U.N.’s Role in Climate Change Talks: Neutral Venue or Forceful Overseer?

By Michelle Consorte

With the 2005 Kyoto Protocol scheduled to end in 2012, the United Nations is working toward creating a new, binding treaty which furthers nations’ commitment to reducing harmful climate change and holds them accountable to these stipulations. After the failure to produce a viable treaty at Copenhagen, nations are currently meeting in China to discuss a new treaty, and will meet again in Mexico in November to continue the conversation.

But what should be the U.N.’s specific role in the formation of the new treaty? And, who will hold nations accountable for their obligations as defined by said treaty?

In a recent New York Times article, Yvo de Boer, the U.N.’s former climate chief, expressed a desire for the United Nations to take a more integral and assertive role in the international climate change talks. He wants the U.N. to be the one to hold countries accountable for adherence to whatever commitments they agree to, and to help set up these commitments a.k.a. “guidelines” in the first place.

He stated, “‘I think it’s ultimately the responsibility of an international regime to set a common metric, to set common standards, perhaps even translate those into guidelines,’” he said, adding that that work could lead to establishing common guidelines. The clean energy business would benefit from an ‘international framework that registers the commitments of countries, but then at the level of activity puts a very solid mechanism in place for reporting monitoring and verification of action.’”

He also claimed that “such a structure would ‘ensure real results are being achieved.’”

I have two major problems with these statements. First off, isn’t the U.N. supposed to act as a neutral venue for discussion between nations to reach a common understanding and/or agreements? Since when did it become a police force or “regime”? The last time I checked, we existed in a state of international anarchy, without this supranational body, because no nation-state was willing to give up part of its individual sovereignty to such an entity.

Secondly, it is difficult to empirically measure the results of climate change reforms because the effects are slow-in-coming so that immediate results which prove that the reforms are working are impossible to achieve the way that educational reforms, for instance, would show in students’ test scores. Although immediate relief and reversal of environmental problems is much sought after, these issues have taken decades, some centuries, to develop and cannot be fixed within the short time frame that we would like.

In effect, it would be the future treaty which holds countries accountable, and the melting of the icecaps, rising sea level, and increasingly intense and bizarre weather patterns that act as a policing force if countries do not comply with said treaty.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, focused more on the idea of creation of a binding treaty as progress, than a forceful U.N. She stated in a press release: “Progress at Cancún would also include a mandate to take the process inexorably forward towards an encompassing agreement with legally binding status.”

She also called on governments to abide by the future treaty of their own accord, rather than relying on a larger body to act as the enforcer of the agreement. Her address to governments to ‘step up to the plate’ is seen in a BBC article: “Ms. Figueres added that this year's gathering would be ‘the place where governments need to take the next firm step on humanity's long journey to meet the full-scale challenge of climate change.’”

Even Ms. Figueres admits that an effective treaty will take time. However, she, like this author, is willing to work toward this realistic option where governments hold themselves accountable for their promises (for the most part- if we are to be truly realistic), rather than expecting a neutral body to suddenly gain an independent army and act as the guardian and watchdog for individual nations.