A World Environment Organization, similar to the World Trade Organization, could be formed as part of environmental governance reform, a meeting of environment ministers decided on Friday.
Ministers and officials from more than 135 nations converged on Nusa Dua, on the Indonesian island of Bali, this week for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) annual meeting, the biggest grouping of environment officials since climate talks in Copenhagen last year.
UNEP’s executive director, Achim Steiner, told reporters on Friday that environmental governance reform was a key part of this week’s discussions and that governments had raised the possibility of a World Environment Organization (WEO).
“The status quo … is no longer an option. Within the broader reform options, the WEO concept is one of them,” he said.
“Governments established a high-level ministerial group to continue this process with greater focus and also urgency. That group will convene within a few months.”
Steiner said earlier in the week the WEO could be modeled on the World Trade Organization but was unable to say if it would have similar power to sanction countries that breach international law.
For the first time in a decade, the UNEP meeting released a formal declaration setting out a series of policies.
Among other things, the Nusa Dua Declaration called for the world body to help ensure quake-struck Haiti was rebuilt in an environmentally friendly manner and that recommendations from a previous report on environmental and infrastructure damage in the Gaza strip be implemented.
The Declaration also called for governments to meet again in June this year to decide if they should create a new international panel of scientists dedicated to biodiversity, modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Steiner said this week’s meeting showed a global willingness to move on from the Copenhagen talks, which fell short of expectations and ended with a non-binding agreement to fight climate change.
“I think here in Bali, so little time after Copenhagen and that great frustration, the ministers responsible for the environment have found their collective voice again,” he said. “That is something that the world should be very pleased with.”
Sunanda Creagh
