In 2010, a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti. At 7.0 on the Richter scale, the capital, Port-au-Prince, was devastated (even the Presidential Palace was not spared), leaving more than 200,000 dead. Six weeks later, an earthquake that registered 8.8 on the Richter scale struck Chile, killing nearly 1,000 people, and causing significantly less damage. The Chilean earthquake was 500 times more powerful than the one in Haiti and the sixth strongest in recorded history, while the Haiti earthquake did not even make the US Geological Survey’s list of the 20 worst earthquakes on record. However, the damage and death in Haiti was still disproportionate, given the difference in severity of the two quakes.

The reality is Chile was better prepared, with strict building codes enforced and government investment in sound infrastructure. Alternatively, Haiti lacked national building codes, enforcement, and the capacity to check building safety (Beam, 2010); building materials were of lower quality; and structures were built informally on slopes with “insufficient foundations or steel supports” (Chmutina et al., 2017). In Chile, marginalized communities were generally the most severely impacted; in Haiti, everyone was. The juxtaposition of the impacts and images of these events is jarring, illustrating that while the severity of the natural hazards themselves cannot be controlled, the degree of destruction and loss of life can.

Between 1998 and 2017, disasters from natural and man-made hazards killed 1.3 million people globally and impacted the lives of another 4.4 billion (UNDRR, 2020), with developing countries hit hardest. Disasters cost the global economy USD 520 billion annually (UNDRR, 2020). While some are geophysical, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, others, including floods, storms, droughts, and heatwaves, are climate related. Still others, like chemical spills, are the result of accidents caused by human error.

With temperatures rising, many of these events have become more intense and frequent, impacting communities and countries differently. Despite predicted temperature increases, the damage caused and the number of lives lost can be mitigated by proactive measures and preparation. Careful planning, early warning systems, wetlands protection and restoration, investment in infrastructure including buildings and hospitals, awareness raising and education, and lowering greenhouse gas emissions can reduce this risk.

By Failing to Prepare, We are Preparing to Fail

Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” This is particularly relevant to natural disasters. Historically, we have taken an emergency response approach to disasters only after an earthquake leveled buildings and towns or floods submerged villages. Little was done to reduce risk. While responding to disasters is obviously necessary, a shift in emphasis toward risk reduction can help mitigate damage and loss of life. It also makes economic sense. For example, in Bangladesh, every USD 1 spent on flood protection infrastructure results in USD 123 in avoided damages and reduces the likelihood of floods from 20% to 4% (WRI, 2020).

Near the end of the 20th century, the fact that disasters are not natural (even if the associated hazard is) was increasingly recognized, as was the premise that only by reducing and managing conditions of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability can losses be prevented and disaster impacts alleviated (UNDRR, n.d.). Thus, the term “disaster risk reduction” (DRR), which applies to the policy objective of anticipating and reducing risk, has become part of the lexicon.

Since we cannot reduce the severity of natural hazards, the main opportunity for DRR lies in reducing vulnerability and exposure. To do this, identifying and reducing the underlying drivers of risk are essential. Such drivers often involve poor economic and urban development choices and practice, environmental degradation, poverty, inequality, and climate change. Addressing these underlying drivers can, in addition to reducing disaster risk, mitigate the impacts of climate change and, consequently, promote sustainable development (UNDRR, n.d.).

If national and local governments ignore disaster risk, then risks accumulate, and current and future social and economic development gains are undermined. If a country or city invests in DRR, potential losses can be reduced over time and critical resources freed up to pursue development objectives. Yet, while international policy guidelines have successfully informed national DRR policies around the world, their dissemination down to the local level has faced complex political challenges, exacerbated in many areas by an increased frequency of disasters (Ogra et al., 2021). For years, the international community has tried to overcome these challenges, but it has not been easy.

The Evolution of Disaster Risk Reduction in the International Arena

The UN General Assembly began tackling disaster relief in earnest in the 1960s, when it passed a series of resolutions focused on relief in response to earthquakes in Iran and Yugoslavia, and a hurricane that hit Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. These events, along with droughts in Afghanistan and Ethiopia in the 1970s and 1980s, also elicited General Assembly resolutions and international responses.

In 1971, the UN established the Disaster Relief Office (UNDRO) to formalize the international response to disasters. The UN Secretary-General appointed a Disaster Relief Coordinator to promote the study, prevention, control, and prediction of natural disasters, and help advise governments on pre-disaster planning. In 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, included disaster response in Principle 9 of the Stockholm Declaration, which states that environmental deficiencies due to under-development and natural disasters could be remedied by accelerated development through financial and technological assistance, as well as developing countries’ domestic efforts. Recommendation 18 of the accompanying Action Plan called for improvements in early warning systems and disaster prevention planning.

As time passed, international conference outcomes and frameworks began to focus more on the need to reduce disaster risk, with the 1990s heralded as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. In 1989, the UN General Assembly established the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, marked annually on 13 October, to promote DRR awareness as well as to recognize how people and communities are reducing their vulnerability to disasters.

The 1994 Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action for a Safer World, the first major international DRR framework, recognized the linkages between sustainable development and DRR. It provided guidelines for disaster prevention, preparedness, and mitigation. In 1999, the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) was created. It was later renamed the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) to coordinate the UN’s disaster reduction programmes and to better reflect its emphasis on risk.

Subsequent agreements continued to frame DRR in a more holistic manner. The 2002 Johannesburg Plan of Implementation mentioned “an integrated, multi-hazard, inclusive approach to address vulnerability, risk assessment and disaster management, including prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.” It also outlined specific steps needed to integrate and mainstream DRR into development policies and processes.

The Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters addressed the role of states and international organizations—calling on civil society, academia, volunteer organizations, and the private sector to join efforts—and supported decentralized authority and resources to promote local-level DRR. Priorities included: building institutional capacity; enhancing early warning systems; increasing understanding and awareness; reducing underlying risk drivers; and strengthening disaster preparedness.

The outcome document of the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20)—The Future We Want—called for addressing DRR and building disaster resilience “with a renewed sense of urgency” in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication. Among other action items, Rio+20 advocated for strategies that integrate DRR and climate change adaptation into investment and decision making, formally linking DRR and climate change.

In 2015, the Hyogo Framework for Action was superseded by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. The emphasis shifted to “disaster risk management” as opposed to “disaster management,” again reiterating the need to focus on risk. The Sendai Framework also broadened the scope of DRR to address both natural and anthropogenic hazards and related environmental, technological, and biological risks (UNDRR, 2015). One of the Framework’s seven targets is to substantially increase the number of countries with national and local DRR reduction strategies by 2020, a prerequisite to achieving the Framework’s other targets by 2030. By August 2020, 93 countries had a national DRR strategy, while 72 had local DRR strategies in place—a 111% and 85% increase, respectively, over 2015 (UNDRR, 2020). Building capacities for creating and implementing national DRR strategies for developing countries is critical in this regard.

If we are better in disaster risk reduction, fewer people die; fewer lives and livelihoods are hampered; homes remain dry and livable; roads stay clear; bridges remain standing; power and water supplies keep working; and schools and hospitals will stay open.

Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction

The Global Platform for DRR (GPDRR), a multi-stakeholder forum first convened in 2007, is the main mechanism to review progress of the Sendai Framework. Regional DRR platforms inform the GPDRR and bring together countries in specific regions to improve coordination and implementation of DRR activities while linking to international and national efforts, including the Sustainable Development Goals, which contain 25 DRR-related targets. In fact, one could argue that without DRR we cannot achieve sustainable development.

Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation

The climate change adaptation and DRR communities, once distinct, are now more integrated than ever, following the formal reconition of their linkages at Rio+20 and given the increasingly severe impacts of climate change-related disasters. As DRR and climate change adaptation both involve reducing vulnerability and enhancing resilience, their integration helps avoid duplication of efforts.

The Pacific region was the first to formally integrate DRR and climate change adaptation with the Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific: An Integrated Approach to Address Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management (FRDP). Battered by the devastating impacts of hurricanes and sea level rise, Pacific islands are among the most affected by climate change and related events—and, thus, among the most committed to act. Endorsed in 2016 by the Pacific Islands Leaders Forum, the FRDP identifies three interrelated goals that must be actively pursued by all stakeholders, working in partnership, to enhance resilience to disasters and climate change in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty. These goals are:

• strengthening the integration of adaptation and risk reduction to enhance resilience to climate change and disasters;
• increasing low-carbon development; and
• strengthening disaster preparedness, response, and recovery.

Other mechanisms to better integrate adaptation and DRR include the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), a partnership administered by the World Bank, which helps developing countries better understand and reduce their vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change. For example, the GFDRR helped Bangladesh develop an urban resilience project, which not only provided key government agencies with state-of-the-art emergency management systems and equipment, but also improved building construction planning, design, permitting, and oversight systems in cities vulnerable to cyclones, floods, earthquakes, and the impacts of climate change. In Niger, community members were trained in DRR to enhance the inclusion of climate change adaptation and disaster risk management in 10 municipal development plans. More than 4,100 households benefited from guidance for predicting the impact of drought on crops. These activities are both practical and community driven as they help people deal with climate variability.

Disasters, many of which are exacerbated by climate change and are increasing in frequency and intensity, significantly impede progress towards sustainable development.

Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, Paragraph 4

In 2021, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UNDRR announced the creation of a Centre of Excellence for Climate and Disaster Resilience, an information hub on climate change and extreme weather and how to manage and mitigate related risks. The Centre is expected to pay particular attention to the needs of least developed countries, small island developing states, and land-locked developing countries, many of which lack access to multi-hazard early warning systems and the means to implement national DRR strategies.

Wetlands: Nature’s Safeguard Against Water Disasters

Water-related disasters have intensified due to climate change. For example, the UN World Water Development Report 2020 estimates that “74% of all natural disasters between 2001 and 2018 were water-related.” Furthermore, during this period the total number of deaths caused only by floods and droughts exceeded 166,000, affected over three billion people, and caused almost USD 700 billion in economic damage.

Healthy wetlands can be effective buffers in reducing water-related disaster risks. Defined as land areas flooded with water, either seasonally or permanently, wetlands act as natural sponges, absorbing and storing excess rainfall and reducing flooding. In the dry season, wetlands release stored water and can delay the onset of droughts and reduce water shortages. Wetlands also store carbon, serve as natural water filters, and provide important wildlife habitat.

Maintaining healthy wetlands, and restoring degraded ones, should be a part of DRR both on the coast and inland. Designating flood- and storm-prone areas as protected wetlands can strengthen this natural buffer and minimize risk in advance of a disaster. For instance, wetlands along the East Coast of the United States helped avoid more than USD 625 million in damages from Hurricane Sandy in 2012 (Ramsar Convention, 2017). In Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka, for example, where offshore coral reefs are protected, damage from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami extended just 50 metres inland. In nearby Peraliya, in contrast, where coral mining had degraded the reefs, the damage extended 1.5 km inland (Ramsar Convention, 2017).

Thus, investing in both human-built infrastructure and nature’s own infrastructure is essential for reducing disaster risk.

“The Extraordinary Is No Longer Extraordinary”

In an interview with The Guardian at the end of 2021, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, stated “The extraordinary and unprecedented is no longer extraordinary or unprecedented because it’s starting to happen so often.” From earthquakes in Haiti, to historic flooding in Germany and Timor Leste, to wildfires across the United States and Canada, volcano eruptions in Indonesia, flash flooding in India, Nepal, and China, and typhoons and hurricanes, 2021 was a year for the record books.

To withstand this “new normal,” new infrastructure must be conceptualized, designed, and built. Rather than just “building back better,” doing better from the outset must be prioritized. Successful DRR requires a robust governance process to build long-term resilience to multiple hazards, an inclusive “whole-of-society” approach, and “a culture of prevention and safety.” This means reducing existing risks, avoiding the creation of new risks, and making risk-informed investments.

In addition, successful DRR results from a combination of top-down, institutional changes and strategies and bottom-up, local, and community-based approaches. For example, following cyclones in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and in anticipation of another storm, the Mozambique Red Cross provided advance warning, as well as training and the distribution of kits, to communities to reinforce homes and schools. In Zimbabwe, authorities used WhatsApp (which accounts for 50% of mobile activity in some places) to communicate hourly updates in local languages. They urged residents to take free buses to shelters instead of moving higher up where mudslides can occur (Mwareya & Bhobo, 2021).

The climate of the 20th Century—which society’s infrastructure was designed for—no longer exists.

Jeff Masters, Meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections

Each year brings more intense and frequent extreme events. While hazards are inevitable and eliminating all risk is impossible, the extent and/or severity of the disasters they cause can be managed and reduced. Regulation and enforcement are needed to prevent or reduce actual damage from hazards. Awareness, education, preparedness, and prediction and warning systems can reduce impacts on communities. Only then can the challenge of reducing disaster risk be realized in the future.

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Forests are synonymous with life on Earth. They are at the root of our oxygen, habitat, food, wood, identity, and culture. It was under a tree that Isaac Newton had his “Eureka!” moment. In the shelter of a fig tree, the Buddha achieved enlightenment.

Humans have destroyed much of the world’s forests, but not for lack of attention. The world has long been aware of forest loss and its consequences. Alexander von Humboldt wrote extensively about the issue at the turn of the 19th century and forest concerns were still central when global environmental governance began to emerge almost two centuries later.

At the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972, forests were linked to a number of principles in the final declaration. For example, Principle 2 calls for natural resources, including flora and fauna and especially representative samples of natural ecosystems, must be safeguarded for the benefit of present and future generations. In the Action Plan, several recommendations pertained to building and sharing information about forests, their management, surveillance, and associated environmental considerations.

In the fifty years since Stockholm, our awareness and knowledge of forests have grown, along with a proliferation of forest governance initiatives. Sadly, forest loss continues and the challenge to protect the Earth’s remaining forests has only become greater.

The State of Global Forests

Forests cover approximately 31% of global land area, about 4.06 billion hectares. About a third are primary forests, areas with naturally grown or regenerated native forests where humans have not significantly disturbed the ecological processes. Most terrestrial biodiversity is found in the world’s forests, from the boreal forests of the north to tropical rainforests closer to the equator. Together, they hold more than 60,000 tree species and provide habitat for 80% of amphibians, 75% of bird species, and 68% of mammals (FAO & UNEP, 2020).

Forests also play a key role in our climate system. They produce oxygen and regulate climate, by storing approximately 861 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon while sequestering 15.6Gt of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) on average each year (WRI, 2021).

The importance of forests extends well beyond their biophysical properties. About 300-350 million people live within or adjacent to dense forests, depending on them for subsistence and income. Roughly a third of humanity has a close dependence on forests and forest products, including for food or fuel (FAO & UNEP, 2020). More intangibly, forests are important sites of culture, spirituality, and recreation.

An estimated 420 million hectares of forest—the area of India and Portugal combined—have been lost to deforestation since 1990.

Mette Løyche Wilkie and Malgorzata Buszko-Briggs, Forestry Division, FAO

The total value of forests is impossible to quantify, and there are many aspects of forests that are simply unfathomable. However, analyses that do attempt to determine the value of forests inevitably reach staggering numbers, such as the USD 150 trillion suggested by Kappen et al. (2020).

For all of forests’ biodiversity, climate, cultural, recreational, spiritual, and monetary value, the trends are worrying. Approximately 420 million hectares of forest were lost between 1990 and 2020 (FAO & UNEP, 2020), with almost 26 million hectares lost in 2020 alone (WRI, 2021). Much of this is temporary forest loss due to plantation harvesting, wildfires, or rotational agriculture that will naturally regrow, but over a quarter is permanent forest loss—deforestation.

Most deforestation occurs in tropical forests, which peaked during the 1980s at over 15 million hectares per year and continued at 4.7 million hectares per year during the 2010s. (See Figure 1.) Between 2019 and 2020, 4.2 million hectares of primary tropical forest were lost—an area the size of Denmark—resulting in the release of 2.64Gt of carbon-dioxide emissions (WRI, 2021).

The predominant driver of tropical deforestation is conversion of primary forest to agriculture or tree plantations. However, the expansion of pasture for beef production is the greatest driver, accounting for about 40% of deforestation, with Latin America representing the largest geographic region of deforestation followed by Asia and then Africa. (See Figure 2.)

Global Forest Governance

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Conference, which first met in 1945, was the principal global forum for the discussion of international forestry issues from its establishment until 1971, when the FAO Committee on Forestry was established to review international forestry problems and advise on the FAO’s work.

At the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit), forests evolved into one of the most divisive issues on the agenda. The exchanges were often acrimonious and became a striking symbol of the North-South divide. A Swedish proposal for a forest convention was strongly resisted by several developing countries, who saw it as a ploy to limit the use of tropical forests for economic development. (Engfeldt, 2009, p. 183). Disagreement centred on whether forests are a common good or a sovereign national resource as well as on financing responsibilities for forest protection (Humphreys, 2005). After lengthy negotiations, delegates did not adopt a treaty and were only able to agree on a set of Forest Principles and a chapter in Agenda 21 on combating deforestation.

Following the Earth Summit, the FAO, national governments, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) held a number of international meetings on forests in an attempt to rebuild some of the trust that was lost in Rio. By 1995, governments were ready to resume discussions and agreed to establish the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF). This was superseded by the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) in 1997, and then a more permanent body was created in 2002: the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF).

While a forests convention has remained elusive, the UNFF has been a forum for continued intergovernmental dialogue on forest issues. UNFF established the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, a partnership of 14 major forest-related international organizations, institutions, and convention secretariats. In 2007 the UNFF negotiated and the UN General Assembly adopted the United Nations Forest Instrument, which provides countries with a framework for promoting sustainable forest management.

Ten years later, in 2017, the UNFF adopted—and the UN General Assembly endorsed—the UN Strategic Plan for Forests 2030. This plan serves as a framework to promote sustainable forest management and the contribution of forests and trees outside forests to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At the heart of the Strategic Plan are six Global Forest Goals and 26 associated targets. The Goals encompass and build on the foundation of the four Global Objectives on Forests of the United Nations Forest Instrument.

Working in parallel to this developing UN forest system has been the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), created in 1983 to promote the sustainable management and conservation of tropical forests and the expansion and diversification of international trade in tropical timber from sustainably managed and legally harvested forests.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) became a major site of forest governance with the evolution of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) since 2005 and forest projects under the Clean Development Mechanism. More recently, forests have been in the spotlight through the rise of “nature-based solutions” climate discourse. Nature-based solutions include planting trees and restoring forested land, which can reduce climate change by capturing carbon dioxide and sequestering it in plants, soils, and sediments. The Convention on Biological Diversity has its own work programme on forest biodiversity.

The pledge at the Climate summit to end deforestation by 2030 is a marker that the importance of nature for climate stability is understood at the highest levels internationally.

Valerie Kapos, Head of Climate Change and Biodiversity, UNEP-WCMC

This governance system for forests has not turned the tide on deforestation. However, it continues to evolve and has become more polycentric with the emergence of private governance initiatives that focus on three key trends in forest governance: deforestation commitments, carbon offsets, and forest restoration.

Deforestation Commitments

One important approach used to help protect forests is through commitments to eliminate deforestation. The most recent example was at the 26th meeting of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP 26) in November 2021. The Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forest and Land Use, under which 141 countries accounting for 91% of global forests committed to eliminate deforestation by 2030. The declaration was accompanied by additional financial commitments to support implementation, including over USD 15 billion in donor funds and USD 7 billion from the private sector (Government of the UK, 2021).

Commitments to stop deforestation are not new, however. Forty countries and 56 corporations pledged in the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests to halve natural forest loss by 2020, and strive to end it by 2030. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’s Sustainable Development Goals have a target (15.2) to halt deforestation by 2020.

Corporate pledges to eliminate deforestation go back even further. In the 2000s, activists drew attention to tropical deforestation linked to commodities such as palm oil. In response, in one of the first major corporate deforestation commitments, Nestlé committed in 2009 to ensure none of its products were linked to deforestation (Poynton, 2014). In 2010, the Consumer Goods Forum, which represents over 400 global consumer goods companies, pledged to reach net-zero deforestation by 2020.

While it is clear net-zero deforestation has not been achieved, various private initiatives have emerged to facilitate compliance, including certification schemes by organizations such as the Rainforest Alliance, Forest Stewardship Council, and Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. They aim to give consumers and governments confidence that forest products or other commodities potentially associated with deforestation have been sustainably produced. The schemes vary in makeup and strictness, from those run by industry players, to purely independent NGO-run schemes, and mixed models in between. This has led to concerns about “forum shopping” for the lowest set of standards.

Research into the effectiveness of supply chain deforestation commitments has found they are often poorly implemented but, if properly executed, can make a measurable impact. However, as Lambin et al. (2018) highlight, they are generally insufficient to end deforestation, particularly against the global demand for commodities. Initiatives can be undermined by lack of implementation and accountability; only moving deforestation rather than stopping it; and unintended consequences on local communities, such as locking out smallholders who may lack the resources to fulfil compliance or certification procedures from market access. Supportive government policies are needed to help address these challenges.

Forests, Net-zero, and the Drive for Carbon Offsets

The Paris Agreement on climate change established an agreed temperature goal for limiting global warming to 2ºC, or preferably 1.5ºC, above pre-industrial levels. Key to achieving this goal is the timing of when emissions reach “net-zero”—the point at which any ongoing emissions are balanced by removals from the atmosphere.

There has been a rush of attention to the removals part of this equation. While there is significant ongoing work on new technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere such as direct air capture, trees and forests offer the most widely available, affordable, and proven method. Countries are interested, but corporations are also looking to meet their own voluntary emissions reduction and net-zero targets.

Net-zero has become a powerful marker for companies wanting to present themselves as doing their part to combat climate change. In turn, the voluntary carbon market emerged with companies looking to offset their emissions and a number of certification bodies stepped in to verify tradeable credits such as Verra, Plan Vivo, and the Gold Standard. Forest projects are accounting for an increasingly greater share of total voluntary carbon market transaction value, reaching 64% in 2020 (Donofrio et al., 2021). Demand is only likely to increase further, including from the aviation industry’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) program, which aims to offset all growth in international aviation emissions.

Forest carbon projects have been the subject of significant controversy, however. Some have been criticized for their effectiveness, in terms of the robustness of the accounting methodology for recording emissions removals and their permanence. Other researchers and activists have focused on potential negative effects, such as the development of monoculture tree plantations that lack biodiversity and have a negative impact on the rights of Indigenous and local communities, including accusations of land-grabbing.

The integrity of Paris Agreement carbon markets remains to be seen, but forest projects are expected to feature prominently. In 2019, several countries agreed to the San José Principles for High Ambition and Integrity in International Carbon Markets as a voluntary set of commitments to the highest standard in international carbon market transactions. The rubber will soon hit the road for such commitments.

Biodiversity and Forest Restoration

Another dynamic in forest governance relates to growing concerns about biodiversity loss. While climate change has achieved a dominant position as the present day’s apex environmental challenge, the alarm has also sounded about the separate, but related, global biodiversity crisis.

This focus has led to renewed efforts around the protection and restoration of forest habitats. Importantly, the focus on biodiversity leads to a different set of optimizing factors than a narrow climate lens. The prioritization of carbon sequestration has led to the expansion of fast-growing monoculture plantations. While good for the climate in the short-term, this type of forestry does little to solve the biodiversity crisis.

We cannot protect the Earth’s biodiversity without protecting our forests. They harbour most of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and support food security, jobs, and livelihoods for millions of people.

Will Simonson, Senior Programme Officer, Climate Change and Biodiversity, UNEP-WCMC

Biodiversity thrives in more natural, diverse forests habitats, especially the complex primary forest systems in which it evolved. While it is difficult to try and recreate these habitats with plantations, land close to native seed sources can often be left, protected, and supported to regenerate forest ecosystems naturally. This is a key part of the logic behind the rewilding movement and initiatives such as the Bonn Challenge, which seeks to bring 350 million hectares of land into restoration by 2030.

Of course, protecting existing biodiversity can be even more powerful than trying to restore it. Protecting the immense biodiversity of forests is part of the drive behind a revitalized international movement to expand the planet’s protected areas. Momentum has been growing behind the “30x30” initiative, which aims to have 30% of the world’s land and 30% of the world’s oceans designated as protected areas.

Biodiversity also draws attention to the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous-held lands cover 25% of the world but contain 80% of the world’s biodiversity, much of it in forests. Indigenous Peoples and knowledge can play an important role in ensuring effective forest protection for biodiversity and other outcomes. There has also been some tension between Indigenous advocates and nature protection efforts such as the “30x30” initiative, which has been criticized by some as threat to Indigenous Peoples’ rights that could see many evicted from their land, replicating colonial legacies of Indigenous dispossession (Mukpo, 2021).

Fighting for the Future of our Forests

In the 50 years since the Stockholm Conference, a forests convention remains elusive, but global attention to the importance of protecting and restoring forests has never been greater. Three important lessons can illustrate the way forward.

The first is to treat and value forests holistically. Humans need to appreciate forests’ multiple environmental, social, and cultural benefits, along with their intrinsic value. Forests play a key role in addressing multiple pressing issues, including climate change and biodiversity loss, while providing homes and livelihoods to millions of people around the world.

Buddha’s words: A tree is a wondrous thing that shelters, feeds, and protects all living things. It even offers shade to the axmen who destroy it.

Richard Powers - The Overstory (2018)

A second lesson is that enforcement and political will is needed at all levels. The international community has repeatedly failed to achieve past commitments to eliminate deforestation. With a new high-profile platform of commitments from both governments and the private sector emerging from COP 26, the world cannot afford to fail again. Perhaps the most successful recent example of political will was in Brazil in the mid-2000s and early 2010s when it reduced deforestation by two-thirds despite high commodity prices. Although this trend was reversed under the Bolsonaro administration, at the time, strong government policies, reinforced enforcement measures, and concerted pressure from civil society were among the keys to success (Boucher et al., 2013).

The third lesson is the importance of finance. This includes both providing dedicated finance for efforts to protect and restore forests as well as working to reduce or eliminate the global financial incentives that drive deforestation. Significant additional finance for forests was mobilized at COP 26, but more will be required. Reversing the financial incentive for deforestation, however, will be even more challenging. For many forest owners and users, it remains more immediately profitable to cut down their trees rather than to maintain them. Part of the challenge will be increasing transparency in supply chains so that financial markets can properly respond to the risk of deforestation-linked production.

Reversing the tide of deforestation will not be easy, as the past fifty years have shown. But with growing public pressure to address climate change and biodiversity loss, and by learning from the mistakes of the past, we might still have a chance.

Works Consulted

Boucher, D., Roquemore, S., & Fitzhugh, E. (2013). Brazil’s success in reducing deforestation. Tropical Conservation Science, 6(3), 426–445. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/194008291300600308

Donofrio, S., Maguire, P., Myers, K., Daley, C., & Lin, K. (2021). State of the voluntary carbon markets 2021. Forest Trends. https://www.forest-trends.org/publications/state-of-the-voluntary-carbon-markets-2021/

Engfeldt, L. (2009). From Stockholm to Johannesburg and beyond. Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

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Government of the United Kingdom. (2021). World leaders summit on ‘Action on forests and land use.’ Policy paper. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cop26-world-leaders-summit-on-action-on-forests-and-land-use-2-november-2021/world-leaders-summit-on-action-on-forests-and-land-use

Humphreys, D. (2005). The elusive quest for a global forests convention. Review of European Community & International Environmental Law, 14(1), 1–10. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9388.2005.00418.x

Kappen, G., Kastner, E., Kurth, T., Puetz, J., Reinhardt, A., & Soininen, J. (2020). The staggering value of forests—and how to save them. Boston Consulting Group. https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/the-staggering-value-of-forests-and-how-to-save-them

Lambin, E. F., Gibbs, H. K., Heilmayr, R., Carlson, K. M., Fleck, L. C., Garrett, R. D., le Polain de Waroux, Y., McDermott, C. L., McLaughlin, D., Newton, P., Nolte, C., Pacheco, P., Rausch, L. L., Streck, C., Thorlakson, T., & Walker, N. F. (2018). The role of supply-chain initiatives in reducing deforestation. Nature Climate Change, 8(2), 109–116. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-017-0061-1

Mukpo, A. (2021). As COP15 approaches, “30 by 30” becomes a conservation battleground. Mongabay. https://news.mongabay.com/2021/08/as-cop15-approaches-30-by-30-becomes-a-conservation-battleground/

Powers, R. (2018). The Overstory. W. W. Norton.

Poynton, S. (2014). Wilmar’s “no deforestation” goal could revolutionise food production. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/wilmar-no-deforestation-commitment-food-production

Ritchie, H. (2021). Cutting down forests: What are the drivers of deforestation? https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation

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Urban sustainability initiatives regularly make headlines. Paris, France, for example has received much attention for new bike lanes and a generalized speed limit of 30 km/h for motorized traffic. Havana, Cuba, is famous for its urban agriculture; Curitiba, Brazil, is a pioneer in bus rapid transit systems; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is referred to as the world’s cycling capital.

Yet, often enough, when cities are featured in the news, headlines sound the alarm on the detrimental impacts of unsustainable urban development: Jakarta, Indonesia, is sinking; New Delhi, India, shut down schools amid high levels of air pollution; and residential buildings are collapsing due to lack of maintenance in Marseille, France. Recent reports highlight key figures, including:

• the proportion of the world’s population living in urban areas grew from 30% in 1950 to 55% in 2018 and is projected to reach 68% in 2050, with almost 90% of the projected increase to take place in Asia and Africa (UNDESA, 2019)
• in 2018, 24% of the global urban population lived in slums, often with limited access to basic services and with the proportion being as high as 56% in Sub-Saharan Africa (UNDESA, 2021)
• urban areas have more than doubled between 1992 and 2018, contributing to biodiversity loss (IPBES, 2019)
• cities are powerhouses of economic growth—contributing about 60% of global gross domestic product (GDP), but also account for a high percentage of global carbon emissions and natural resource use (UN, 2019)
• urbanization has exacerbated the impacts of global warming, with urban centres being warmer than their surrounding areas due to the urban heat island effect (IPCC, 2021)

Although sustainable urban development is receiving increased attention, the topic is not new. In fact, it was on the agenda of the very first multilateral environmental conference, the landmark 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden. At the time of the conference, which convened in the context of the decolonization process, urbanization was much lower, though growing. Policymakers nevertheless recognized urban sprawl has destructive impacts on the environment and that, while people move to urban areas with hopes of better employment opportunities and living conditions, cities often struggle to meet the increased demand for housing, mass transit, and other infrastructure. The question of how to ensure sustainable urban development has been on the global agenda ever since.

Planning must be applied to human settlements and urbanization with a view to avoiding adverse effects on the environment and obtaining maximum social economic and environmental benefits for all. In this respect, projects which are designed for colonialist and racist domination must be abandoned.

1972 STOCKHOLM DECLARATION, PRINCIPLE 15

Selected Sustainable Urban Development Milestones

Multi-dimensional Issue

As set forth in the Vancouver Declaration adopted at the 1976 UN Human Settlements Conference (Habitat I), the most important objective of urban development policy is the improvement of the quality of life for all people, beginning with satisfying basic needs such as food, shelter, clean water, employment, health, and education. This objective has been reconfirmed throughout the years, including in the 2016 New Urban Agenda.

This underscores a fundamental reality: the starting line is not the same for all. Whereas fulfilling fundamental needs—such as through improving access to clean piped water and sanitation—remains an important part of urban planning in many cities of the Global South, discussions on sustainable cities in the Global North mainly centre on how to make existing infrastructure more efficient and less wasteful. In the latter, the aim is for a “transformation” of building, energy, transport, and other systems toward enhanced environmental sustainability—for example, promoting better building insulation for reduced heat waste or fostering waste recycling. As Youba Sokona, South Centre, and Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), recently noted, “In Africa the question is less about transformation and more about ‘jump starting’ their development in a sustainable manner.”

Beyond this stark global divide, there are significant differences within individual cities: higher-income neighborhoods are typically better serviced than low-income areas and some communities face discrimination that hampers the fulfillment of their fundamental needs. Life in Banana Island, one of Lagos, Nigeria’s gated communities, with wellmaintained roads and a central sewerage system, is vastly different from that in the nearby Makoko slum, where residents live under the threat of eviction and lack access to basic services (Ajayi et al., 2019). Roma people, Europe’s largest ethnic minority, continue to struggle with precarious housing and the US city of Flint, Michigan, whose African-American inhabitants suffered years of lead-poisoned water before a court confirmed wrongdoing, became the poster child of environmental racism. Today, discussions on ensuring access to basic services for all stand side-by-side with futuristic reflections on urban air mobility and drone-based delivery systems.

Sustainable urban development also spans various sectors, key among them housing, transportation, energy, water, waste, food, and health. But that’s not all. As multilateral declarations adopted over the past fifty years highlight, sustainable urban development also touches on heritage preservation, disaster planning, urban-rural linkages, and much more. Striving for sustainable cities requires a holistic vision for how to accommodate increasingly large urban populations, ensuring sustainable livelihoods, quality of life, and social cohesion, while minimizing cities’ and city dwellers’ immediate and long-term impact on the environment. Consequently, all challenges associated with the very notion of sustainability come to the fore in urban areas.

Finally, sustainable urban development is multi-dimensional because it spans a wide array of urban realities. Cities vary in size, with metropolises such as Manila, Philippines, or Beijing, China, having populations ten times larger than entire countries, such as Slovenia and Lesotho. These cities, which would rank among the top 60 most populous countries of the world, must deal with sustainable urban development challenges on a different scale than cities of little more than 50,000 inhabitants. And differences do not only relate to cities’ sizes, but also to factors such as their historical development and geographic location. Coastal cities must plan for sea level rise, while other cities might face water scarcity or must deal with an industrial downturn. There is no single recipe for sustainable urban development. It materializes differently, depending on cities’ specific contexts.

Urban Sustainability is Shaped by Many Actors

Local governments are the key players for fostering of urban sustainability as they can take measures within their own jurisdiction. They are also increasingly engaged in transnational networks, such as ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. These networks provide space for peer-learning among local governments from different countries and serve to feed urban perspectives directly into regional and global sustainability debates. But fostering sustainable cities is not only a matter for local governments. Other actors have power to steer cities toward sustainability.

For one, while the concrete allocation of authority differs between countries, actors at varying government levels have a role to play. National governments might set up an overall housing strategy with tax incentives for the development of new rental housing or pass legislation on insulation or energy efficiency, while cities can develop specific building codes and measures to support social housing. Others can also influence urban sustainability by adopting specific policies and standards, such as influencing norms or opening funding opportunities. This includes state, provincial, or regional governments in federally structured countries, supranational entities, where relevant, and multilateral fora.

Further, non-governmental actors—including businesses, civil society organizations, schools, research institutions, and faith-based organizations—are also sustainability agents. They can self-govern toward sustainability, such as by adjusting diets in canteen menus or switching to renewable energy. At a larger scale, they can take outward-facing initiatives, such as hosting a repair café to help people fix broken household items and sharing information on grant programs for home retrofits, and pressure governments by lobbying for cities to phase out fossil fuels. Corporate initiatives toward enhanced urban sustainability can help develop new technologies and business models, with many leveraging big data and sharing economy approaches. Actors engage in sustainability initiatives for various reasons. As Westman et al. (2021) show, small- and medium-sized enterprises notably aim to improve their reputation in the local community, increase efficiency, or align with personal values. Some initiatives—such as when exasperated citizens build their own bike lanes—are disruptive and constitute a push for change from the bottom, while at other times windows of opportunity are opened from the top. Change often relies on the interplay between different kinds of actors, both governmental and non-governmental. Fostering urban sustainability nevertheless remains a protracted undertaking. Key challenges include that local governments at times lack the autonomy or fiscal and human capacity to undertake sustainability measures and that powerful actors—such as central governments or large businesses—might stand in the way of change (Beermann et al., 2016).

Key Trends in Sustainable Urban Development

Many new approaches to sustainable urban development are breaking with the long predominant mindset of “taming nature” and are bringing back greenery into the infamous concrete jungle. Think of urban agriculture, which is gaining ground in the collective imagery of sustainable cities.

More broadly, there is a strong move toward what is increasingly termed “nature-based solutions.” A look at urban water management provides many examples: New York City is restoring oyster reefs, cities like Seoul are daylighting water streams buried under concrete for many decades, and China is supporting the development of so-called sponge cities. Rather than relying only on hard engineering, these cities leverage natural infrastructure to achieve multiple benefits, not only enhancing flood management but also providing recreational opportunities and supporting biodiversity, among other benefits. Many such measures are designed to address climate change, especially from an adaptation and resilience standpoint. They can mitigate the urban heat island effect and flooding—both from increased precipitation events and, where relevant, storm surges. Plants are not only used on the ground and on roofs but also on facades, with architects and urban residents increasingly experimenting with vertical gardens. Similarly, urban wastelands and unused industrial infrastructure are being renatured to provide habitat for urban biodiversity and recreational spaces for city dwellers, with New York City’s High Line and Atlanta’s BeltLine in the US as flagship projects.

Cities are also grappling with the detrimental effects of decades of car-centred urban planning, which fostered urban sprawl, placed a barrier on other forms of transportation, contributed to a large share of cities’ greenhouse gas emissions, and lead to local air pollution (OECD, 2018). Multimodal transportation initiatives are sprouting up around the world in various forms, including: establishing toll roads (Singapore; London, UK), enabling free public transportation for residents (Aubagne, France; Tallinn, Estonia), installing cable cars (Medellín, Colombia; Constantine, Algeria), and giving priority traffic lights to cyclists as a default or when it rains (Odense, Denmark; Rotterdam, the Netherlands). Additionally, there are corporate initiatives such as bicycle and scooter rentals, and civil society actions, such as the collective bike rides of the Critical Mass movement. Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a reckoning about the immense amount of urban space allocated to cars. In many cities, residents have become fond of newly extended sidewalks and parking spaces converted for outdoor dining. Whether this will truly bring about permanent change remains to be seen.

More fundamentally, equity considerations are increasingly coming to the fore, as people grapple with the fact that urban development has failed to make cities liveable for all. Building on the work of feminist and disability studies scholars, the World Bank (2020) provides a toolkit for redressing the fact that “In general, cities work better for heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender men than they do for women, girls, sexual and gender minorities, and people with disabilities” (p. 8). Meehan et al. (2020) draw attention to intersecting social and racialized inequalities that curtail access to basic services, even in some of the most affluent cities in the world. This reckoning not only pertains to the detrimental effects of past urban planning, but also relates to more recent developments. For example, hostile architecture that has flourished in many places with the aim of banishing homeless people is increasingly decried as a manifestation of failures to address the root causes of homelessness and for rendering public spaces unwelcoming to urban dwellers at large. This critical reflection also relates to the potential negative effects of some sustainability measures, where green gentrification can increase local property values and displace existing residents who can no longer afford to live in the neighbourhood (Anguelovski, 2016).

Against this background, it is important to pay attention to inclusive urban planning. Decisions adopted at Habitat I in 1976 already stipulated that “Public participation is a right that must be accorded to all segments of the population, including the most disadvantaged” (p. 76) and that “Citizens must be provided opportunities for direct involvement in the decisions that profoundly affect their lives” (p. 71). This can foster democratic legitimacy and adapt measures to specific local contexts, which can enhance their effectiveness. Yet, as UN-Habitat (2019) notes, ensuring public participation in practice remains a challenge and “when deliberation occurs it is often biased towards more powerful stakeholders with greater resources” (p. 23). To overcome long-standing challenges with implementing participation ideals, scholars, community organizations, and some local governments are experimenting with different approaches, including participatory budgeting and community mapping exercises (Calisto Friant, 2019; Klopp & Cavoli, 2019).

As more and more people live in urban areas, coupled with worsening impacts from climate change and natural resource loss, the magnitude of the urban sustainability challenge and the need for decisive action is bigger than ever. As the world saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, overcrowding and poverty make it difficult to follow recommended measures such as social distancing and self-isolation. This calls for a holistic rethinking about how to make cities liveable for all while minimizing adverse impacts on the environment.

Striving for sustainable cities requires overcoming barriers between different levels of government as well as vested interests in preserving the status quo. It requires looking beyond the sphere of the urban to attend to urban-rural linkages, foster circular resource use, and decarbonize the energy, transport, and building sectors. Urban sustainability requires cross-sectoral planning and attention to the differentiated needs of all urban dwellers so as to leave no one behind in the necessary transformation. Sustainability pathways should be tailored to specific urban contexts. As such, there will never be one single model for what a sustainable city looks like.

Works Consulted

Ajayi, O., Soyinka-Airewele, P., & Samuel, O. (2019). Gentrification and the challenge of development in Makoko, Lagos State, Nigeria: A rights-based perspective. Environmental Justice, 12(2), 41-47. doi.org/10.1089/env.2018.0020

Anguelovski, I. (2015). From toxic sites to parks as (green) LULUs? New challenges of inequity, privilege, gentrification, and exclusion for urban environmental justice. Journal of Planning Literature, 31(1), 23-36. doi.org/10.1177/0885412215610491

Beermann, J., Damodaran, A., Jörgensen, K., & Schreurs, M. A. (2016). Climate action in Indian cities: An emerging new research area. Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences, 13(1), 55-66. doi.org/10.1080/1943815x.2015.1130723

Calisto Friant, M. (2019). Deliberating for sustainability: Lessons from the Porto Alegre experiment with participatory budgeting. International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 11(1), 81-99. doi.org/10.1080/19463138.2019.1570219

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2021). Regional fact sheet - urban areas. Sixth Assessment Report. Working Group I - The Physical Science Basis. ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/factsheets/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Regional_Fact_Sheet_Urban_areas.pdf

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. (2019). Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. S. Díaz, J. Settele, E. S. Brondízio E.S., H. T. Ngo, M. Guèze, J. Agard, A. Arneth, P. Balvanera, K. A. Brauman, S. H. M. Butchart, K. M. A. Chan, L. A. Garibaldi, K. Ichii, J. Liu, S. M. Subramanian, G. F. Midgley, P. Miloslavich, Z. Molnár, D. Obura, A. Pfaff, S. Polasky, A. Purvis, J. Razzaque, B. Reyers, R. Roy Chowdhury, Y. J. Shin, I. J. Visseren-Hamakers, K. J. Willis, and C. N. Zayas (Eds.). ipbes.net/sites/default/files/inline/files/ipbes_global_assessment_report_summary_for_policymakers.pdf

Klopp, J. M., & Cavoli, C. (2019). Mapping minibuses in Maputo and Nairobi: Engaging paratransit in transportation planning in African cities. Transport Reviews, 39(5), 657-676. doi.org/10.1080/01441647.2019.1598513

Meehan, K., Jurjevich, J. R., Chun, N. M. J. W., & Sherrill, J. (2020). Geographies of insecure water access and the housing–water nexus in US cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(46), 28700-28707. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2007361117

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UN-Habitat. (2019). Mixed reality for public participation in urban and public space design: Towards a new way of crowdsourcing more inclusive smart cities. unhabitat.org/mixed-reality-for-public-participation-in-urban-and-public-spacedesign-towards-a-new-way-of

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Westman, L., Luederitz, C., Kundurpi, A., Mercado, A. J., Weber, O., & Burch, S. L. (2018). Conceptualizing businesses as social actors: A framework for understanding sustainability actions in small- and medium-sized enterprises. Business Strategy and the Environment, 28(2), 388-402. doi.org/10.1002/bse.2256

World Bank. (2020). Handbook for genderinclusive urban planning design. worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/publication/handbook-for-gender-inclusive-urban-planning-and-design

"Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we can not eat money.” Chief Seattle

There are approximately 370 million Indigenous Peoples today representing thousands of languages and cultures. Indigenous lands make up around 20% of the Earth’s territory, containing 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity—a sign Indigenous Peoples are the most effective stewards of the environment. In contrast with models of individual ownership, privatization, and development that have led to climate change, pollution, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, Indigenous Peoples have practiced sustainability for centuries.

There is no formal definition of Indigenous Peoples in international law. According to one definition, Indigenous Peoples are those who lived on their lands before colonial powers claimed the land through problematic legal doctrines of conquest, occupation, or other means. This resulted in dispossession, oppression, and creation of dependency. The international remedy to colonization is the right to self-determination, which is set out for Indigenous Peoples in Article 3 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

A modern understanding of who is Indigenous is based on different elements. A key one is self-identification as Indigenous and recognition and acceptance by the group as one of its members. This is well established, including in the International Labour Organization Convention Nº 169, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and in Article 33 of UNDRIP, adopted in 2007 by the UN General Assembly. Other important elements to identify Indigenous status include a strong link to territories and natural resources, and distinct social, economic, or political systems.

At the First International Conference of Indigenous Peoples in 1975 in Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada, Indigenous representatives decided to use the term “Indigenous Peoples” to refer to themselves at the international level. They adopted the 1975 Solemn Declaration where they refer to themselves as those “who have a consciousness of culture and peoplehood on the edge of each country’s borders and marginal to each country’s citizenship.” They did not feel represented by country governments at the United Nations. Almost 50 years after intense advocacy efforts in the international arena, the use of the term “Indigenous Peoples” is well-established at the UN, as is their right to self-determination, which is recognized not only in UNDRIP, but also in many other international human rights instruments and multilateral environmental agreements.

The Aboriginal vision of property was ecological space that creates our consciousness, not an ideological construct or fungible resource...Their vision is of different realms enfolded into a sacred space...[the] notion of self does not end with their flesh, but continues with the reach of their senses into the land but continues with the reach of their senses into the land

DAES, 2000, P.7

Recognition of the right to self-determination of Indigenous Peoples is vital to protect their traditions, and their social, cultural, economic, and political characteristics that are distinct from those of dominant governments. Indigenous Peoples hold unique knowledge systems and practices for the sustainable management of natural resources. Many have a special relationship with the environment, the land, and all living things. Against this backdrop, the Western view of land, natural resources, and nature in a commodified and more tradable manner stands in stark contrast.

Indigenous Peoples’ Participation at the UN

In 1923, Chief Deskaheh of the Iroquois Confederacy brought the Iroquois dispute with the Canadian Government over their sovereignty to the League of Nations. The dispute was dismissed as the League considered it a domestic matter (Anaya, 1996). Despite opposition from some states, including legislative prohibitions on organizing around land issues, Indigenous Peoples again ventured into the international arena half a century later. In 1972, Grand Chief George Manuel from the National Indian Brotherhood in Canada was part of the Canadian delegation to the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden (Crossen, 2017). This was the beginning of Indigenous participation in international environmental negotiations. However, the resulting Stockholm Declaration and Action Plan did not acknowledge Indigenous Peoples, demonstrating the need for more organizing. As a result, Manuel founded the first modern pan-Indigenous organization, the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP).

In 1977, the first UN conference with Indigenous delegates participating alongside states, the International NGO Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas, convened in Geneva, Switzerland. It had far-reaching repercussions, including the adoption of the “Declaration of Principles for the Defense of the Indigenous Nations and Peoples of the Western Hemisphere.” It also resolved “to observe October 12, the day of so-called ‘discovery’ of America, as an International Day of Solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples.” This conference also recommended creating the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP), which came to fruition in 1982. The WGIP gave Indigenous Peoples visibility at the UN (Dahl, 2012). Moreover, it provided a space for Indigenous Peoples to substantially contribute to the draft of UNDRIP, facilitated by Erica-Irene Daes, who played a pivotal role in promoting the Indigenous cause, both within and beyond the WGIP.

The process of drafting UNDRIP took almost three decades of intense and complicated negotiations. From the outset, controversial issues included the recognition of the right to self-determination, collective land rights, and the requirement of their free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) to major projects on their lands and territories. UNDRIP enshrines these three elements and has since guided developments on Indigenous rights across international negotiations.

Indigenous Peoples wanted to create a permanent forum as high in the UN hierarchy as possible, with a mandate beyond human rights. This was achieved in 2001, when the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) was established under the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). UNPFII began to integrate Indigenous Peoples as participants with similar rights to states for the first time in UN history (Dahl, 2012). Eight members of the UNPFII are appointed by governments and eight by the president of ECOSOC on the recommendation of Indigenous Peoples’ representatives. At the UNPFII, Indigenous Peoples’ appointed experts adopt resolutions, and provide recommendations to governments and UN bodies. The UNPFII, together with the appointment in 2001 of a Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the 2007 Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples under the UN Human Rights Council, have expanded awareness on the views and situation of Indigenous Peoples.

Challenging the Prevailing Discourse on Sustainable Development

Indigenous Peoples challenge prevailing Western discourses, such as on human rights and on the normative foundations of the international world order and the UN (Tauli-Corpus, 1999). The worldviews of Indigenous Peoples have also challenged the prevalent discourse on sustainable development, calling for recognition and respect of their traditional knowledge and collective rights to use and control the lands and natural resources that they depend on and strive to protect.

Indigenous Peoples occupied a prominent role in the preparatory sessions for the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Tauli-Corpus, 1999). Their lobbying and organizing efforts, which began in Stockholm 20 years earlier, resulted in a wider recognition of Indigenous Peoples in Agenda 21, the programme of action adopted in Rio. In addition to being referenced throughout the 40-chapter action programme, Chapter 26 explicitly called for establishment of a process to empower Indigenous Peoples and their communities through various measures. Chapter 26 also called for the involvement of Indigenous Peoples and their communities at the national and local levels in resource management and conservation strategies to support and review sustainable development strategies.

We also recognize the importance of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the context of global, regional, national and subnational implementation of sustainable development strategies.

THE FUTURE WE WANT, PARAGRAPH 49

Since 1992, Indigenous Peoples have engaged directly in UN processes on sustainable development, including in the Commission on Sustainable Development (1993-2013) and its successor, the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. At the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in 2012, the outcome document, “The Future We Want,” recognized the importance of the participation of Indigenous Peoples in the achievement of sustainable development.

Indigenous Peoples’ organizations also worked on the sidelines of the sustainable development process adopting a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2010. This declaration stands in opposition to the green economy and growth narrative, which later underpinned the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Protecting Biodiversity

Indigenous Peoples are recognized in the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as essential to reaching the convention’s objectives (Schabus, 2017). In CBD Article 8(j), in particular, parties agree to respect, preserve, and maintain the knowledge, innovations, and practices of Indigenous Peoples relevant for the conservation of biological diversity and to promote their wider application with the approval of knowledge holders and to encourage equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the use of biological diversity.

The establishment of the CBD Working Group on Article 8(j) and Related Provisions in 1998 resulted from intense and effective lobbying efforts of Indigenous Peoples. The Working Group provides a forum for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and other nonstate actors to participate in similar ways as states, albeit without the right to vote. Even though states must endorse their proposals, the space and instruments created for Indigenous Peoples in the CBD negotiations are “unprecedented” in the environmental arena (Schabus, 2017). Furthermore, considerations relating to the traditional knowledge of Indigenous Peoples have been incorporated into all the programmes of work under the Convention. Under its programme of work to implement the commitments of Article 8(j), the CBD has adopted a number of key voluntary guidelines:

• Akwé: Kon Voluntary Guidelines for the conduct of cultural, environmental and social impact assessments regarding developments proposed to take place on, or which are likely to impact on, sacred sites and on lands and waters traditionally occupied or used by Indigenous and local communities
• Tkarihwaié:ri Code of Ethical Conduct to Ensure Respect for the Cultural and Intellectual Heritage of Indigenous and Local Communities
• Mo’otz Kuxtal Voluntary Guidelines for the development of mechanisms, legislation, or other appropriate initiatives to ensure the “prior and informed consent,” “free, prior and informed consent,” or “approval and involvement,” depending on national circumstances, of Indigenous Peoples and local communities for accessing their knowledge, innovations and practices, for fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of their knowledge, innovations, and practices relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, and for reporting and preventing unlawful appropriation of traditional knowledge
• Rutzolijirisaxik Voluntary Guidelines for the repatriation of traditional knowledge relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity

The adoption of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing was a milestone in the recognition of the intrinsic link between genetic resources and Indigenous knowledge and associated rights. The Protocol is the first multilateral environmental agreement with substantive provisions on Indigenous rights (Schabus, 2017, p. 271). It states that traditional knowledge and associated genetic resources can only be accessed with the prior informed consent (PIC) of Indigenous Peoples, and if such access is authorized, fair and equitable sharing of benefits must be ensured.

But challenges to integrate Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and worldviews in the environmental field continue, as illustrated by experiences at the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). IPBES embodies “one of the most ambitious attempts to date to bridge the divide between scientific and indigenous and local knowledge” (Löfmarck & Lidskog, 2017 p. 22). To bridge this divide, IPBES established a task force on Indigenous and local knowledge systems, methodologies and an approach to recognize and work with Indigenous and local knowledge across all its assessments, most recently for those on sustainable use of wild species, values of nature, and invasive alien species. However, IPBES struggles to live up to its ambitions within the confines of the Western scientific system. For instance, it focuses mainly on the inclusion or exclusion of different actors instead of how their visions and values are represented through the selection of authors and evidence for IPBES assessments (Beck & Forsyth, 2020). This matters as power resides with those who frame issues and processes, which for IPBES largely remains with people within the Western scientific worldview.

Adapting to and Mitigating the Climate Crisis

Climate change aggravates the disadvantages already faced by Indigenous Peoples, including human rights violations, poor socio-economic conditions, and discrimination (ILO, 2017). At the same time, measures to address climate change, such as the construction of dams, biofuel plantations, tree farms, and nuclear power plants can also have negative effects on Indigenous communities, including by restricting access to their land and natural resources. Such measures often lead to a rise in land grabs, disruption of traditional practices, and community displacement (Recio & Wallbot, 2017). Indigenous Peoples’ participation in climate politics is key to reducing the risks to their livelihoods.

Indigenous Peoples have criticized the predominant Western understanding of climate change, which they see as a result of the same mindset that promoted the exploitation of people and resources during colonization (Gram-Hanssen, Schafenacker & Bentz, 2021). Their historic experience and holistic perspective of nature-human relationships makes them key agents in developing climate solutions.

However, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) did not include any reference to Indigenous Peoples and they were not formally recognized as a constituency in the UNFCCC until 2001. In 2008, the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) was established as the caucus for Indigenous Peoples participating in UNFCCC processes. They have lobbied, unsuccessfully so far, for equivalent participatory rights to states, including through a working group on Indigenous Peoples, similar to that of the CBD Working Group on Art 8(j) (Powless, 2012).

The UNFCCC continues to marginalize Indigenous knowledge in the climate discussions (Comberti et al., 2016), with the 2015 Paris Agreement failing to fully recognize the role of and the need to further integrate Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and practices in climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. One case in point is an initiative under the UNFCCC called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). REDD+ intends to financially compensate developing countries for keeping their standing forests and has raised huge but short-term expectations for funding. However, much of the standing forests in the developing world are inhabited by Indigenous Peoples (Frechette et al., 2016). Implementation of REDD+ can therefore cause severe constraints to their access to forest resources, affecting traditional livelihoods and aggravating their socio-economic conditions. But Indigenous Peoples were barely considered in the initial proposal.

Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we can not eat money.

CHIEF SEATTLE

Indigenous Peoples’ efforts played a pivotal role in the adoption by the UNFCCC of the 2010 Cancun Safeguards, which recognize the need to ensure respect for the knowledge and rights of Indigenous Peoples, although avoiding the term “traditional knowledge.” The Safeguards require “the full and effective participation of relevant stakeholders, in particular, Indigenous Peoples and local communities,” instead of acknowledging Indigenous Peoples’ right to the free, prior, and informed consent called for under UNDRIP.

REDD+ was also criticized by Indigenous Peoples as grounded on a materialist and simplistic view of forests. Some communities in the Amazon have put forward an Indigenous version of REDD+, based on a traditional combination of productive use of the forest with simultaneous protection (Alonso, 2016). The proposal in Peru, for example, is principled on the primacy of collective rights of Indigenous Peoples, including to self-determination, consent, and lands. However, as Dupuits and Cronkleton (2020) argue, these initiatives must still overcome fragmented institutional governance of forests and continued challenges related to Indigenous tenure security.

Beyond Inclusion for Improved Outcomes

Indigenous Peoples are critical to sustaining the diversity of life on Earth. Many Indigenous Peoples are at the frontlines of resisting the drivers of the global environmental crisis. During the Glasgow Climate Change Conference in 2021, the Guardian highlighted the leadership of six young Indigenous women, arguing that Indigenous Peoples have done more than any government to solve climate change. Yet, international and national policies and laws do not recognize and support their collective rights (Tauli-Corpus et al., 2020). Respecting their rights and ensuring sufficient legal and financial support for their significant role as guardians of nature, culture, knowledge holders, and agents of change is essential, and a necessary first step.

It is time to get serious about Indigenous Peoples’ leadership and integrating new and traditional knowledge to create solutions—and systems—that work both for people and the planet. If the international community is to succeed with its sustainability agenda, it matters what worldviews underpin its creation and control. If Western cultures continue to subjugate Indigenous knowledge, humanity’s collective future will be compromised. It took many years for Indigenous Peoples to put forward their rich and long-lasting traditional knowledge and worldviews in the international arena. Indigenous Peoples are willing and able to lead and “require only that other... actors... sit down and talk—or simply catch up” (Powless, 2012, p. 421).

If traditional knowledge is integrated with other scientific and technological knowledge, innovative and equitable ways of creating a better future for all can be found. An example is the AI Laboratory, which develops and applies Indigenous protocols to the making of artificial intelligence based on caring for country and kin. The IPBES assessments, the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, and implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change present significant opportunities for further dialogue, leadership, and convergence in the international arena. A key question is whether the international community will finally have the courage to move away from the status quo and follow the lead of Indigenous Peoples.

Works Consulted

Alonso, J. (2016). Colombia, Ecuador y Perú apuestan por incluir un enfoque indígena en la gestión de los bosques. p.dw.com/p/1IsR5

Beck, S., & Forsyth, T. (2020). Who gets to imagine transformative change? Participation and representation in biodiversity assessments. Environmental Conservation, 1-4. doi.org/10.1017/S0376892920000272

Comberti, C., Thornton, T., & Korodimou, M. (2016). Addressing Indigenous Peoples’ marginalisation at international climate negotiations: Adaptation and resilience at the margins. Social Science Research Network. doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2870412

Crossen, J. (2017). Another Wave of Anti-Colonialism: The Origins of Indigenous Internationalism. Canadian Journal of History 52(3), 533-559. doi.org/10.3138/cjh.ach.52.3.06

Daes, E-I. (2000). Indigenous Peoples and their relationship to land. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2001/21. digitallibrary.un.org/record/419881?ln=en

Daes, E-I. (2009). The contribution of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations to the genesis and evolution of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In C. Charters & R. Stavenhagen (Eds.), Making the declaration work (pp. 48-77) IWGIA.

Dahl, J. (2012). The Indigenous space and marginalized peoples in the United Nations. Palgrave Macmillan.

Dupuits, E., & Conkleton, P. (2020). Indigenous tenure security and local participation in climate mitigation programs: Exploring the institutional gaps of REDD+ implementation in the Peruvian Amazon. Environmental Policy and Governance 30(4), 209-220. doi.org/10.1002/eet.1888

Frechette A., Reytar, K., Saini, S., & Walker, W. (2016) Toward a global baseline of carbon storage in collective lands. Rights and Resources Initiative. rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Toward-a-Global-Baseline-of-Carbon-Storage-in-Collective-Lands-November-2016-RRIWHRC-WRI-report.pdf

Gram-Hanssen, I., Schafenacker, N., & Bentz, J. (2021). Decolonizing transformations through ‘right relations.’ Sustainability Science. doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00960-9

Löfmarck, E., & Lidskog, R. (2017). Bumping against the boundary: IPBES and the knowledge divide. Environmental Science & Policy, 69, 22–28. doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2016.12.008

Powless, B. (2012). An Indigenous movement to confront climate change. Globalizations 9(3), 411–424. doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2012.680736

Schabus, N. (2017). Traditional knowledge. In E. Morgera & J. Razzaque (Eds.), Biodiversity and nature protection law (pp. 264-279). Elgar.

Tauli-Corpuz, V. (1999). Thirty years of lobbying and advocacy by Indigenous Peoples in the international arena. Indigenous Affairs 1, 4–11.

Tauli-Corpuz, V., Alcorn, J., Molnar, A., Healy, C., & Barrow, E. (2020). Cornered by PAs: Adopting rights-based approaches to enable cost-effective conservation and climate action. World Development 130, 104923. doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.104923

Wallbott, L., & Recio, E. (2018). Practicing human rights across scale: Indigenous peoples’ affectedness and recognition in REDD+ governance. Third World Thematics 3(5–6), 785–806. doi.org/10.1080/23802014.2018.1599691

In 2016, Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi played a hauntingly beautiful composition, “Elegy for the Arctic,” as he floated on an artificial ice platform in the Arctic Ocean constructed for the occasion. Seeking to raise awareness about the “purity and fragility” of the Arctic, he played a grand piano against the backdrop of the stunning Wahlenbergbreen glacier in Svalbard, Norway (Knijf, 2016). Greenpeace Spain organized the event to bring the world’s attention to the need for an Arctic sanctuary to protect one of the world’s most fragile ecosystems; one whose existence as we know it is threatened by climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.

The ancient Greeks named the region Arktos, meaning bear, “a reference to the Great Bear constellation that circles the northern sky” (New Internationalist, 2009). The name is fitting as the polar bear has become the most iconic symbol of the Arctic. Increasingly unable to access once plentiful food as sea ice disappears, the world’s largest land-based predator and other Arctic wildlife are struggling to survive. As the glaciers around them melt, their very existence is threatened, as are the ways of life of Indigenous Peoples who have called the Arctic home for thousands of years. As climate change opens up shipping routes and access to mineral deposits, this environmental devastation is likely to accelerate.

Given the immense challenges posed by climate change and other environmental threats, cooperation among the Arctic states, and the international community more generally, is needed now more than ever to ensure the Arctic, its inhabitants, and their way of life survive.

What Is the Arctic?

The Arctic is the northernmost region on Earth. It is dominated by the Arctic Ocean basin, with the Russian Federation, the United States, Canada, and the five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) all claiming part of it.

It is a place of extremes that easily capture the imagination: hard to reach; hostile, yet stunningly beautiful; fragile, yet rugged.

About four million people live in the Arctic region, with Indigenous Peoples making up a minority of the population. They include, to name a few: the Inuit in Canada, Alaska (US) and Greenland; the Yu’pik, Iñupiat, and Athabascan in Alaska; and the Sami in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Russian Federation. Although ethnically diverse and geographically dispersed, they hunt the same animals, organize their communities along cooperative lines, and have adapted to “a harsh, yet abundant, environment” (New Internationalist, 2009).

Climate Change and the Arctic

The Arctic could be warming up to four times as fast as other regions in the world, according to research undertaken by a team of climate scientists (Voosen, 2021), with a recent study predicting summer sea ice could disappear entirely as early as 2035 (Borunda, 2020).

Arctic sea ice extent is declining each year (IPCC, 2019), with approximately 75% of ice volume disappearing in the last 15 years alone. The remaining ice is thinner and of poorer quality (Purtill, 2021). For the first time since record keeping began, rain fell on the summit of Greenland, a “reliably frozen region” that sits two miles above sea level (Sierra Club, 2021). Scientists have recorded the calls of orcas in areas of the Arctic once blocked by sea ice, threatening the survival of animals up and down the food chain (Purtill, 2021). And in 2020, 21,000 tonnes of diesel spilled from a storage tank at Norilsk Nickel’s power plant in Siberia, polluting rivers and lakes. Investigators believe the tank sank because of melting permafrost due to global warming, which weakened the tank’s supports. Hence, the accident both caused and was the result of environmental destruction in the Arctic (BBC, 2021).

Melting permafrost not only releases carbon dioxide, but also methane and black carbon—short-lived climate pollutants that, while remaining in the atmosphere for shorter periods of time, are 25 times more potent and powerful than carbon dioxide in terms of their contribution to global warming. Black carbon, which causes up to a quarter of warming in the Arctic, is a dark soot that deposits in snow and ice when released, accelerating melting (Shankman, 2018).

Declining sea ice also means the Arctic Ocean will likely see increased commercial shipping and tourist cruises. Large commercial ships are increasingly entering once inaccessible areas, disturbing wildlife and dumping trash as new commercial shipping routes across the Arctic shorten the distance between Europe and Asia. The Arctic is also rich in mineral resources, including vast oil and gas reserves, with the US Geological Survey estimating the Arctic has around a quarter of the world’s oil and gas deposits. As the ice retreats, oil, gas, and other mineral deposits become accessible, drawing private sector actors to the region.

While further environmental damage is inevitable, it can be minimized if actions are taken to restrict or outright ban some of these activities. However, this can only be done through cooperation among Arctic states and the larger international community. No one country can do it alone.

Arctic Cooperation

International cooperative efforts on the environment can be traced back to the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm, Sweden, which opened a new era of environmental diplomacy. The Stockholm Conference first expressed the idea that marine environmental protection is the international community’s responsibility and is not a matter subject to the discretion of the world shipping industry or individual countries (Lamson, 1987). While not explicitly mentioned in the Stockholm Action Plan, protecting the Arctic represents an example of where bordering countries from different continents with varied interests can cooperate.

On 1 October 1987, then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called for international cooperation and a “zone of peace” in the Arctic. Speaking in Murmansk, the largest city above the Arctic Circle in what was then the Soviet Union, he called for East-West talks to restrict military activity in the northern seas. While military cooperation was met with resistance and has yet to be realized, many viewed his entreaties on the environmental and economic fronts as “laying the foundation” for future cooperation in the Arctic. The steps he outlined, often referred to as the Murmansk Initiative, provided inspiration for some tangible achievements. His call for scientific research coordination provided additional impetus to talks already underway for what became the International Arctic Science Committee in 1990. More significantly, his call for cooperation on environmental protection and management contributed to the establishment of the Arctic Council, the preeminent international forum on Arctic issues.

The community and interrelationship of the interests of our entire world is felt in the northern part of the globe, in the Arctic, perhaps more than anywhere else.

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1987

Following Gorbachev’s speech, Finland’s Foreign and Environment Ministers invited the Arctic States to Rovaniemi in 1989 to discuss how they could address Arctic degradation. Two years later, they established the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS) to address the region’s environmental challenges. While the AEPS was considered a “landmark” step, Canada supported a more formal and expanded forum to enhance cooperation among Arctic countries, and ensure the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples. In 1995, under the leadership of Mary Simon, a member of the Inuit community, Canada initiated discussions with other Arctic countries to transform the AEPS into a new organization with a broader mandate and Indigenous participation (Arctic Council, 2021).

On 19 September 1996 in Ottawa, Canada, the Arctic Council was established. The Council consists of the eight Arctic countries: the Arctic Five (the five coastal states)—the United States, the Russian Federation, Canada, Denmark, and Norway—plus Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. It is unique in that Indigenous communities are formal “Permanent Participants,” a status that ensures their full participation in Council deliberations. In addition to the eight Arctic states and six Permanent Participants (representing Indigenous groups from all over the Arctic), the Council has 38 observers, including 13 non-Arctic states, intergovernmental and interparliamentary organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

The Ottawa Declaration set up the basic framework and mandate of the Council, which currently has six working groups:

• Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) monitors and assesses pollution and climate change issues.
• Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna Working Group (CAFF) focuses on biodiversity-related issues and enables the exchange of data and information on shared species and habitats.
• Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response Working Group (EPPR) provides a framework for responding to environmental emergencies.
• Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment Working Group (PAME) addresses policy and non-emergency response measures related to the protection of the marine environment from land and sea-based activities.
• Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG) formalized the Council’s role beyond the environment.
• Arctic Contaminants Action Program (ACAP) aims to prevent and reduce pollution and environmental risks.

Three legally binding agreements have been negotiated under the auspices of the Arctic Council:

• 2011 Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic
• 2013 Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic
• 2017 Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation

Expert groups address pressing and emerging issues, such as black carbon and methane and litter and microplastics. An expert group addressing the latter is developing the first comprehensive monitoring plan for plastics in the Arctic.

The Arctic Council is a model for global governance. It is inclusive of Indigenous Peoples and perspectives, committed to scientific-based decision-making, and a champion of regional peace and stability. However, it remains constrained by funding and its relatively weak legal structure. Its two-year rotating chairmanship has led to a lack of continuity in the Council’s work. New agendas are introduced every second year that often reflect the domestic interests of the host country more than the needs of the region (Exner-Pirot et al., 2019).

And in the rare case of a war initiated by an Arctic Council country, no less the current Chair, work can be essentially halted. On 3 March 2022, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and the US issued a joint statement following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, stating that their representatives would not travel to the Russian Federation for Arctic Council meetings. Additionally, the statement notes a temporary pause in participation at all Council meetings and those of its subsidiary bodies, pending consideration of modalities to enable work to continue in view of the circumstances (US Department of State, 2022).

Persistent Organic Pollutants

One successful example of international cooperation in the Arctic was the response to the discovery of high levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the 1970s and 1980s. POPs, which are produced and released by mines, military sites, smelters, power stations, and other sources, can cause cancer, damage to the nervous system, reproductive disorders, and disruption of the immune system. POPs generally do not originate in the Arctic but are transported over long distances via air, water, and to a lesser extent migratory species. A 1997 AMAP study, Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of the Arctic Environment Report, found caribou in Canada’s Northwest Territories had 10 times the levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as the lichen on which they grazed, and wolves, which eat the caribou, had nearly 60 times as much (US EPA, 2009). Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic are exposed to POPs by consuming fish and other animals. This discovery served as a catalyst for what ultimately became the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which calls on governments to eliminate or reduce the release of POPs into the environment.

A soapstone carving of an Inuit mother cradling her child symbolizes the importance of this issue to Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic. It sat by John Buccini, a Canadian diplomat, as he chaired the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee responsible for the final legally binding agreement on POPs. The carving was a gift from Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit woman, who was influential in getting the Stockholm Convention negotiated and adopted.

[A] poisoned Inuk child, a poisoned Arctic, and a poisoned planet are all one and the same.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, June 1998

The Convention’s preamble acknowledges Arctic ecosystems and Indigenous communities are particularly at risk because of the “biomagnification of POPs and that contamination of their traditional foods is a public health issue.” A report has found that restricting and banning the use of these chemicals has had positive impacts on the Arctic (NIST, 2018), confirming the successful implementation of the Stockholm Convention.

The Arctic as a Bellwether

While what happens in the rest of the world affects the Arctic, the reverse is also true. “The Arctic is a bellwether,” warned former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. What is happening in the Arctic affects other parts of the world and should serve as a warning to us all. Direct links can be made between more extreme temperature fluctuations—including hotter summers in the US and Canada, warming of the Mediterranean Sea and East Asia, and colder winters and more snow in mid-latitudes across North America, Europe, and East Asia—and diminishing summer Arctic sea ice that changes atmospheric circulation patterns (Thompson, 2016). To ensure the Arctic survives, economic development in the region must be balanced with environmental protection.

Greenpeace first floated the idea of an Arctic sanctuary at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2012. Greenpeace called for a protected area that would be off-limits to extractive and destructive uses, covering the central Arctic Ocean beyond the 200-nautical mile limit of Arctic coastal states’ exclusive economic zones. Fishing, exploration, and extraction of hydrocarbons or other minerals from the seabed, as well as military activity would be prohibited. Strict environmental controls would apply to shipping in the area, including the prohibition of heavy fuel oil use (Greenpeace, 2014). As the proposed sanctuary would be “beyond national jurisdiction,” the Arctic Council and other members of the international community would need to work together to make it happen.

Short of an Arctic sanctuary, a range of policy options exist, many of which are under discussion in various international fora or at the national level. For example, a network of marine protected areas could also be established to help halt and reverse environmental damage that is already occurring from increased shipping.

We need to save the Arctic not because of the polar bears, and not

because it is the most beautiful place in the world, but because our very survival depends upon it.

Lewis Pugh, Ocean advocate, after swimming across the North Pole in 2007.

The International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) International Code for Ships Operating in Polar Waters (Polar Code), which entered into force in 2017, includes measures to mitigate the impacts of shipping in the Arctic. It details ship designs to prevent accidents and limits the discharge of oil, chemicals, sewage, and garbage. However, it does not go far enough to prevent shipping accidents and pollution (Schopmans, 2019). While a “ban” on heavy fuel oil, a source of black carbon emissions, was adopted in 2021, most ships are likely to continue using it until 2029 and beyond (Reuters, 2021). By then, it may be too late to reverse any environmental devastation caused by shipping.

Nevertheless, most Arctic issues—from Indigenous knowledge and livelihoods to shipping to sanitation to wildlife protection—come back to climate change and its impacts. The reluctance of some countries, especially the United States and Russia, over the years to commit to mitigating climate change through reducing greenhouse gas emissions, let alone discuss the challenges of adapting to a post-petroleum future, has prevented the Council from addressing this major threat (Exner-Pirot et al., 2019). Stronger and broader local, national, and international measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must be implemented. Increased funding and investment, as well as capacity, is also critical to implement these and other actions in the region.

The disappearance of sea ice and the plight of Arctic wildlife and Indigenous culture should serve as a wake-up call. It is not too late to reverse the trend and slow the melting—but that window of opportunity may close in the face of continued inaction.

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At some time, most of us have experienced the frustration of a blocked toilet for a few hours or days. Now imagine your life without a working toilet—ever.

This is the reality for 673 million people in the world today—about twice the population of the United States—who don’t have a toilet in their homes (UNICEF & WHO, 2020). Moreover, 698 million school-age children do not have basic sanitation services at school and more than half the world’s population—4.3 billion—use sanitation services that release untreated human waste into the environment, contaminating water sources (UNICEF & WHO, 2020).

That is not all. Three of every 10 people, or 2.1 billion, still do not have access to safe drinking water, whether from household or public taps, bottled water deliveries, rainwater, borewells, or natural springs protected from contamination (WHO & UNICEF, 2017). Every day, 700 children under five years of age die from a diarrheal disease. That is about one child every two minutes. If you have an average reading speed, by the time you reach the end of this brief, 11 children will have died.

Many such deaths could be prevented if everyone had access to safe drinking water, sanitation services, and good hygiene. Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) also improves opportunities for education and work; for example, availability of facilities to manage menstrual hygiene in schools clearly improves girls’ attendance, in both rich and poor countries alike (Tegegne & Sisay, 2014; Sebert Kuhlmann et al., 2020).

The 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment identified “health and sanitation” as necessities for a decent life, along with food, clothing, shelter, and education. The resulting Stockholm Action Plan’s 109 recommendations included calls for water supply, sewerage and waste disposal systems adapted to local conditions. Yet, 50 years later, ensuring water and sanitation for all remains one of the world’s biggest challenges.

Did International Action Achieve Water and Sanitation Targets?

Five years after the 1972 Stockholm Conference, the first-ever UN international water summit convened in Mar del Plata, Argentina. The summit discussed water use and efficiency, environment, and health and pollution control, among other objectives. The summit also adopted the Mar del Plata Action Plan and called for an International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade to be observed from 1981-1990—a recommendation the UN General Assembly later adopted.

The Mar del Plata summit and the International Decade boosted action to improve the lives of the millions without access to potable water and toilets and drew attention to the need for a holistic approach that would include care for water in the environment. But toward the close of that decade, despite some progress, developing countries still lacked the necessary financing, technology, and human resource capacity to fulfil their own national action plans on water and sanitation (Biswas, 1988). One reason was that development banks had introduced stricter conditionalities on borrowing during the 1980s, limiting the opportunities for poorer countries to establish the large-scale infrastructure they needed (Muller, 2015). Other factors, such as rapid urbanization and rise of informal urban settlements around many cities, also posed challenges for governments in providing water and sanitation services.

The 1992 International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin, Ireland, convened just prior to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro and set the framework for integrated water resource management (IWRM) that governments and others sought to implement in the long term. The “Dublin Principles” that emerged from these deliberations were incorporated into Chapter 18 of Agenda 21, the programme of action adopted in Rio in June 1992. The Principles addressed catchment management, the importance of the role of women, and participation by local communities and other stakeholders in water management. They became widely accepted in the world of water policy, at least in principle. However, developing countries and poorer populations did not necessarily benefit from technical advice on institution building and stakeholder participation when what they wanted was water pipes and treatment plants. The deliberative democracy approach promoted through IWRM was also difficult to achieve, even in countries with strong and liberal democratic systems (Muller, 2015).

The water and sanitation agenda received a boost when UN Member States adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. The MDGs focused on solving global poverty and served as a framework to coordinate donor aid toward implementing international commitments. MDG 7 contained a suite of environmentally related targets, including target 7C that pledged to halve the proportion of the world’s population lacking sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.

UN agencies reported achievement of MDG target 7C by 2010, five years ahead of schedule, with 2.6 billion people reportedly gaining access to “improved” drinking water sources. The criteria for achievement, however, were set too low. The indicator, “access to an improved water source,” did not consider water quality. A new tap or pump well could be delivering contaminated water and would still qualify as “improved,” under this criterion (Weststrate et al., 2019). Another indicator, “access to an improved sanitation facility,” did not include any requirement for the safe collection, treatment, and disposal of wastewater and fecal sludge. While the UN’s Joint Monitoring Programme estimated 62% of the world’s population had access to basic sanitation, other assessments that included sewage treatment as a criterion placed that figure at just 40% (Weststrate et al., 2019).

The extent to which water resources development contributes to economic productivity and social well-being is not usually appreciated, although all social and economic activities rely heavily on the supply and quality of freshwater

AGENDA 21, PARAGRAPH 18.6

UN Member States committed to a higher level of ambition when they adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015. SDG 6 on access to water and sanitation contains targets for wastewater treatment, water-use efficiency, IWRM (including transboundary cooperation), and the protection and restoration of water-related ecosystems. SDG 6 also includes implementation-focused targets for international cooperation and capacity building, and for participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management.

While the MDG target was limited in scope, SDG 6 reflects the holistic approach that was advocated in the early global conferences on water. It takes into account the entire water cycle, as well as the human and institutional capacities that will be needed to deliver water and sanitation for all.

SDG 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Going Beyond Toilets and Taps

Human health and environmental quality are connected. Rivers, lakes, forests, and all water-related ecosystems influence the quality and quantity of available water for urban and rural populations. Where environmental degradation occurs, the goal of providing safe drinking water and sanitation gets harder to reach. Deforestation of watersheds can increase flash floods and landslides, increasing the sediment load and turbidity of water sources, and decreasing household access to clean drinking water (Mapulanga & Naito, 2019). Water quality is also affected by excessive nutrients from fertilizers and detergents, salinity intrusion, and organic waste. Developing countries discharge almost 90% of sewage untreated into water bodies, and 1.8 billion people use a source of drinking water with fecal contamination (Bhaduri et al., 2016). The UN Joint Monitoring Programme on water and sanitation anticipates that, at the current rate of progress, by 2030 there will still be 1.6 billion people in the world without access to safe drinking water at home.

These pressures have increased in the 50 years since the Stockholm Conference and the impacts are not limited to developing countries. In 2021, UN-Water reported 80% of the world’s wetland ecosystems, which play important roles in filtering out sediment and pollutants, are already lost.

For everyone to have access to safe drinking water and properly managed sanitation services, water security is an integral concern. There needs to be greater emphasis on managing water risk and adopting a precautionary approach at every level of governance.

The World Water Assessment Programme, coordinated by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), issues regular assessments on the state of the world’s freshwater resources. Such reports have promoted understanding of water risk as a product of drivers such as agriculture, food and energy demand, international trade, and climate change.

Concepts of “virtual water,” “water footprint,” and “green water” underline the interconnections between water resources and environmental quality with trade and land use patterns, and show who benefits, or not, from available water. For example, the calculation of water footprints—the amount of water used to produce particular goods or services—can show which activities are the most water- intensive. The water footprint of a golf course requiring lavish watering may be difficult to justify in places where residents are subject to water rationing as reservoir levels fall. Similarly, the concept of virtual water takes into account the water used in traded products, from coffee to cars to computers. Some products may be grown or manufactured in water-scarce regions and then exported to water-rich regions, compounding patterns of global inequity (Gupta et al., 2013).

Green water—the water available to support terrestrial ecosystems—maintains the healthy forests and grasslands that support the water cycle. Water is indeed “the bloodstream of the biosphere” (Falkenmark, 2017).

Over 2 billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress, and about 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year. Stress levels will continue to increase as demand for water grows and the effects of climate change intensify

UN WORLD WATER DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2019

Climate change is leading to greater variability in the water cycle and is one of the global drivers of demand for water resources for use in producing energy, food, and other necessities. UN-Water, which coordinates the efforts of UN entities and international organizations working on water and sanitation issues, has called for greater investment in producing hydrological data, conducting risk assessment, and educating water users, ultimately building capacity and expertise for better water management. As countries prepare their national adaptation plans (NAPs) and other climate-related strategies, action on water risk must be a key part of solutions.

Focusing on the Poorest

Exposure to water risk is not the same for everyone. Minorities, slum dwellers, and the poor face higher levels of risk. Even in places where water is abundant and infrastructure sufficient, issues of social exclusion and inequality can limit universal access to water and sanitation.

The UN World Water Development Report 2019 noted poor communities often do not benefit from government investment in water and sewage infrastructure. They may live in temporary dwellings or shantytowns that don’t have infrastructure connections. They may pay higher prices for water they buy directly from vendors than they would for piped water.

For example, women and girls in low-income countries spend some 40 billion hours a year collecting water. That is equivalent to the annual effort of the entire workforce of a country like France. The time spent could be much better invested in earning a livelihood or—in the case of girls—attending school. It is time to change how we value and manage water (Guterres, 2018).

For universal access to become a reality, governments and private-sector service providers should adopt a human rights-based approach to ensure water and sanitation services are safe, available, accessible, affordable, and culturally acceptable. Access to services should be monitored through the experiences of women and minorities. Setting global priorities for climate-resilient water and sanitation could address, for example, the provision of drinking water and sanitation services in places where there is large-scale human displacement. While cost recovery measures for water and sanitation services are appropriate in some contexts, collecting disaggregated data will help determine which groups are at highest risk of being left behind and what services should be subsidized.

More than 30 UN organizations conduct water and sanitation programmes. UN-Water convenes meetings twice a year as a global coordinating platform for the UN family of organizations active in this area. The UN-hosted Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) partnership, founded in 2009, has more than 270 voluntary partners, including development banks and philanthropic foundations, as well as more than 170 civil society, private sector, and academic organizations.

Despite these efforts, the world is far from achieving water and sanitation for all by 2030. To meet the 2030 deadline for the SDGs, progress on some targets needs to be about four times faster, according to UN-Water’s own monitoring mechanism on SDG 6.

The UN launched a new International Decade for Action on Water and Sanitation in 2018. International campaigns and special days, such as World Water Day and World Toilet Day, continue to promote action on water and sanitation through public awareness activities, conferences, and events. In March 2023, UN Member States will hold a three-day high-level summit and mid-term review of the Decade’s achievements. At the 35th UN-Water meeting in 2021, delegates proposed the summit should link SDG 6 targets to other objectives, including good governance, gender equality, climate action, and human rights.

For all the goodwill and political commitment expressed, meetings and targets on water will not be enough. Water and sanitation are also influenced by action on biodiversity, land use, chemicals and waste, and disaster risk reduction, in addition to the crosscutting objectives proposed by UN-Water. Global agreement-making in all these areas already includes commitments to increase development aid, enable access to technology, and promote a just and fair society. Concerted efforts across all these areas are needed to achieve water and sanitation for all. Fulfilment of countries’ commitments under various global agreements will contribute to achievement of SDG 6—and failure to meet commitments will hinder it.

For example, increasing financing for adaptation to climate change—a promise of the 2021 Glasgow Climate Change Conference—could help protect threatened water resources. Tree planting to counter rising temperatures in cities, say, would also increase green water in the landscape, promoting water security. Infrastructure to protect coastal communities against storm surges could also prevent salinization of freshwater sources. Projects to house displaced people could include connections to wastewater and sewage treatment.

There needs to be a greater focus on the governance of water security, including responsibility and accountability for agreed standards, enforcement against polluters, and anti-corruption measures—issues that often block progress. Creative financing methods such as Costa Rica’s wastewater discharge environmental fee, Cambodia’s sanitation development impact bond, and Kenya’s credit rating scheme for utilities—described in a 2020 handbook for finance ministers released by SWA in 2020—could be part of the policy mix. Education for “water literacy” to increase understanding of the water cycle and the drivers of water risk will also promote adoption of strict policy measures in favor of needed water security.

It is time to change how we value and manage water.

UN SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES

Drinking a glass of water straight from the tap or flushing a toilet in the privacy of one’s home cannot be taken for granted. Social inequalities mean many people today do not have these two options. For many more, water risk in their part of the world also means the future might not include them.

A Slovakian proverb states, “Pure water is the world’s first and foremost medicine.” The world should prioritize action for universal access to water and sanitation—not only for human health, but also because ensuring water supply and treating wastewater are among the best ways to maintain a healthy planet.

Works Consulted

Bhaduri, A., Bogardi, J., Siddiqi, A., Voigt, H., Vörösmarty, C., Pahl-Wostl, C., Bunn, S. E., Shrivastava, P., Lawford, R., Foster, S., Kremer, H., Renaud, F. G., Bruns, A., & Osuna, V. R. (2016). Achieving Sustainable Development Goals from a water perspective. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 4. doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2016.00064

Biswas, A.K. (1988). United Nations water conference action plan. International Journal of Water Resources Development, 4(3), 148-159, doi.org/10.1080/07900628808722385

Falkenmark, M. (2016). Water and human livelihood resilience: A regional-to-global outlook, International Journal of Water Resources Development 33(2), 181-197. doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2016.1190320

Gupta, J., Pahl-Wostl, C., & Zondervan, R. (2013). ‘Glocal’ water governance: A multi-level challenge in the anthropocene. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 5 (6), 573–580. doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2013.09.003

Guterres, A. (2018). Remarks at launch of International Decade for Action “Water for Sustainable Development” 2018-2028. un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2018-03-22/decade-action-watersustainable-development-remarks

Mapulanga, A.M., & Naito, H. (2019). Effect of deforestation on access to clean drinking water. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(17), 8249-8254 doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1814970116

Muller, M. (2015). The ‘nexus’ as a step back towards a more coherent water resource management paradigm. Water Alternatives 8(1). 675-694. water-alternatives.org/index.php/all-abs/271-a8-1-4/file

Sebert Kuhlmann, A., Key, R., Billingsley, C., Shato, T., Scroggins, S., & Teni, M. T. (2020). Students’ menstrual hygiene needs and school attendance in an urban St. Louis, Missouri, district. The Journal of Adolescent Health, 67(3), 444–446. doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.05.040

Tegegne, T.K., & Sisay, M.M. (2014). Menstrual hygiene management and school absenteeism among female adolescent students in Northeast Ethiopia. BMC Public Health 14, 1118. doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-1118

United Nations Children’s Fund & World Health Organization. (2020). State of the world’s sanitation: An urgent call to transform sanitation for better health, environments, economics and societies. who.int/publications/i/item/9789240014473

Weststrate, J., Dijkstra, G., Eshuis, J., Gianoli, A., & Rusca, M. (2018). The Sustainable Development Goal on water and sanitation: Learning from the Millennium Development Goals. Social Indicators Research, 143(2), 795–810. doi.org/10.1007/s11205-018-1965-5

World Health Organization & United Nations Children’s Fund. (2017). Progress on drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene: 2017 updates and SDG baselines. data.unicef.org/resources/progress-drinking-watersanitation-hygiene-2017-update-sdgbaselines/

The gendered impacts of trade policy

Around the world, policy-makers, academics, and others are paying more and more attention to whether trade rules take sufficient account of the differentiated impacts of trade on different groups, whether and how social issues need to be incorporated in trade policy-making, and what information would be needed to do so.

Parties to regional trade agreements are increasingly considering these questions and articulating dedicated measures in favour of gender equality in their trade policies. Some countries, such as Canada, Chile, and New Zealand, are leading the way through such measures as stand-alone trade and gender chapters in their trade agreements, the recently-adopted trade and gender arrangement, or gender reviews of their trade policies.

Trade and gender at the World Trade Organization

Many World Trade Organization (WTO) members remain reluctant to discuss social issues—including gender—within the organization. Some are concerned that doing so could pave the way for new reasons for discriminating against their imports. Others are disinclined to tackle new topics at the WTO before agreement has been reached on items that are already part of the multilateral negotiating agenda, such as agriculture, and which have yet to reach agreed outcomes since the Doha Ministerial Conference in 2001.

Still, over the past year, some 130 WTO members have been sharing experiences and exchanging views on trade and gender equality in an Informal Working Group on Trade and Gender (IWG). The IWG was established following the 2017 adoption of the Joint Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment (Buenos Aires Declaration) by a group of 118 WTO members and observers on the sidelines of the WTO’s 11th Ministerial Conference (MC11) in Buenos Aires.

As the International Institute for Sustainable Development reported in July, the IWG’s work is articulated around four pillars:  

1. Sharing best practices on removing trade-related barriers and increasing women’s participation in trade.
2. Reviewing gender-related research by the WTO Secretariat and others on women’s economic empowerment. 
3. Clarifying what a “gender lens” is and how it could be applied to the work of the WTO.
4. Contributing to the WTO’s Aid-for-Trade Work Programme. 

Notwithstanding its essentially descriptive and technical nature, work under these four pillars has laid the ground for deeper analysis and action, as well as for greater acceptance of trade and gender within the organization. The November 2021 report of the IWG co-conveners noted that IWG discussions have enabled a “better understanding of the trade and women’s economic empowerment nexus and how it is integrated into Members’ trade and trade policies.” This article will focus on the third pillar and how to get the “gender lens” right.  

The Ministerial Declaration

The imminent adoption of a Ministerial Declaration on trade, gender equality, and women’s economic empowerment sends a clear signal that work in trade and gender is here to stay at the WTO, even if it is not yet on the formal WTO agenda. Participating members had been due to adopt the Declaration in late 2021 during the WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12), which has now been postponed until June 2022. In the meantime, support for the Declaration has grown. Over half a dozen members have already joined the 115 that had signed on in November. New supporters include Bahrain, China, Jordan, Macao, Panama, and the United States. As of March 1, 123 WTO members had joined, and more are expected to express their support for the Declaration in the weeks leading up to MC12.

The Declaration recommends that the IWG continues its efforts based on the IWG’s four work pillars. It also calls for developing a 2-year work plan that includes concrete action points towards the 13th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC13).

This opens up a new space to look in more detail at how to design trade and trade rules so as to enable tangible benefits for women worldwide. 

Framing the gender lens

IWG participants have arguably focused the least on the gender lens pillar of its work plan in the course of their technical work on trade and gender during 2021. Looking at reports of the IWG’s work over the past year, the references that participating members have made to this issue suggest disparate understandings of what applying a gender lens to trade means and what it should cover.

Over the last few months, analytical work on this aspect is being led by the International Trade Centre’s (ITC) SheTrades Initiative. The ITC is a joint agency of the WTO and the United Nations. The analytical work in this area aims to develop “a gender lens framework for the work of the WTO and maximize opportunities for trade agreements to promote women’s economic empowerment and participation in trade-related activities and ensure that trade agreements do not inadvertently undermine national gender-equality commitments.”

As the IWG prepares to chart out its work for the next 2 years, policy-makers should step back and reflect carefully on how the gender lens—or “gender perspective,” to use the words of the Ministerial Declaration—should be framed. Getting the gender lens right is essential to ensuring that work on trade and gender contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals and is consistent with members’ gender equality and women’s rights commitments, such as the International Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

To get the gender lens right, it will be necessary to pay heed to the following five essential elements.

Five essential elements for clarifying the gender lens

1. Distinguish between women’s economic empowerment and gender equality

First, we need to clarify the meaning of—and distinction between—commonly used terms. The 2017 Buenos Aires Declaration expresses the concepts of gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. They are closely related yet distinct. 

Gender equality refers to the equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of women, men, girls, and boys. It implies that the interests, needs, and priorities of both women and men are taken into consideration, recognizing the diversity of different groups of women and men.

Empowerment refers to whether women have the ability to exercise control and have options and choices over the practical and strategic decisions that shape their lives and their futures. Women’s economic empowerment is one means of achieving gender equality.

The Buenos Aires Declaration also speaks to the need to remove barriers to women’s participation in international trade and increase the number of women in such trade. Removing these barriers is a step toward economic empowerment and gender equality. 

In sum, increasing the number of women in international trade is a narrower objective than women’s economic empowerment, which in turn is narrower than achieving gender equality. 

The concept of gender equality should guide members as they clarify how a gender lens can apply in their work at the WTO. There are several reasons for this. One is that all WTO members except one have committed to achieving gender equality, specifically by signing or ratifying CEDAW and other international, legally binding human rights instruments. Second, significant conceptual work has already been undertaken on how to achieve and measure gender equality. Third, there are situations where women’s engagement in economic activities can increase their dependence on men. 

The assumption that women’s economic empowerment will foster both gender equality and economic development is not always borne out in practice, which is another reason why it is important to maintain a focus on gender equality and women’s rights when considering women’s economic empowerment. 

2. Identify women’s multiple economic roles

To understand how economic factors—including new trade rules—affect women differently than men, it is necessary to acknowledge women’s multiple roles in the economy. Like men, women are workers, entrepreneurs, producers, traders, consumers, carers, decision makers, rights-holders, users of public services, and taxpayers. These roles overlap (a producer may also be a trader), and women usually occupy multiple roles at the same time (a woman who works will be a rights-holder and a user of public services). A woman may be exposed to different sources and forms of gender inequality in each of her multiple roles. Trade and trade-related rules may bring opportunities or challenges in each of these roles.

Trade affects economies through different channels. When it leads to changes in the structure of production, it influences employment opportunities, wages, and the quality and security of work, thus affecting women in their role as workers or producers. Trade and trade rules may induce changes in the price of goods and services, which impacts the cost of living and women in their role as consumers. Trade agreements often result in a reduction of tariffs and corporate taxes. This diminishes—or changes the source of—government revenues, which may have gendered implications and affect women in their role as taxpayers. Lower public revenues may curtail a government’s ability to provide public services, which can affect women who rely on some public services to a greater degree than men. 

Trade-related rules, such as on investment and on trade in services, may also affect women’s rights in different ways. For instance, governments may face new rules on applying certain types of performance requirements, including gender equality programs that favour women producers over men. 

3. Consider both sides of the trade–gender relationship

To ensure a fully-rounded, 360° analysis of interactions between trade and gender equality, both sides of the trade and gender relationship must be borne in mind. On one side of this relationship is the fact that the distributional outcomes of trade and trade-related rules vary by gender. Within a country, men and women may be affected differently by changes in trade patterns, volumes, and regulations.

On the other side of the relationship is the effect of gender inequalities on trade strategies and outcomes. These effects manifest in two main ways: (1) the relatively cheaper cost of women’s labour creates a situation where women may be sources of competitive advantage in international trade; (2) gender inequalities constitute barriers to women entrepreneurs or traders from benefitting equally from the new opportunities that trade offers.
 

4. Recognize domains in which gender (in)equality plays out

When applying a gender lens to economic analysis, it helps to identify the domains in which gender inequalities are expressed to formulate appropriate policy responses. We can categorize the domains of gender inequality under the headings of capabilities, access to resources and opportunities, and security. Inequality in available time, also known as women’s time poverty, as well as prevailing social norms about gendered roles, must also be taken into account, as they underlie all three domains to varying degrees.

The capabilities domain refers to basic human abilities, such as knowledge and health. These generate the preconditions for engaging in production and economic decision making. The access to resources and opportunities domain refers to conditions that enable individuals to earn adequate livelihoods for themselves and their families by accessing economic assets and resources and exercising political decision making. The security domain refers to vulnerability to violence or conflict. The physical and psychological harm that these can cause undermines the ability of individuals and communities to fulfill their potential.

5. Ensure the gender lens analytical framework is applied at all trade policy stages 

When considering the impacts of a trade-related policy or rule through a gender lens, policy-makers should apply the analytical framework to the four stages of a trade agreement: (i) the negotiation process, for instance, through ex ante gender impact assessments of the planned agreement; (ii) the outcome or text of the agreement; (iii) implementation, enforcement, and review mechanisms; and (iv) complementary laws, policies, and programs. 

An opportunity for future trade and gender work

With the WTO poised to more formally turn its attention to questions at the intersection of trade and gender, it is time for participating members to make sure they have a clear understanding of the scope of the gender lens. This will be crucial for them as they define the content and scope of their future trade and gender work for the next 2 years in the lead-up to MC13 and well beyond. 

A range of groups, including feminists, human rights advocates, and development professionals, has criticized the WTO’s work on trade and gender as framed so far. Common criticisms are that the approach that the IWG currently uses focuses too narrowly on women’s economic empowerment rather than the broader goal of gender equality or women’s rights objectives; that it commodifies women; or that it entrenches reliance on trade, which can perpetuate existing inequalities if parallel steps are not taken to remedy those inequalities. Similar critiques have been voiced regarding trade and gender work in other international forums.

WTO members participating in the IWG have an invaluable opportunity to take a 36o° approach to understanding the role international trade and trade rules can play in enhancing—or undermining—gender equality, women’s rights, and economic empowerment. A clear and comprehensive definition of the gender lens in trade is crucial for realizing this opportunity.

The Persian leopard (Panthera pardus tulliana), the largest subspecies of leopards, used to roam widely across Central Asia and the Caucasus. They are large spotted cats—about five feet in length—with slender hindquarters and long, thick tails. Both male and female leopards lead solitary lives, though they come together during winter mating. They are very territorial, patrolling wide home ranges to scent-mark trees, shrubs, and rocks. The leopard inhabits a wide variety of habitats: from mountain crags up to 3,000 meters in elevation, to grasslands and cold desert ecosystems, with a preference for cliff and rocky areas, as well as juniper and pistachio woodlands that give them cover for hunting.

During the past century, human-wildlife conflict, indiscriminate killing of their prey, habitat loss, and bounties incentivizing their killing have reduced their historic range by 72-84% (Jacobson et al., 2016). Today, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species—the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of species and subspecies, which uses a set of defined criteria to evaluate their extinction risk (Rodrigues et al., 2006)—the Persian leopard is endangered.

The story of the Persian leopard is the story of many species pushed by human action to the brink of extinction. Strong conservation measures can still reverse the course for some species. For many others, it is too late.

During the past century, human-wildlife conflict, indiscriminate killing of their prey, habitat loss, and bounties incentivizing their killing have reduced the leopard’s historic range by 72-84%

JACOBSON ET AL., 2016

The foundations of global species conservation measures date back to the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Principle 2 of the Stockholm Declaration says “the natural resources of the earth, including the air, water, land, flora and fauna and especially representative samples of natural ecosystems, must be safeguarded for the benefit of present and future generations.” Principle 4 reads “Man has a special responsibility to safeguard and wisely manage the heritage of wildlife and its habitat, which are now gravely imperilled by a combination of adverse factors.”

Among the 109 recommendations found in the Stockholm Action Plan, Recommendation 99 calls for the preparation and adoption of an international treaty to regulate international trade in certain species of wild plants and animals. This treaty, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), had been drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1963 at a meeting of members of IUCN. As a result of the push provided by the Stockholm Conference, the Convention was finally adopted at a meeting of representatives of 80 countries in Washington, D.C. on 3 March 1973.

There are a few other relevant recommendations. Recommendation 29 draws attention to species of wildlife that may serve as indicators for future wide environmental disturbances. Recommendation 30 emphasizes drawing attention to the situation of animals endangered by their trade value. The Stockholm Declaration and Action Plan also legitimized the role of IUCN and especially the Red List, which had been established in 1964. In fact, IUCN was one of the few environmental organizations formally involved in the preparations of the Stockholm Conference and in the drafting and implementation of the three conventions that followed it: the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972), CITES, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (1971).

What are Endangered Species: The Role of the IUCN Red List

Since its establishment, the IUCN Red List has been the key tool to assess the status of species and catalyze action for conservation and policy change. Through the List’s rigorous assessment processes, experts linked to the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s specialist groups collect information on a species’ range, population size, habitat and ecology, use and/or trade, threats, and conservation actions that inform necessary conservation decisions.

The assessments published in the IUCN Red List are used by governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and multilateral environmental agreements. The assessments drive conservation action and funding, albeit still in insufficient ways to always ensure saving species. In fact, Betts et al. (2020) noted that without successful communication between species experts, academics, policymakers, funders, and practitioners, IUCN Red List assessments may not lead to development and implementation of conservation action plans.

The IUCN Red List has nine categories to indicate how close a species is to becoming extinct. The closest to extinction is the “critically endangered” category, with a species example being the Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), a subspecies found only in Iran that has dwindled to fewer than 50 animals remaining in the wild. The least critical category is defined as “least concern.” For example, the global brown bear (Ursus arctos) population is considered to be of “least concern” because it is large and spread over three continents, even though there are some local populations that are under threat. The categories in the middle, i.e., “vulnerable” and “endangered,” are for species considered under threat.

In other words, if a species is either critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable, it is in popular terms “endangered.”

This mismatch between the technical terms of the IUCN Red List and common language can lead to confusion. In 2016, a re-assessment of the snow leopard prompted an outcry from some members of the conservation community due the species’ being reclassified from endangered to vulnerable (McCarthy et al., 2016). Their anger was echoed by members of the public, in part because they did not understand “being vulnerable” under IUCN Red List criteria still means at high risk of extinction.

The way a species is assessed under the IUCN Red List can also determine whether such species deserve protection under two international treaties aimed at species conservation: CITES and the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). Listing an endangered species under either of these two conventions can catalyze further action and, possibly, save a species from extinction (Zahler & Rosen, 2013).

Without successful communication between species experts, academics, policy makers, funders, and practitioners, IUCN Red List assessment may not lead to development and implementation of conservation action plans.

BETTS ET AL. (2020)

Regulating the Protection of Endangered Species

CITES and CMS are the key conventions tasked with regulating protection of endangered species.

CITES regulates international trade and therefore looks at the impact of trade on species conservation. Annually, international wildlife trade is estimated to be worth billions of dollars and to include hundreds of millions of plant and animal specimens. The trade is diverse, ranging from live animals and plants to an array of products derived from them, including food, exotic leather goods, wooden musical instruments, timber, tourist curios, and medicines. Since trade in wild animals and plants crosses borders between countries, the effort to regulate it requires international cooperation to safeguard certain species from over-exploitation. Today, CITES accords varying degrees of protection to more than 37,000 species of animals and plants, whether they are traded as live specimens, fur coats, or dried herbs (CITES, n.d.)

In the language of CITES, species listed under Appendix I are considered threatened with extinction and afforded the highest level of protection, including restrictions on commercial trade. Examples of the 931 species currently listed under Appendix 1 include gorillas (Gorilla sp.), tigers (Panthera tigris), and snow leopards (Panthera uncia). Appendix II includes species that, while currently not threatened with extinction, may become so without trade controls. It also includes species that resemble other listed species and must be regulated to effectively control the trade in those other listed species. Currently 34,419 species are listed under Appendix II, including saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica), wolf (Canis lupus), argali sheep (Ovis ammon), and kiang (Equus kiang). Appendix III includes a list of wildlife and plant species identified by particular CITES parties as being in need of international trade controls.

The purpose of CMS is conservation of migratory species, their habitats, and migration routes. “Migratory” is broadly defined as species that straddle international borders (Lewis & Trouwborst, 2019). Migratory species threatened with extinction are listed in Appendix I of the Convention. Appendix I listing is a mechanism to promote conservation measures called, in CMS terminology, “Concerted Action” among the range states of the listed species. CMS parties commit to ensure strict protections under national laws and conserving their habitats, mitigating obstacles to migration, among other threats. Migratory species viewed as benefiting from international cooperation are listed in Appendix II of the Convention (CMS, n.d.). To date, seven specialized regional agreements and 19 memoranda of understanding have been concluded for Appendix II species under the CMS.

Representative Frameworks for the Conservation of Endangered Species

The development of models tailored to conservation needs throughout migratory ranges is a unique feature of the CMS. Along these lines, there are two important initiatives benefiting endangered species in Africa and Central Asia under the CMS umbrella.

One is the Central Asian Mammals Initiative (CAMI) and its associated Programme of Work. Established in 2014, CAMI aims to strengthen the conservation of Central Asian migratory mammals through a common framework to coordinate conservation activities in the region and coherently address major threats to migratory species. By developing an initiative for Central Asian mammals, CMS is catalyzing collaboration between all stakeholders, with the aim of harmonizing and strengthening the implementation of the Convention (Rosen & Roettger, 2014). One of the most recent projects under CAMI is the proposed development of a regional strategy for the conservation of the Persian leopard.

The Joint CITES-CMS African Carnivores Initiative (ACI), established in 2017, stems from the recognition of the importance of synergies and coordination of measures toward species that are protected under both Conventions. Supported by IUCN Species Survival Commission’s specialist groups, the Secretariats are tasked to drive effective conservation of African lion, leopard, cheetah, and wild dog, and help avoid duplicate activities and associated costs, and generate funding.

By developing an initiative for Central Asian mammals, CMS is

catalyzing collaboration between all stakeholders, with the aim of

harmonizing and strengthening the implementation of the Convention

ROSEN & ROETTGER, 2014

There are also two other important frameworks, each focused on the conservation of single species. One is the Global Tiger Initiative Council (GTIC), and the other is the Global Snow Leopard Ecosystem Protection Program (GSLEP).

GTIC was originally set up as the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI), a global alliance of governments, international organizations, NGOs, and the private sector, with the goal to save tigers from extinction. Established by the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Smithsonian Institution, Save the Tiger Fund, and International Tiger Coalition (representing more than 40 NGOs), the initiative is led by the 13 tiger range countries. The St. Petersburg Declaration, adopted in 2010 at the Tiger Summit in Russia, defines the priorities.

GSLEP, propelled by GTI and established in 2013, is driven by 12 snow leopard range states, NGOs, and international organizations, which sit on a steering committee. The foundation of the GSLEP is 12 individual National Snow Leopard and Ecosystems Priorities (NSLEPs). Under GSLEP, specific activities are grouped under broad themes that correspond to the commitments of the Bishkek Declaration adopted at the 2013 Global Snow Leopard Conservation Forum (Zakharenka et al., 2016).

Some of these initiatives have successfully catalyzed attention, resources, and conservation action. They have received a high level of political attention, especially GTI in Russia and GSLEP in Kyrgyzstan, as respective hosts of the Tiger Summit and Snow Leopard Forum. However, some conservationists argue, especially in relation to tigers, that results have fallen short, and lack of transparency and accountability is compromising progress in tiger conservation efforts. Slappendel (2021) writes that “tiger-range countries are responsible for making tiger conservation efforts and holding themselves accountable for their methods and results. There’s no authority above them, so they can do whatever they want.

While the reach and influence of CAMI and ACI are more limited compared to GTI and GSLEP, they have also generated important resources for conservation and could likely have a stronger policy-driving role in the future.

Generally, these four frameworks serve as important examples for directing donor resources.

The Role of UN Agencies and Donors

The GEF, established in 1992, is the largest multilateral fund focused on enabling developing countries to invest in nature. It supports the implementation of major international environmental conventions including on biodiversity, climate change, chemicals, and desertification. Endangered species prioritized under CITES and CMS, such as GTI and GSLEP, are also prioritized for GEF funding.

In 2010, the GEF indicated it would provide up to USD 50 million in grants to save the tiger through contributions to be invested by developing countries using their GEF allocations in biodiversity, supplemented by investments from its REDD+ Program (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, and the role of conservation, sustainable use of forests, and enhancement of carbon stocks) (GEF, 2010). Since 1991, the GEF has invested nearly USD 100 million toward snow leopard projects implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The GSLEP Forum in 2013 catalyzed nine further GEF-financed, UNDP-implemented projects, representing an investment of about USD 45 million to support snow leopard range countries. These nine projects also leveraged over USD 200 million in co-financing from national and international partners (UNDP, 2016).

UNDP has emerged as one of the key implementing UN agencies when it comes to endangered species and conservation projects more broadly. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has also spearheaded initiatives for the conservation of endangered species, such as Vanishing Treasures. This EUR 9 million project, funded by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, seeks to better understand the vulnerability to climate change of the snow leopard, tiger, and gorilla and the ecosystems being affected.

Why Do Many Species Continue to be Endangered?

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warned in its Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services that “nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history—and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating” (IPBES, 2019).

Despite continued conservation efforts, the status of many endangered species remains unchanged—including tigers, lions, and cheetahs. The question is: Why? With our growing knowledge of the fragility of the planet’s ecosystems, why are we pushing entire species out of existence?

The limited amount of funding benefiting species research and conservation is one reason. Often these funds are short term, whereas to really see progress and results, a longer funding commitment is necessary. Some projects are also too narrowly focused on protection and enforcement, without seeking ways local communities can be part of the solution. Likewise, some projects do not address root causes of decline.

But there are also issues of capacity. In many countries that provide habitat for endangered species, there is limited technical capacity to protect such species. Local and national conservation organizations also would benefit from greater capacity building.

At the national level, species conservation may not be prioritized. This is often reflected in ministries tasked with both environment and agriculture or economic and mining issues—with the latter issues prioritized over conservation. Species conservation also does not operate in a vacuum, but must be considered alongside mechanisms to address threats to their survival, which may be exacerbated by conflicting development goals. For example, a development project aimed at improving access to water, through building dams and irrigation channels, may hurt access by salmon species to spawning grounds or damage riparian habitat. Finally, conservation organizations—with their own agendas and issues of competition for funding that leads to lack of cooperation—sometimes fail to create better synergies for conservation.

There are also many other endangered species that are not as well known or do not have the appeal of more popular endangered species, such as snow leopards or tigers. Some of these species have disappeared from large swaths of their range, including the striped hyaena (Hyaena hyaena), which can no longer be found in parts of Central Asia and Caucasus regions. The lesser-known Saint Lucia racer (Erythrolamprus ornatus), listed as Critically Endangered, numbers fewer than 20 individuals and is considered one of the rarest snakes in the world. Similarly, the Daguo Mulian tree (Magnolia grandis) is listed as critically endangered due to habitat loss for agricultural expansion and logging.

Moving Forward

Protecting iconic endangered species is still important for promoting policies and measures that can benefit entire ecosystems and many other endangered species. Nevertheless, species conservation efforts must expand to include many more species that are lesser known and serve important ecosystem services. Such efforts should also create incentives for local communities to conserve them, including through sustainable use when that is recognized as the only or the most effective measure. Finally, greater financial resources have to be allocated. Many hope the post-2020 global biodiversity framework will help guide the most pressing actions to keep entire species from being erased from our shared world.

Works Consulted

Betts, J., Young, R. P., Hilton-Taylor, C., Hoffmann, M., Rodríguez, J. P., Stuart, S. N., & Milner-Gulland, E. J. (2020). A framework for evaluating the impact of the IUCN Red List of threatened species. Conservation Biology: The Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 34(3), 632–643. doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13454

Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. (n.d.). What is CITES? cites.org/eng/disc/what.php

Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals. (n.d.). CMS. cms.int/en/legalinstrument/cms

Global Environment Facility. (2010). Global Environment Facility to support $50 million in grants to save the tiger. thegef.org/newsroom/news/global-environmentfacility-support-50-million-grants-save-tiger

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. (2019). Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3831673

Jacobson, A.P., Gerngross, P., Lemeris, Jr., J.R., Schoonover, R.F., Anco, C., Breitenmoser-Würsten, C., Durant, S.M., Farhadinia, M.S., Henschel, P., Kamler, J.F., Laguardia, A., Rostro-García, S., Stein, A.B., & Dollar, L. (2016). Leopard (Panthera pardus) status, distribution, and the research efforts across its range. PeerJ 4:e1974. doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1974

Lewis, M., & Trouwborst, A. (2019). Large carnivores and the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS)—definitions, sustainable use, added value, and other emerging issues. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 7. frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fevo.2019.00491

McCarthy, T., Mallon, D., Jackson, R., Zahler, P., & McCarthy, K. (2017). Panthera uncia. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2017. Panthera uncia (Snow Leopard) (iucnredlist.org)

Rodrigues, A.S.L., Pilgrim, J.D., Lamoreux, J.F., Hoffmann, M., & Brooks, T.M. (2006). The value of the IUCN Red List for conservation. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 21(2), 71-76. doi.org/10.1016/j. tree.2005.10.010

Rosen, T., & Roettger, C. (2014). Central Asian Mammals Initiative: Saving the last migrations. CMS. cms.int/sites/default/files/publication/Central_Asian_Mammals_Initiative.pdf

Slappendel, C. (2021). What’s stopping some countries from keeping up with tiger conservation promises? Commentary. Mongabay news.mongabay.com/2021/11/whats-stopping-some-countries-from-keeping-up-with-tiger-conservationpromises-commentary/

UNDP. (2016). Silent Roar - UNDP and GEF in the snow leopard landscape. undp.org/publications/silent-roar-undpand-gef-snow-leopard-landscape

Zahler, P., & Rosen, T. (2013). Endangered mammals. Encyclopedia of Biodiversity. Elsevier.

Zakharenka, A., Sharma, K., Kochorov, C., Rutherford, B., Varma, K., Seth, A., Kushlin, A., Lumpkin, S., Seidensticker, J., Laporte, B., Tichomirow, B., Jackson, R. M., Mishra, C., Abdiev, B., Modaqiq, A. W., Wangchuk, S., Zhongtian, Z., Khanduri, S. K., Duisekeyev, B., … Yunusov, N. (2016). The Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection Program. Snow Leopards, 559–573. doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-802213-9.00045-6

Public procurement provides a key entry point for governments to change the trajectory of their greenhouse gas emissions and to meet climate goals in line with their international commitments to the Paris Agreement, the Sustainable Development Goals, and—in Europe—to the European Green Deal. In the coming years, it is essential for public procurement, which accounts for 15% of carbon emissions globally, to become a driver of innovation and commercialization of low-carbon infrastructure, goods, and services.

This is the challenge that the CO2 Performance Ladder was designed to address. Developed in the Netherlands in 2009 for the rail sector, it is now owned and managed by the Foundation for Climate Friendly Procurement and Business (SKAO). The CO2 Performance Ladder helps organizations structurally reduce their carbon emissions as both a CO2 management system and a procurement tool. Over 4,000 organizations are certified on the Ladder, and it has been used by over 200 public procurement agencies in the Netherlands and Belgium in their tendering processes.

The CO2 Performance Ladder offers the following advantages as a procurement tool:

• It is user friendly and has low transaction costs for getting started. Procuring authorities simply offer companies the option to submit a form along with their bid attesting to their proposed level of commitment on the Ladder.

• It is an optional tool in the tendering process, whereby CO2 reduction is rewarded with an award advantage for the bidding companies. The higher the ambition level of the company, the higher the award advantage.

• It requires third-party accreditation, which lowers the burden on procurement authorities to verify that companies are doing what they say they will do in their bids.

• The CO2 Performance Ladder has been developed and used in compliance with the European Union (EU) Procurement Directive, making it immediately applicable in other EU countries.

In 2021, IISD began a collaboration with SKAO (funded by the IKEA Foundation) to scale the uptake of the CO2 Performance Ladder beyond the Netherlands. The goal of the project is to identify potential pilot projects in other European countries (apart from Belgium, where pilots are already underway) that demonstrate the effectiveness of a tool that is trialled, tested, and ready to support governments with their carbon reduction goals. We hope that these pilot projects will further inspire other countries and regions to consider the CO2 Performance Ladder as a practical instrument for green public procurement (GPP).

Initial scoping work

In 2022, IISD and SKAO will collaborate with 10 European countries to identify the building blocks required to implement and use the CO2 Performance Ladder. This scoping work was initiated based on our quick scan, which included a review of countries’ broad situations with regard to GPP implementation, their enabling policy environment, recent progress on low-carbon infrastructure, and geographic locations. Alongside these 10 countries, SKAO is exploring possibilities for the CO2 Performance Ladder in France and Luxembourg, on the basis of existing connections between those countries and the pilot programme already running in Belgium.

1. GPP frontrunners

Europe’s Nordic countries are generally advanced in GPP, specifically in low-carbon procurement. We will explore the extent to which contracting authorities in Denmark and Sweden may find the CO2 Performance Ladder complementary to their ongoing efforts to lower carbon emissions in the construction of public works.

2. Large European economies with a GPP track record

GPP has been gaining prominence across Europe. We are looking at Germany, Austria, Spain, and Italy to highlight some of the different approaches to GPP implementation, as well as capture the challenges and opportunities, in large EU economies. For instance, GPP efforts have been mostly decentralized in Germany and Spain, whereas they have been more centralized in Austria. Exploring different governance approaches to GPP and carbon mitigation activity across Europe may provide insights into how the CO2 Performance Ladder can have the greatest value and impact.

3. New policy space for GPP countries

The United Kingdom and Ireland currently have quickly evolving policies for GPP activity, specifically related to low-carbon procurement. Ireland has announced the National Action Plan on Green Tenders and the upcoming Circular Economy Bill, and the United Kingdom has introduced the National Procurement Policy Statement (2021) and upcoming procurement reforms. While these countries already have experience with GPP, more effective policy action on procurement as a driver for low-carbon development may be further leveraged with a tool like the CO2 Performance Ladder.

4. GPP ambition countries

The GPP policy space in Slovenia and Poland demonstrates political willingness to use GPP as a driver for low-carbon development—with recent initiatives such as the Care4Climate Project and the Green City and Climate Action Plan (GCCAP), respectively. In these countries, the CO2 Performance Ladder could be positioned as a tool for scaling up GPP efforts and driving low-carbon infrastructure procurement at national or subnational levels.

Observations on the status of GPP in Europe

More and more mandatory GPP

Through its Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) process, the 2014 Public Procurement Directive has made it possible to procure goods, services, and infrastructure based not only on the lowest-cost criterion but also considering other features, such as quality, innovation, social characteristics, and life-cycle costs.

However, increasingly, European countries and subnational governments are making GPP mandatory. In Austria, Finland, Germany, Norway, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, and the United Kingdom, GPP is mandatory for central government procurement. In a subset of this group—Norway, Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Italy—GPP is mandatory for all levels of government. Mandatory GPP is implemented in different ways but could oblige the procuring authority to use minimum GPP criteria in all tenders, oblige procurers to give preference to the most environmentally friendly bid, or mandate the incorporation of life-cycle analysis and/or quality considerations.

There are some other noteworthy updates. In Ireland, the incorporation of green criteria will be mandatory in all public procurement from 2023 onwards. In Croatia, GPP becomes mandatory in central procurement “where feasible” in 2022. In Switzerland, from 2021 onwards, public authorities are obliged to award tenders based on consideration of the most “advantageous” tender—not the most “economically advantageous” tender—and to consider price and quality equally in their procurement. Interestingly, another country outside of the EU, the United Kingdom, is planning similar revisions to procurement legislation in the future, transitioning from a MEAT to a MAT—the “Most Advantageous Tender”—approach in awarding contracts in order to give more flexibility to qualitative and sustainability objectives.

In many other countries in Europe, GPP is mandatory in certain product and service categories only. Some of the mandatory GPP categories include Denmark (wood products), Estonia (furniture, cleaning products, IT), Slovenia (buildings, roads), Latvia (street lighting, food), France (energy efficiency, waste requirements), Greece (transport, road lighting), Malta (office buildings, roads) Slovakia (roads), and Norway (construction, food catering). Lithuania has another approach, where GPP must account for an increasing share of public procurement, aiming for 100% from 2023 onwards.

Wide variations in implementation levels

GPP is voluntary for public authorities in the European Union. Across Europe, there are wide variations in levels of GPP implementation, as well as in levels of ambition. In some countries, such as Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, less than 5% of public sector contracts include any kind of GPP criteria. Desk-based research revealed little to no GPP activity in countries such as Bulgaria and Romania (though language barriers may have impeded getting a fuller picture). Similarly, while other countries may demonstrate a higher share of contracts using GPP, its application can be limited to minor spend categories such as office paper or cleaning products. While all efforts to incorporate GPP are worthwhile, the scale of the environmental and climate challenges will require greater efforts in the years ahead.

At the same time, there are national or local governments blazing very ambitious GPP trails, and some with an explicit focus on reducing carbon emissions. In Norway, they are focusing on completely decarbonizing the transport and construction sectors; Spain has the Carbon Footprint Registry for public procurement; Germany uses Environmental Product Declarations; and Sweden regularly uses a wide range of sustainability criteria and LCC tools in procurement. These few examples from our database will hopefully soon become more commonplace in procurement, especially in carbon-intensive sectors. Compiling lessons learned from successful and unsuccessful attempts to lower carbon emissions in public procurement will be extremely valuable for countries currently scaling up their efforts.

Cities that stand apart

It should be mentioned that, in many cases, cities stand out for their advanced GPP activities at a municipal level. Oslo has ambitious “zero-emission construction sites”; Helsinki has projects to advance climate neutrality through public procurement; Copenhagen has rigourous standards for construction and civil works; and Stockholm set a goal to become the European leader in sustainable public procurement in the coming years. Outside of the Nordic region, the city-states of Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen have made GPP mandatory, as have the cities of Vienna and Barcelona. Recently, Tallinn won the 2023 European Green Capital City Competition based in part on their use of environmentally friendly public procurement.

Monitoring GPP activity: A common challenge

Across Europe, governments are finding it challenging to monitor and report on GPP activity systematically. For most countries, a rough indication of GPP as a percentage of total government procurement is usually available, deduced from information on e-procurement platforms such as the number of contracts awarded that include some environmental criteria. Beyond that, however, there does not seem to be systematic data collection, aggregation, or reporting on, for example, avoided carbon emissions or avoided waste for even the most advanced or “frontrunner” GPP countries. While further research is needed to understand the nature of the challenge, it likely comes at least in part from the difficulty of finding shared baselines and indicators across many levels of government. This should be an area of focus for the GPP community in the coming years, as it will also represent an important way for governments to report against their commitments to international agreements such as the Paris Agreement or the Sustainable Development Goals.

Countries that seem to have the most robust GPP monitoring systems in place are France, which has mandatory reporting for ministries against standardized sustainable public procurement targets; Germany, with annual GPP monitoring at the federal and state levels (including on CO2 emissions impacts); and Croatia, where the Ministry for the Environment must publish CO2 savings generated by the implementation of GPP annually. These might be countries to look to for inspiration and good practices on GPP monitoring and reporting, particularly for carbon, moving ahead.

Plans to improve GPP monitoring and reporting are already foreseen in Ireland, Greece, and Malta in the next few years.

Opacity regarding uptake of GPP tools

Our desktop research revealed a plethora of GPP tools across Europe that are available to procurement authorities. The most common tools referenced are life-cycle costing-based tools or calculators, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards, and sector/product-specific GPP criteria (either the EU GPP criteria directly or bespoke GPP criteria at the national or subnational level). Other tools mentioned include other carbon footprint tools, Environmental Management Systems, eco-labels for specific categories of products or services, Environmental Product Declarations, and Environmental Spend Analysis .

Apart from citing the existence of these tools in policies or action plans on GPP, however, it is difficult to discern how often these tools are used, at what stage of the procurement process, and their specific applications to infrastructure procurement. Procurement authorities may also still be searching for the most appropriate tools to use to meet their needs. As such, in the next phase of research for this project, IISD and SKAO will work with procurement agencies at national or subnational levels, as well as with buyer networks and other stakeholders, to understand the use of GPP tools in practice and the value added of the CO2 Performance Ladder in implementing GPP across Europe.  

If you are interested in learning more about the CO2 Performance Ladder or would like to pilot it in your jurisdiction, contact us! We are keen to explore options for how the tool can add value to your Green Public Procurement journey

Roughly every minute, USD 11 million in subsidies flow into coal, oil, and natural gas, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In fact, in 2020 alone, fossil fuel subsidies were worth USD 5.9 trillion or about 6.8% of global gross domestic product (GDP). This is expected to rise to 7.4% of GDP by 2025 in stark contrast to scientific calls for a carbon neutral economy by 2050 (Parry, Black & Vernon, 2021).

Growing fossil fuel subsidies are only one example of a worrisome trend. Instead of investing in a green and forward-looking recovery with COVID-19 economic stimulus packages, decision makers are continuing to funnel public money toward unsustainable patterns of development. Without clear pathways toward decarbonized economies and innovative ways to measure economic success to capture these unsustainable patterns, existential risks to future generations increase.

In the context of a planetary emergency characterized by multiple crises—climate, biodiversity, pollution, and social inequalities—the relationship between trade and environment merits further examination. While the interactions between trade and environment are complex, pursuing policy coherence is imperative to respond to this emergency while leaving no one behind.

The Ambivalent Relationship between Trade and Environment

In preparation for the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, the Secretariat of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the multilateral treaty charged with promoting free trade, was asked to contribute an assessment of concerns around economic growth and growing pollution. Beginning in the 1960s, social movements helped raise awareness about human-caused pollution and demanded stronger environmental protection. While governments responded with science-based legislation designed to protect the environment, trade rules had yet to be re-examined.

In 1971, GATT Director-General Olivier Long presented the GATT assessment, “Industrial Pollution Control and International Trade.” The study reflected the concern of trade officials with environmental policies, which were perceived as potential obstacles to free trade and could constitute “green protectionism.” In response, the GATT created the Group on Environmental Measures and International Trade (known as the “EMIT” group) in November 1971. Curiously, this group could only convene at the request of GATT members, which did not happen for 20 years. Finally, in 1991, the European Free Trade Association members broke the silence and asked for a meeting because another large environmental meeting was on the radar: the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (WTO, n.d.).

Heading into the Earth Summit, the conflict between environmental protection policies and trade came to the fore in the 1991 “Tuna-Dolphin” dispute between Mexico and the US. The case focused on the US embargo on tuna imported from Mexico caught using “purse seine” nets that could entangle and kill dolphins and other marine mammals. The GATT dispute settlement panel favored Mexico, which argued the embargo was inconsistent with international trade rules. Its ruling was criticized by environmental groups arguing trade rules were an obstacle to environmental protection (WTO, n.d.).

The Earth Summit highlighted the role of international trade in alleviating poverty and combating environmental degradation. The resulting programme of action, Agenda 21, and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, like Stockholm before it, promoted an international trading system that considers the needs of developing countries and sustained economic development.

States should cooperate to promote a supportive and open international economic system that would lead to economic growth and sustainable development in all countries, to better address the problems of environmental degradation.

Rio Declaration, Principle 12

The Earth Summit, however, did have an impact on the outcome of the GATT’s 1986–1994 Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. The Uruguay Round established the World Trade Organization (WTO) and brought about the biggest reform of the world’s trading system since the GATT’s establishment after World War II. And trade-related environmental issues were on the agenda.

The WTO and the Committee on Trade and Environment

The preamble to the Marrakesh Agreement, which established the WTO, refers to the importance of sustainable development. In Marrakesh in April 1994, ministers also signed a “Decision on Trade and Environment,” stating: “There should not be, nor need be, any policy contradiction between upholding and safeguarding an open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system on the one hand, and acting for the protection of the environment, and the promotion of sustainable development on the other.”

The decision also created the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE), which was charged with identifying the relationship between trade measures and environmental measures to promote sustainable development and make appropriate recommendations on whether any modifications of the multilateral trading system are required. To date, the CTE has yet to agree on any recommendations.

Item 1 of the CTE’s mandate, addresses the relationship between the primary goal of the WTO—facilitating trade—and the objectives of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). According to the WTO, 15 MEAs incorporate trade measures to help them achieve their goals. This means the agreements can use restraints on trade in particular substances or products. Although this represents a relatively small number of MEAs, they include some of the most important, including the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES); the Montreal Protocol; the Basel, Rotterdam, Stockholm, and Minamata Conventions; and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (Chasek & Downie, 2021, p. 268). However, to date no formal dispute involving a measure under any MEA has been brought to the WTO.

A second issue, contained in Item 3(b), looks at GATT Article XX, which lays out specific cases where WTO members may be exempted from GATT rules. Concerning the environment, WTO members can adopt measures necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health (paragraph (b)) or relate to the conservation of exhaustible natural resources (paragraph (g)). But can countries discriminate against goods whose production involves negative ecological consequences (e.g., pollution, deforestation, carbon emissions)? On this matter, there are competing views.

For example, under Paragraph 32 of the 2001 Doha Ministerial Declaration, the CTE was mandated to identify areas of the WTO in need of clarification, including ecolabels, which identify products that meet specific environmental performance criteria. Many developed countries and environmental organizations see ecolabels as a tool to inform consumers that the production of this good or service is environmentally sustainable. According to the WTO, its members generally agree ecolabels can be useful for consumers, and tend to restrict trade less than other methods, especially if these schemes are voluntary, based on the market, and transparent. However, others are concerned ecolabels could be used to protect domestic producers, and discriminate against small businesses and developing countries, thus restricting their market access.

A third issue is that the WTO and the CTE do not have a strong science-policy interface. The WTO lacks a “consistent, principled manner in which to take into account the scientific uncertainty” underlying policy decisions that must determine whether domestic environmental policies are legitimate or a form of trade protectionism (Green & Epps, 2007, p. 286). Furthermore, the Uruguay Round negotiations only applied a scientific evidence requirement to health measures, specifically the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement and the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement), and not to environmental measures (Green & Epps, 2007).

WTO Committee on Trade and Environment Mandate (1994)

Item 1: The relationship between the provisions of the multilateral trading system and trade measures for environmental purposes, including those pursuant to multilateral environmental agreements.

Item 2: The relationship between environmental policies relevant to trade and environmental measures with significant trade effects and the provisions of the multilateral trading system.

Item 3(a): The relationship between the provisions of the multilateral trading system and charges and taxes for environmental purposes. 

Item 3(b): The relationship between the provisions of the multilateral trading system and requirements for environmental purposes relating to products, including standards and technical regulations, packaging, labelling, and recycling.

Item 4: The provisions of the multilateral trading system with respect to the transparency of trade measures used for environmental purposes and environmental measures and requirements which have significant trade effects.

Item 5: The relationship between the dispute settlement mechanisms in the multilateral trading system and those found in multilateral environmental agreements.

Item 6: The effect of environmental measures on market access, especially in relation to developing countries, in particular to the least developed among them, and environmental benefits of removing trade restrictions and distortions.

Item 7: The issue of exports of domestically prohibited goods.

Item 8: The relevant provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

Item 9: The work programme envisaged in the Decision on Trade in Services and the Environment.

Item 10: Input to the relevant bodies in respect of appropriate arrangements for relations with intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations referred to in Article V of the WTO.

Subsidies and Sustainable Development

Then there are subsidies. A subsidy is money given by a government to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service remains low or competitive. Subsidies distort markets by failing to reflect the true costs of production, including environmental harm. Subsidies on goods traded internationally also give unfair price advantages compared to similar goods from countries without subsidies. Yet despite widespread condemnation, the actual removal of subsidies remains a contentious topic. The principal subsidy sectors in question are agriculture, fossil fuels, fisheries, and forestry.

Many hoped trade and environment-related decisions would be part of the outcome of the Doha Development Round of trade negotiations. The 2001 Doha Ministerial Declaration included more language on sustainable development and environmental issues than any of its predecessors. In addition to liberalizing global agricultural trade by reducing agricultural subsidies and addressing fishing subsidies, the Doha Round sought to further reduce barriers to trade in services, such as business and finance, and nonagricultural goods (Chasek & Downie, 2021, pp. 267-268). However, even after 20 years, WTO members have not concluded these negotiations.

Getting the nexus between trade and the environment right requires addressing subsidies. For example, governments around the world provide over USD 600 billion per year in subsidies to support their agricultural sectors. However, research shows this support does not align with achieving collective benefits under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in improving food security and nutrition, reducing poverty, combating inequalities, decarbonizing economies, or protecting biodiversity. Allocating resources fairly and sustainably, rather than through subsidies that generally benefit industrial agriculture, can support an SDG-based agri-food transformation by making food and agriculture markets more resilient to shocks and accessible to people in vulnerable situations. The climate crisis also necessitates market actors include environmental costs in the food system (FAO, 2018). To do that, coherent policies are required across the entire food value chain.

Fisheries subsidies also offer somber examples of unsustainable agri-food systems. “If we were to remove all harmful fisheries subsidies we could have a 12.5% increase in fish biomass, or 35 million metric tonnes of fish by 2050,” stated Peter Thomson, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean. Moreover, one in five fish caught may come from illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Some estimates suggest eliminating fishing subsidies would significantly decrease high seas overfishing, 77% of which is due to activities of fishing vessels from China, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Spain, and the Republic of Korea. Eliminating these subsidies would not only accelerate the implementation of the SDGs but would restore depleted fisheries and protect the rights of small-scale artisanal fishers.

I am convinced that eliminating these subsidies is the single most important measure governments can take to reverse the plundering of the fish in the ocean… I am still waiting for WTO members to do the right thing.

Peter Thomson, UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for the Ocean

Fossil fuel subsidies also have cross-cutting effects on sustainable development, in particular climate change, poverty, and governance. Fossil fuel subsidy reform is seen not only as a macroeconomic necessity, but also as a valuable tool for tackling the climate crisis (Bassetti & Landau, 2021). Indeed, one study found eliminating fossil fuel subsidies alone would reduce global greenhouse emissions up to 10% by 2030 and between 6.4% and 8.2% by 2050.

With science urging leaders to become carbon neutral by 2050, much needs to change quickly. For example, the Paris Agreement must deliver a long-term reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from cross-border transport and trade, at the same time the WTO is facilitating their expansion. Solving the climate puzzle cannot be done in isolation.

Optimizing Trade Governance for Sustainable Development

Growing pressure for new rules and agreements that meaningfully consider sustainable development and trade is challenging multilateralism, especially at the WTO, which is haunted by a two-decade deadlock (Hopewell, 2016). How can the WTO emerge from this paralysis? Several recent initiatives offer hope.

In November 2020, 50 WTO members announced they would organize structured discussions to advance work on trade and environmental sustainability. In the year that followed, the “Trade and Environmental Sustainability Structured Discussions,” coordinated by Canada and Costa Rica, met five times with the participation of 71 members representing 82% of world trade. In December 2021, the group issued a Ministerial Statement, which sets out future work for the initiative in areas such as trade and climate change, trade in environmental goods and services, circular economy, and sustainable supply chains. It also sets a road map for advancing discussions (WTO, 2021a).

Similarly, in November 2020, WTO members established an informal dialogue on plastics pollution and environmentally sustainable plastics trade to promote trade as a tool for reining in plastics pollution. Another December 2021 Ministerial Statement spells out the way forward in support of global efforts to reduce plastics pollution and transition toward an environmentally sustainable plastics trade (WTO, 2021a).

In a third Ministerial Statement on fossil fuel subsidies, 45 WTO members affirmed their intention to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, consider the specific needs of developing countries, and advance discussions at the WTO (WTO, 2021a).

While this is positive news, the WTO still faces challenges moving forward. One such challenge is the diverse views on the pertinence of its existence and competing narratives on the value of globalization and free trade (Roberts & Lamp, 2021). In this basket of competing narratives, the view that everyone loses with the current support for unsustainable economic growth must be considered. On one hand, incoherent trade policies could lead to more resource use and pollution, putting vulnerable communities at a disadvantage and, ultimately, accelerating an existential threat to humanity.

An Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, one that will help both the planet and people, is within our grasp. It is also an opportunity to build trust in multilateralism, and the opportunity for WTO members to succeed in negotiating new rules for the 21st century.

Ambassador Santiago Wills, Colombia, Chair of the Fisheries Subsidies Negotiations

On the other hand, defenders of free trade argue value chains lead to more efficient use of resources globally. They note it all depends on domestic environmental policies. The main challenge is to shift the narrative regarding the trade-environment nexus. More emphasis on how to address harmful impacts of trade or trade agreements on the environment deserves consideration, while recognizing the needs of developing countries. (Deere Birkbeck, 2021).

Going forward, the WTO could accomplish the following.

1. Place sustainable development in the WTO at the same level as its goals on trade liberalization. Harmful subsidies, for example, must be considered against their effects on the health and resilience of people and the planet, instead of being assessed exclusively through their degree of trade disruption.
    
2. Increase science-policy interactions at the WTO to enhance policy analysis of environmental effects related to trade in partnership with the UN system and other stakeholders. The WTO would benefit from a more influential, systematic, and inclusive science-policy interface that could analyze cases where trade supports the environment, such as through green products and technology, and how the removal of perverse subsidies can contribute to achieving sustainable development.
    
3. Use current trade rules to advance the Paris Agreement on climate change. The WTO needs to consider the impact of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies on climate action and strengthen countries’ disclosure rules.
    
4. Accelerate agreement on decisions related to fisheries subsidies. WTO negotiations on fisheries subsidies have been ongoing for 20 years. The adoption of the SDGs in 2015, particularly target 14.6 on fisheries subsidies, has given new momentum to the talks, which many hope will conclude in 2022 (WTO, 2021b). Restoring overexploited fish stocks would increase the economic benefits by a factor of almost 30, from USD 3 billion to USD 86 billion and reducing the global fishing effort by 5% a year for a 10-year period would allow this level to be reached in about 30 years.

Trade rules that ignore the negative impacts of trade on our planet, our only home, are counterproductive. Despite the substantive knowledge about the growing risks of social and environmental tipping-points, several trade policy-induced crises are creating new sources of risks and uncertainties. The trade wars between the US and China and vaccine inequities during the COVID-19 crisis are two emblematic examples.

Change is the only certainty we have. While structural transformations do not happen overnight, applying a systemic approach to the trade-environment interface is not only cost-effective but an essential step toward the survival of our planet.

Works Consulted

Bassetti, V., & Landau, K. (2021). Seizing opportunities for fuel subsidy reform. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/02/25/seizing-opportunities-for-fuel-subsidy-reform/

Chasek, P., & Downie, D. (2021). Global environmental politics (8th ed.). Routledge.

De Paula, N. (2021). Breaking the silos for planetary health – A roadmap for a resilient post-pandemic world. Palgrave McMillan.

Deere Birkbeck, C. (2021). Greening international trade: Pathways forward. Global Governance Centre and the Forum on Trade, Environment & the SDGs. https://tradehub.earth/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Greening-International-Trade_18.07.2021.pdf

Food and Agriculture Organization. (2018). The state of agricultural commodity markets 2018. https://www.fao.org/publications/soco/2018/en/

Food and Agriculture Organization, International Fund for Agriculture Development, United Nations Children’s Fund, World Food Programme & World Health Organization. (2021). The state of food security and nutrition in the world 2021. https://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/2021/en/

High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security. (2020). Food security and nutrition: Building a global narrative towards 2030. https://www.fao.org/cfs/cfs-hlpe/reports/en/

Hopewell, K. (2016). Breaking the WTO: How emerging powers disrupted the neoliberal project. Stanford University Press.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2019). Recommendation of the Council on Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development. OECD/LEGAL/0381. https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0381

Parry, I., Black, S., & Vernon, N. (2021). Still not getting energy prices right: A global and country update of fossil fuel subsidies. IMF Working Paper. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Still-Not-Getting-Energy-Prices-Right-A-Global-and-Country-Update-of-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-466004

Roberts, A., & Lamp, N. (2021). Six faces of globalization: Who wins, who loses, and why it matters. Harvard University Press.

Santarius, T., Dalkmann, H., Steigenberger, M., & Vogelpohl K. (2004). Balancing trade and environment: An ecological reform of the WTO as a challenge in sustainable global governance. Wuppertal Institut für Klima. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/35133134.pdf

World Trade Organization. (2021a). State of play 15 December 2021: Trade and the environment. https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/mc12_e/briefing_notes_e/bfenvir_e.htm

World Trade Organization. (2021b). Draft agreement on fisheries subsidies submitted for ministers’ attention ahead of MC12. https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news21_e/fish_25nov21_e.htm

World Trade Organization. (n.d.) Early years: Emerging environment debate in GATT/WTO. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/envir_e/hist1_e.htm