not whether climate change will occur, but
towards what may happen as the change progresses towards irreversibility.
There is no sense of satisfaction among climate scientists being proved
right after enduring years of vitriolic attack by the pro-carbon lobby.
There is a sadness in the realization that we have again demonstrated a
misuse of our environment beyond nature's capacity to absorb or repair. We
are nevertheless thankful that there is a mechanism capable of giving us
early warning of the consequence of our folly and a process established
with the potential to slow environmental change and confine it within the
boundaries beyond which catastrophic consequences result.
Reviewing achievements
The United Nations' 50th anniversary has presented an opportunity for
governments to review its achievements and to reflect on its future. There
are some that would charge that the United Nations is a dream unfulfilled,
and an expensive and inefficient anachronism. Wiser heads acknowledge
that, despite its faults, if the United Nations did not exist then it
would be necessary to invent it. Nowhere is the truth more apparent than
in the international campaign to protect the atmosphere. Investigations of
potential ozone destruction by synthetic compounds or the building of a
figurative global greenhouse through processes that have provided us with
the benefits of the industrial revolution may well have been abandoned on
the pages of the scientific journals in which they were first revealed, if
it were not for a mechanism that could draw international attention to the
risks and galvanize international action to address the issues and resolve
the problems. There can be few who could realistically contest that there
exists an appropriate alternative to the United Nations driven process
that has coordinated international efforts against global problems. While
some deplore what they perceive as inertia in the bureaucracy of the
United Nations there are others that welcome the dynamism of the
specialized agencies that can direct specialized international talent in
pursuit of global problem solving.
United Nations action
Let me just identify what has been put in place in the United Nations to
deal exclusively with what was until now a theoretical climate problem.
With regard to research, there is a World Climate Programme led by the
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and jointly coordinated by six
United Nations specialized bodies, including UNEP and the International
Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU).
The World Climate Programme coordinates internationally national climate
research, climate applications and services, observations, and climate
impact and response strategy assessment. In order to broaden the
constituency further the United Nations has adopted the Climate Agenda,
referred to in the article by Professor Obasi,
which brings together all international climate related programmes in an
integrated manner.
Since 1980 UNEP, WMO and ICSU have arranged and published assessments of
climate change based on World Climate Programme generated science. In
1988, this assessment process was formalized through the creation by UNEP
and WMO of the IPCC.
The signing in Rio, and subsequent adoption, of the Framework Convention
on Climate Change has provided the instrument through which the
international community can respond to the climate-related research
results, and their analysis by the IPCC, by identifying the necessary
international response that bypasses political divisions, overcomes
economic disparities and compensates for technical deficiencies inherent
in a world at different stages of development. There is no panic reaction
to an unexpected threat but instead a measured, economically viable
response by a partnership of nations, impossible to achieve without the
United Nations.
Protecting the ozone layer
The potentially lethal destruction of the ozone layer was averted by a
similar process in which UNEP played a pivotal role. Where might we be
without the singular success of the Vienna Convention, its Montreal
Protocol and the international process that led the development and
implementation of the treaties? Again in December in Vienna, UNEP had the
opportunity to honour some of those who were prominent in the programme to
save the ozone layer. Invisible but palpably present on the roll of honour
is the United Nations which through UNEP and others was able to effect
this success. Those who would classify the United Nations system as
redundant might usefully reflect on the international protection of the
atmosphere as a process that works. The IPCC notes that future climate
changes may also involve surprises. For ozone the surprise was an immense
hole over Antarctica. We would not wish to confront a climate catastrophe
of that magnitude. Appropriate action through the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change may avert any risk, but should one occur it
is comforting to think that, under the auspices of the United Nations,
there exists a vigilant, rapid reaction force to recognize and recommend
how we deal with disaster.
