Let’s say you decide to buy a car. Who should be responsible for the pollution caused by that vehicle, including its production and use? Should the manufacturer or you, the purchaser, bear that cost?

In practice, the costs of pollution are likely to be covered by regulations that force the producer to take measures to reduce the pollution. Similarly, if a factory or a mining operation produces toxic or hazardous waste, who should be responsible for cleaning it up? Who should be responsible for the environmental and human health impacts of air pollution or water pollution?

These are questions that inform the polluter-pays principle (PPP), which requires those who produce pollution to bear the costs of managing it to prevent damage to human health and the environment. The PPP has its origin in economic discussions on assuming responsibility for costs arising from pollution, referred to as a “Pigouvian tax” or the social tax of negative externalities, which occur when the production or consumption of a product results in a cost to a third party. This principle has found its way into the legal realm through different international instruments, and today it is recognized as a principle of international environmental law within the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and has been used by courts in their interpretation of cases (De Sadeleer, 2020). Likewise, it has been gradually incorporated into international climate change law (Kodolova & Solntsev, 2020).

Despite these positive advances and the seemingly straightforward application of the PPP—polluters should pay for the environmental harm they cause by taking on the costs of preventing pollution and control measures—its use in contemporary international environmental law shows there are still considerable uncertainties and ambiguities (Beyerlin & Marauhn, 2011). Unlike the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), the PPP refers to economic reparations from those responsible for environmental harm—an issue of individual responsibility rather than state responsibility.

The PPP thus helps establish a mechanism to reduce environmental degradation but does not determine who the polluter is. Unsurprisingly, few people or organizations step forward to claim the title of “the polluter.” This lack of clarity on who makes up the links of the chain of polluters is why the PPP has found its way into regulations of some countries, particularly in the European Union, but has not uniformly been incorporated into universal international agreements, which would require all countries enforce its rules.

The Evolution of the Polluter-Pays Principle

From a case law perspective, there have been precedents referring to the obligation of states to guarantee and demand compensation from polluters. This occurred as early as the 1938-1941 Trail Smelter arbitration between Canada and the United States, where the court required Canada and the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company to reduce and prevent damage from air pollution in the state of Washington.

As Europe sought to incorporate common solutions to reduce environmental pollution, the PPP emerged in the 1968 “Declaration of Principles” on air pollution control, adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. Principle 6 on financing states: “The cost incurred in preventing or abating pollution should be borne by whoever causes the pollution. This does not preclude aid from Public Authorities.” Later, in response to similar concerns for the environment, it was included in a non-binding instrument of the OECD: the 1972 Recommendation on Guiding Principles concerning International Economic Aspects of Environmental Policies, which is recognized as the first international document that regulates the PPP. This recommendation establishes the principle as follows:

The principle to be used for allocating costs of pollution prevention and control measures to encourage rational use of scarce environmental resources and to avoid distortions in international trade and investment is the so-called ‘Polluter-Pays Principle’. This Principle means that the polluter should bear the expenses of carrying out the abovementioned measures decided by public authorities to ensure that the environment is in an acceptable state. In other words, the cost of these measures should be reflected in the cost of goods and services which cause pollution in production and/or consumption.

The European Community (now European Union) also articulated the application of the PPP progressively: in 1973 with its Program of action on the environment; in 1975 with its Recommendation 75/436, regarding cost allocation and action by public authorities on environmental matters; and in 1986 with the Single European Act. In the latter, the PPP guides and applies the environmental policy of the European Union as a key principle and as a hard law standard of the European legal system. Even though the principle is not widely used outside the EU and the US, other countries, such as Australia, Ghana, and Zimbabwe, have incorporated the principle into policy and/or regulation.

Such regulations follow the line of international cooperation regarding liability and compensation from the effects of pollution, which emerged during the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, and was incorporated in Principle 22 of its Stockholm Declaration. Twenty years later, the PPP was included broadly in Principle 16 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, adopted at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit).

National authorities should endeavor to promote the internalization of environmental costs and the use of economic instruments, taking into account the approach the polluter should, in principle, bear the cost of pollution, with due regard to the public interest and without distorting international trade and investment.

PRINCIPLE 16, RIO DECLARATION ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

It should be noted that a legal instrument containing reference to the PPP can use it either as a non-binding approach or as binding rule. De Sadeleer (2020) points out the following examples of both approaches:

Non-binding:

• 1980 Athens Protocol for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea against Pollution from Land-Based Sources and Activities
• 1990 International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation
• 1992 Helsinki Convention on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents
• 1993 Lugano Convention on Civil Liability for Damage Resulting from Activities Dangerous to the Environment
• 2000 London Protocol on Preparedness, Response, and Co-operation to Pollution Incidents by Hazardous and Noxious Substances

Legally binding:

• 1976 Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea against Pollution
• 1985 Agreement on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources
• 1991 Convention on the Protection of the Alps
• 1992 Agreement to establish the European Economic Area
• 1992 Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic
• 1992 Helsinki Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes
• 1992 Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area
• 1994 Charleville-Mézières Agreements on the Protection of the Rivers Meuse and Scheldt
• 1994 Convention on Cooperation for the Protection and Sustainable Use of the Danube River
• 1996 London Protocol to the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter
• 1998 Rotterdam Convention on the Protection of the Rhine
• 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants

Today the jurisprudence built around the PPP considers it “as the backbone of environmental policy” (Heine, Faure & Dominioni, 2020). Yet, it is still the subject of much debate.

Current Debate

Despite its potential to be applied to many global environmental issues, the PPP is still not recognized as a customary international norm (Heine, et al., 2020). This is due to the myriad ways states define the PPP and configure its implementation in their internal legal systems—a complexity that emerges precisely because the PPP relates to so many wide-ranging areas, including the protection of the environment and human health, with incentives for economic activities (Schwartz, 2010). Beyerlin and Marauhn (2011) describe the PPP as having a normative quality as a rule rather than a principle, since it is neither designed to be considered in relevant decision-making that occurs when the production or consumption of a product results in cost to a third party, nor intended to be used merely for interpretative guidance. They state the PPP directly calls upon states to ensure that in every case where the environment has been, or is going to be, polluted, the accountable person bears the costs of clearing or preventing pollution.

Sands and Peel (2012) explain that the application of the PPP to specific cases and situations remains open to interpretation, particularly in relation to the nature and extent of the costs included and the circumstances in which the principle will not apply. Nevertheless, the principle has attracted broad support and is closely related to the rules governing civil and state liability for environmental damage, the permissibility of certain forms of state subsidies, and the acknowledgement in various instruments by developed countries of the responsibilities they bear in the international pursuit of sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies place on global development. This is also expressed in the CBDR principle, which is contained in many environmental treaties adopted over the past 30 years.

More recently, the PPP has been discussed within the context of international climate change law, although it is not expressly mentioned in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol, or the Paris Agreement (Mayer, 2018; Kodolova & Solntsev, 2020). However, the PPP has been relevant in discussions on both loss and damage, and the CBDR principle.

The UNFCCC defines loss and damage to include harm resulting from climate change—both sudden-onset events, such as cyclones, and slow-onset processes, such as sea level rise. Loss and damage can include economic losses and non-economic losses (i.e., individual loss of life, health, or mobility; loss of territory, cultural heritage, Indigenous or local knowledge). For years, parties to the UNFCCC have discussed who should assume direct and indirect responsibility for the adverse effects of climate change (Heine et al., 2020). The PPP is especially meaningful in this debate, particularly with regard to the cost of forecast and actual damages as well as the mechanisms to obtain fair, viable, and comprehensive reparations arising from climate-related impacts.

Yet, this remains difficult to achieve. While the CBDR principle promotes international cooperation to tackle environmental degradation, the PPP includes methods to allocate the costs of pollution through taxation, charges, and liability laws that are often more effective when used within a country, as opposed to deployed internationally. In the context of the Paris Agreement, it is clear the greenhouse gas emissions of developed country parties largely determine current global emissions (Kodolova & Solntsev, 2020). Consequently, it is those emissions that will make it possible—or impossible—to limit temperature increases to 1.5°C from pre-industrial levels. This does not mean developing country parties are exempt from any responsibility. In fact, under the PPP approach all parties to the Paris Agreement would have the status of polluters. In this sense, indirect forms of the PPP can be found in the Paris Agreement’s nationally determined contributions, obligations of climate finance, and emission trading schemes. With these mechanisms, states recognize their responsibilities in exacerbating climate change and propose ways to reduce their emissions and offer other solutions.

Without trying to underestimate the flexibility and the approach offered by the CBDR principle, some scholars try to apply the Principle of Prevention of Transboundary Harm (PTH) in lieu of a substantial principle that guides states in the fight against climate change (Zahar, 2020). The PTH relies on the obligation of states not to emit greenhouse gas emissions that go beyond the capacity of their sinks, in accordance with the UNFCCC preamble:

States have… the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.

Other scholars believe state practice does not conceive that all costs should be assumed by the polluter (Mayer, 2018). An example of this can be found in the International Law Commission’s Draft guidelines on the protection of the atmosphere. This document expressly excludes questions concerning the PPP, the precautionary principle, and the CBDR principle at the request of states (ILC, 2020). Despite this, climate defenders rely on the CBDR principle to hold states accountable for much of the negative impacts of climate change (Mayer, 2018).

These developments in the international climate regime are finding their way into the work of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund through the Helsinki Principles of 2019 (Principle 3), “Work towards measures that result in effective carbon pricing,” where the world’s finance ministers committed to make polluters pay for carbon emissions through taxes, trading schemes, and reduced or eliminated fossil fuel subsidies (De Sadeleer, 2020). The Explanatory Note to the Helsinki Principles references the use of price-based instruments to reach the emission-reduction objectives of the Paris Agreement (Heine et al., 2020). The draft Global Pact for the Environment mentions the PPP in the following terms: “Parties shall ensure that prevention, mitigation and remediation costs for pollution, and other environmental disruptions and degradation are, to the greatest possible extent, borne by their originator” (Article 8).

Moving Forward

One of the main obstacles in international environmental law is creating enforceable rules that can apply to all countries, considering the different conditions and capabilities of states. Developed countries have considerable advantage in this regard, since they usually have the necessary economic and institutional foundations in place. While it would be ideal to have consistent regulations across all countries, in the Global South environmental protection must compete for policymakers’ attention with high priority issues such as nutrition, health, safety, and education. So, the question is: how can a principle of international law such as the PPP contribute not only to environmental protection in all countries, but also harmonize with sustainable development for all, particularly in the North-South context?

The PPP includes some elements for the application of responsibility, prevention, and compensation that could be used to reduce the impacts of environmental issues, such as climate change, the degradation of ecosystems, and biodiversity loss. And considering the difficulties in applying this principle in all countries, incorporating elements of CBDR—such as state cooperation and differentiation—could be useful when considering the PPP in international law. This is a process Peces-Barba (1995) called “specification,” and would translate to countries and corporations of the Global North absorbing the costs of environmental harms caused in the Global South. This would shift the current common practice of favouring products that have low environmental impacts in the places where these are used, but high impacts where they are manufactured or where their materials are extracted.

Increasing scrutiny on businesses that have long profited from “passing the bill” from their pollution to communities and the environment could fit together with carefully examining the substance of the PPP, applying to environmental issues without prejudice to borders between the North and the South. Modern international agreements are finding ways to incorporate these concerns into legally binding mechanisms, but the evolution of international law is slow, and issues for which we could have reasonable solutions still have a long road ahead.

Works Consulted

Beyerlin, U., & Marauhn, T. (2011). International environmental law. Hart. De Sadeleer, N. (2020). Environmental principles: From political slogans to legal rules (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

De Sadeleer, N. (2020). Environmental principles: From political slogans to legal rules (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Heine, D., Faure, M. G., & Dominioni, G. (2020). The polluter-pays principle in climate change law: An economic appraisal. Climate Law, 10(1), 94-115. doi.org/10.1163/18786561-01001004

International Law Commission. (2020). Sixth report on the protection of the atmosphere by Murase Shinya, Special Rapporteur. digitallibrary.un.org/record/3856187?ln=en

Kodolova, A. V., & Solntsev, A. M. (2020). Application of the polluter-pays principle in Russian legislation on climate change: Problems and prospects. Climate Law, 10(2), 197-210. doi.org/10.1163/18786561-01002003

Mayer, B. (2018). The international law on climate change. Cambridge University Press.

Peces-Barba, G., de Asis Roig, R., Liesa, C. R. F., & Cascon, A. L. (1995). Curso de derechos fundamentales: Teoría general. Instituto de derechos humanos Bartolomé de las Casas, Universidad Carlos III.

Sands, P., & Peel, J. (2012). Principles of international environmental law. Cambridge University Press.

Schwartz, P. (2010). The polluter-pays principle. In M. Fitzmaurice, D. M. Ong & P. Merkouris (Eds.), Research handbook on international environmental law (pp. 243-261). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Zahar, A. (2020). The polluter pays principle and its ascendancy in climate change law. National Taipei University Law Review, 14, 129-180. dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3479845

In many big-budget disaster movies early scenes often show scientists raising the alarm about what’s to come, from pandemics to impending asteroid strikes. Their warnings go unheeded, setting the stage for spectacular special effects before the protagonist eventually saves the day and the planet. 

While it is seldom as cinematically thrilling as the movies, societies often do rely on the science community to identify environmental risks early enough so they can be avoided or, if necessary, controlled and resolved.

In the lead up to the first global environmental summit in Stockholm in 1972—the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment—environmental disasters had already captured public attention. Hunting and/or habitat destruction had driven certain species, such as humpback whales and Bengal tigers, close to extinction. Exposure to long-term discharges of methyl mercury into Minamata Bay in Japan had led to widespread mercury poisoning, known today as Minamata Disease, among communities consuming fish from the Bay. Deadly short term pollution events brought entire cities to a standstill, as was the case in London during its Great Smog of December 1952, which killed thousands. Industrial accidents had become commonplace. Oil spills had not only fouled coastlines but trapped sea life in their morass.

While these high visual-impact events can belatedly raise the alarm for policy action, the Stockholm Conference conceptualized an early warning role of science and technology in Principle 18 of the Stockholm Declaration: “Science and technology, as part of their contribution to economic and social development, must be applied to the identification, avoidance and control of environmental risks and the solution of environmental problems and for the common good of mankind.”

By emphasizing identification, avoidance, and control of environmental risks, the Declaration highlights that science and technology communities should play a central role in the application of the precautionary principle to avoid disasters. By including references to control and solutions, the Declaration also identifies the need for a partnership between policymakers and science and technology communities to address planetary challenges.

But how are scientists supposed to convey timely warnings and inform policymaking? If each country relies on their own science advisors or advisory process, how can conflicting advice be resolved when trying to set coordinated policy responses to global challenges?

Since 1972, a variety of strategies have been employed to facilitate constructive exchanges at the interface of science and policy arenas. The resulting formalized mechanisms aimed at bridging the enduring gulf between science and policy are now called science-policy interfaces (SPIs); many operate in the arena of global environmental governance. Among these, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has come to be the most visible model of such institutions. This prominence is reflected in calls for an “IPCC for land” (Chasek, 2019), an “IPCC for food systems” and an “IPCC for chemicals and wastes.” Other models include SPIs that are subsidiary to a single treaty, such as the Stockholm Convention’s Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee. Given enduring and worsening global environmental challenges, what lessons have been learned over the last five decades to live up to the ambition in Principle 18?

Successes at the Science-Policy Interface

The science institutions that helped advise the international community as they came together to address ozone layer depletion are perhaps some of the best known early SPIs. Prior to the adoption of the Montreal Protocol in 1987, governments heeded scientists’ warnings on the need to collaborate on research and monitoring of the ozone layer. Under the Montreal Protocol, parties established three assessment panels to continue this work: the first reviewing the science of the ozone layer, the second the environmental effects of ozone layer depletion, and a third focused on technological and economic issues. The latter includes specialized technical options committees that have guided parties as they have phased out ozone-depleting substances.

Even as the Montreal Protocol was being finalized (it has since been heralded as the most successful environmental treaty), global attention shifted to the threat of climate change. The IPCC was established in 1988 under the umbrella of both the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The first assessment produced by the IPCC in 1990 played an integral role in supporting negotiations that culminated in the adoption of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC established a Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and yet this subsidiary body has never supplanted the IPCC in the way that the Montreal Protocol assessment panels supplanted their predecessors. Indeed, the landscape of SPIs is now divided among subsidiary SPIs, with agendas set by parties to a convention, and stand-alone SPIs with a designated governing body (Kohler et al., 2012).

When improvements in scientific knowledge are brought to the attention of global decision-makers through fora such as the United Nations, effective global action can be taken to protect the environment, the people, and the planet.

Tina Birmpili, former Executive Secretary, Ozone Secretariat

Among subsidiary SPIs, many institutional models exist. A common set-up involves an open-membership body, such as the UNFCCC’s SBSTA or the Committee on Science and Technology under the 1994 UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). These bodies often operate in a similar manner to the Convention’s main policymaking body, the Conference of the Parties (COP), just on a smaller scale. As a result, such bodies have frequently been criticized for politicization. In fact, the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice has long been considered a “mini-COP” with more government representatives than scientists (Mulongoy, 2011).

Other arrangements involve limited membership expert committees, such as those established under the Montreal Protocol, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, as well as the UNCCD’s Science-Policy Interface. There is much variation across treaties regarding how experts are selected to serve on such committees, whether they serve in their individual capacity, whether their meetings are open to other participants, and in how their mandates are delineated.

As a stand-alone SPI, the IPCC has overseen the preparation of periodic assessment reports as well as an array of specialized technical guidance on climate change. The IPCC is well known for its “policy-relevant but not policy prescriptive” assessments, and in 2007 its work and impact were recognized when it was jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore. This is not to say the IPCC has been without controversy, and for more than three decades the IPCC has continually adjusted and improved its working practices, notably regarding how it controls for conflicts of interest and through broadening the geographic affiliation of its experts and authors.

Policymakers tackling other global environmental challenges have sought to emulate and build upon the IPCC model to improve or establish SPIs in other environmental domains. Following negotiations launched in 2005, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was established in 2012. In addition to generating assessments, like the IPCC, IPBES also supports knowledge generation, capacity building, and policymaking as additional and complementary functions (Brooks, Lamoreux & Soberon, 2014). Recognizing the importance of Indigenous and local knowledge to the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems as a cross-cutting issue relevant to all of its activities, IPBES has an objective in its rolling work programme up to 2030 to this end: “Enhanced recognition of and work with Indigenous and local knowledge systems.”

The IPCC and IPBES have themselves become objects of study from scholars across several disciplines. Some studies hold them up as examples for other SPIs, others point to the unresolved crises of climate change and biodiversity loss as evidence of these panels’ failings (Lidskog & Sundqvist, 2015; Beck et al., 2016).

There have also been parallel and connected efforts to professionalize how science—and scientists—can advise policymakers. Following an initial conference on Science Advice to Governments convened in 2014, the International Network for Government Science Advice was established, under the umbrella of the International Science Council, by a network of experts with practical experience in serving in SPIs at national, regional, and global levels (Gluckman & Wilsdon, 2015; Gluckman et al., 2021). Participants included members of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s 26-member Science Advisory Body, which operated from 2014 until the end of Ban’s term in 2016. The International Science Council recommended in 2021 that current UN Secretary-General António Guterres reconvene such a body.

Scholars and practitioners agree that the most effective SPIs satisfy certain key criteria. A 2020 UNEP report reviewed science-policy interfaces, as mandated by the fourth meeting of the UN Environmental Assembly (UNEA 4). The report stated: “[c]redibility, relevance, legitimacy, transparency, iterativity and inclusiveness are the hallmarks of an effective SPI platform, as well as being policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive” (UNEP, 2020, p.17). But what strategies can be deployed to achieve these goals?

Proposing New Science-Policy Interfaces

Over the last year, calls for an “IPCC for Chemicals and Wastes” and an “IPCC for Food” have been discussed in both policy and scientific arenas. Given that these arrangements are intended to improve how scientists can inform policymaking, it is particularly striking that the former has largely been supported by the scientific community while the latter has not.

An IPCC for Chemicals and Wastes? UNEA 4 called on UNEP to assess options for strengthening the science-policy interface at the international level for chemicals and wastes. The resulting 2020 report assesses an option for an intergovernmental panel for chemicals and wastes. The value of such a proposal has since been supported by several constituencies. In February 2021, a group of experts published a policy forum piece in Science titled “We need a global science-policy body on chemicals and waste” (Wang et al., 2021, p. 774). The International Panel on Chemical Pollution, a global network of scientists, coordinated an online petition for practitioners and scientists to support the idea. Stakeholders from the health arena also supported the proposal.

In July 2021, Marcos Orellana, Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes, presented his annual report to the UN Human Rights Commission on the “Right to science in the context of toxic substances.” The report supported establishing a global SPI on chemicals and wastes, underscoring the importance of applying the precautionary principle.

The creation of effective channels connecting science with policymaking is indispensable to advancing the contribution of scientific knowledge to human rights protection.

Marcos Orellana, Special Rapporteur

Following a series of regional presentations in December 2021, Costa Rica, Ghana, Mali, Norway, Switzerland, the UK, and Uruguay released a draft resolution for a Science-Policy Panel to support action on chemicals, waste, and pollution for consideration by UNEA in 2022. The draft envisions the establishment of a working group to prepare a detailed proposal for establishing such a panel. The draft resolution further provides for the panel to be “an autonomous intergovernmental body; and that the ultimate authority shall rest with Governments to ensure the programme of work delivers policy-relevant evidence.”

An IPCC for Food? Just a few months after the group of experts called for a global science-policy body on chemicals and wastes, another group of scientists took to the pages of Science to discuss a proposed SPI for food systems (Turnhout et al., 2021). But this was not an endorsement supported by extensive petitions. Instead, the authors—experts with first-hand engagement with several science-policy platforms—raised several concerns with a proposal that had earlier been traced to a 2017 World Economic Forum report (Clapp et al., 2021, p. 2).

In their article, the authors warned “if pluralism, equitable participation, and inclusion of diverse forms of knowledge cannot be ensured, a new platform could do more harm than good.” They concluded “The implicit suggestion in many science-policy interface initiatives that the synthesis, assessment, and communication of knowledge will strengthen governance in and of itself is misguided and overly simplistic, and it risks detracting attention away from actual policy action” (Turnhout et al., 2021, p. 1095).

Challenges. Each of these proposals relate to very broad issue areas that already engage actors and institutions from multiple ministries in a typical country. For food systems, this involves not only environment, but also agriculture, development aid, health, and labour. Similarly, for chemicals and wastes, while several of the existing treaties are housed under UNEP, the Inter-Organization Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals (established in 1995) brings together the work of nine organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization, and the World Bank.

These two issue areas share not only a wide breadth of stakeholders, but also enduring power imbalances. Some of the largest multinational corporations are key players in these arenas (and indeed some of these players, such as pesticide producers, operate in both arenas). In contrast, farmers, local communities, Indigenous Peoples, and other civil society actors face financial and logistical challenges to participate in global SPIs. These power imbalances may help to explain the difference in how these proposals have been received among expert communities.

In a report released in July 2021, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), an organization established in 2015 with a panel of 24 scientists, called out the proposal, arguing: “The calls for a new ‘IPCC for Food’ originated from a small group of actors whose views have been amplified by a powerful network of organizations, many of which are closely aligned with business and industry” (Clapp et al., 2021, p. 2). In contrast, experts mostly affiliated with universities have long been calling for an “IPCC for Chemicals,” having already established, in 2008, the International Panel on Chemical Pollution as an international network of researchers with a mandate that includes the identification of emerging issues.

Lessons for Science-Policy Interfaces

The “hallmarks” of “credibility, relevance, legitimacy, transparency, iterativity, and inclusiveness” (UNEP, 2020, p. 17) are difficult to attain while also contending with logistical and financial constraints. Policymakers negotiating a new SPI may be tempted to disregard one in favour of another, yet this risks the SPI’s long-term effectiveness. The following three-pronged approach to SPI design can guide policymakers as they aim to maximize these hallmarks while also ensuring they engage scientists and incorporate a diversity of sources of knowledge (Kohler, 2020).

First, who are the experts who make up the membership of the SPI? At the global level, it is not surprising the focus has often been on achieving geographical diversity of members. Increasingly, the focus on ensuring representation has also included age, career stage, gender, and institutional affiliation. In establishing a new SPI, it is important to clarify whether experts are serving in their individual capacity or as government representatives, or whether there is a need for both types of appointments. Indeed, this dual approach in both IPCC and IPBES has facilitated government buy-in of their reports.

Second, what institutional rules and processes should govern how the SPI functions? These rules might address not just what information can be considered (i.e., does it need to be peer-reviewed) but also how members deliberate and reach agreement. On this latter point, some SPIs might allow for voting as a last resort, while others, such as the IPCC, rely on word-by-word consensus on reports. When considering proposals for any new panel, codifying conflict of interest procedures for experts and clarifying how proprietary industrial knowledge might be taken into consideration are key for alleviating concerns over undue influence from industry stakeholders.

Third, which disciplines and ways of knowing should inform the SPI’s work? It is striking to see the differences between the bodies of knowledge engaged in the work of IPCC and IPBES, with social sciences and Indigenous and local knowledge systems more prevalent in the latter. These choices influence not just who contributes to the SPI’s work, but also what assumptions shape the SPI’s agenda. In considering proposals for future panels, tensions could arise among stakeholders relating to the inclusion of knowledge gained in the field and in the lab, as well as the inclusion of the critical social sciences and humanities that have been studying the injustices and inequities that persist in both food systems and the governance of chemicals and wastes.

As experts and policymakers look to existing SPIs to inform the design of new ones, there is much to learn from looking beyond the IPCC and IPBES. The urgent challenges we face require timely and effective advice on solutions. Other SPIs, notably those advising on ozone layer depletion, chemical pollution, and desertification, have valuable experience supporting decision-making. SPIs must create avenues for the science communities to not just sound the alarm but to work with policymakers to craft just and sustainable solutions.

Works Consulted

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Clapp, J., Anderson, M., Rahmanian, S., & Suárez, S. M. (2021). An ‘IPCC for food’. How the UN Food Systems Summit is being used to advance a problematic new science-policy agenda. Briefing note 1 on the governance of food systems. IPES Food. ipes-food.org/_img/upload/files/GovBrief.pdf

Gluckman, P. D., Bardsley, A., & Kaiser, M. (2021). Brokerage at the science–policy interface: From conceptual framework to practical guidance. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 1-10. doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00756-3

Gluckman, P., & Wilsdon, J. (2016). From paradox to principles: Where next for scientific advice to governments? Palgrave Communications, 2(1), 1-4. doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2016.77

Kohler, P.M. (2020). Science advice and global environmental governance: Expert institutions and the implementation of international environmental treaties. Anthem Press. doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvq4bzt8

Kohler, P.M., Conliffe, A., Jungcurt, S., Gutierrez, M., & Yamineva, Y. (2012). Informing policy: Science and knowledge in global environmental agreements. In P.S. Chasek & L.M. Wagner (Eds.) The Roads from Rio: Lessons learned from twenty years of multilateral environmental negotiations. (pp. 59-82). Routledge. doi.org/10.4324/9780203125564

Lidskog, R., & Sundqvist, G. (2015). When does science matter? International relations meets science and technology studies. Global Environmental Politics, 15(1), 1-20. doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00269

Mulongoy, K. J. (2011). Mobilizing the scientific community for the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity. cbd.int/doc/meetings/sbstta/sbstta-15/other/sbstta-15-presentation-jo-en.pdf

Turnhout, E., Duncan, J., Candel, J., Maas, T. Y., Roodhof, A. M., DeClerck, F., & Watson, R. T. (2021). Do we need a new science-policy interface for food systems? Science, 373(6559), 1093-1095. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj5263

Wang, Z., Altenburger, R., Backhaus, T., Covaci, A., Diamond, M. L., Grimalt, J. O., ... & Suzuki, N. (2021). We need a global science-policy body on chemicals and waste. Science, 371(6531), 774-776. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe9090

This article was originally published on the Ecosystem for Peace – A compendium of ideas website, hosted on medium.com, and is reprinted below with permission. Read the original post here.

Context

It can be difficult to make the case for climate adaptation planning in contexts defined by fragility and violence. Despite the often clear link between fragility, climate impacts, and climate vulnerability, it can be difficult to argue that limited time and resources should be put into plans for adapting to future and uncertain climate risks; governments and donors are understandably focused on alleviating immediate human suffering, re-establishing or strengthening public services, and generally creating the conditions for development and investment. However, a failure to integrate climate adaptation considerations into peacebuilding plans and post-conflict development agendas can undermine the long-term viability of both.

The converging crises of conflict and climate change can be mutually reinforcing, with climate impacts potentially exacerbating the conflict cycle and violence weakening the governance structures and institutions needed to build climate resilience.

There are, of course, considerable barriers to adaptation planning in such contexts beyond the prioritization of more immediate needs. Governance is weak, as governments struggle with the hard work of rebuilding the social contract and re-establishing their legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens. Adaptation projects and progress may have been derailed by conflict; populations may have been targeted or displaced, staff evacuated, and project resources damaged or destroyed. A dearth of reliable and accurate climate data and information can also hinder effective policymaking. Finally, donor priorities may have shifted. Unfortunately, with often similar root causes — weak institutions, discrimination, inequality, poverty, marginalization — the converging crises of conflict and climate change can be mutually reinforcing, with climate impacts potentially exacerbating the conflict cycle and violence weakening the governance structures and institutions needed to build climate resilience. One way to align peacebuilding, development, and adaptation strategies is through the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process.

What’s been done

The NAP process is a country-owned strategic process to integrate climate adaptation priorities into medium- and long-term development plans. For fragile states, the NAP process provides governments struggling with conflict, instability, and climate change the opportunity to align their peacebuilding, development, and adaptation agendas and lay the foundation for lasting peace. The NAP process is not designed to address the drivers of conflict in a country; however, as an integrated approach to development and adaptation planning, it is well-positioned to support peacebuilding processes in some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries in several ways.[i]

First, the NAP process — similar to peacebuilding processes — requires that governments take a holistic approach to addressing vulnerabilities to climate change and conflict. It promotes both incremental and transformative actions to increase resilience across sectors and levels of government. Doing so effectively requires addressing the underlying causes of climate vulnerability — which in fragile states can overlap with the drivers of conflict, such as weak governance, inequality, and poverty.

Second, both the NAP process and peacebuilding timelines are concerned with medium- and long-term planning horizons. While fragile states face urgent and immediate adaptation and stability needs, it takes an average of 22 years for an economy to recover from a major conflict.[ii] A similar longer-term view, espoused by the NAP process, is required to adapt to a changing climate.

Third, the NAP process is contextually sensitive, flexible, and structured to evolve; as an iterative process it is well-placed to take into account the changing dynamics of fragile states and to be adjusted over time to reflect the evolving realities on the ground. As with sustainable peacebuilding programmes, the NAP process is not imposed from outside, but rather is country-owned and participative. And finally, the NAP process, in articulating a country’s adaptation priorities, can open the door to funding for technical support, capacity building, and institutional strengthening in countries often in dire need of resources for all three.

Governments are already using the NAP process to integrate conflict dynamics and considerations into adaptation planning and efforts.

A review of submitted NAP documents indicates that governments are already using the process to integrate conflict dynamics and considerations into adaptation planning and efforts.[iii] Several countries, including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Colombia, and Brazil, see adaptation as a clear means to preventing potential conflicts around land and water resources. Others, such as Palestine, recognize conflict as a key source of their population’s climate vulnerability. Still others — such as Sudan, Burkina Faso, and Colombia — note in their NAPs that adaptation plans need to recognize conflict as a driver of climate vulnerability and adaptation as a possible tool for conflict prevention.

Looking ahead

There remains much to do to fully align NAPs with peacebuilding agendas in fragile states. Governments must ensure that their climate adaptation actions respond to conflict dynamics and, when possible, that they are designed to actively address the drivers of both climate and conflict vulnerability. This includes, at a minimum, ensuring that adaptation actions are conflict-neutral; interventions that do not, for example, consider the equitable distribution of adaptation benefits could cause more harm than good. They must also work to ensure that their peacebuilding plans and programmes are climate resilient and designed to cope with existing and expected local and national climate impacts. Donors also have a role to play; they must increase their support for conflict-sensitive, flexible, and autonomous adaptation planning in conflict-affected states, and fully support the transition from planning to implementation.

This article is a contribution to a compendium of 50 entries on the future of environmental peacebuilding, written by 150 authors in a collective effort to chart a future course of action. Environmental peacebuilding, climate security, environmental peace and security — these are all terms to articulate the relationship between natural resources and the lines between violent conflict and peace.

The collective project will be collated and launched online on 1 February 2022 at the International Conference for Environmental Peacebuilding. It is meant to be a tool both of collective sensemaking and of influence for decision-makers. Learn more here.

Note: This white paper submission is drawn from: Crawford, A. and Church, C. (2020) The NAP Process and Peacebuilding: Briefing Note. International Institute for Sustainable Development: Winnipeg. (https://napglobalnetwork.org/resource/naps-and-peacebuilding/)

[i] Crawford, A., and Church, C. (2020) The NAP Process and Peacebuilding: Briefing Note. International Institute for Sustainable Development: Winnipeg. (https://napglobalnetwork.org/resource/naps-and-peacebuilding/)

[ii] Hoeffler, A. (2012) Growth, aid and policies in countries recovering from war. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/growthaid-and-policies-in-countries-recovering-from-war_5k49dfgl38wb-en)

[iii] Crawford, A. and Church, C., (2020) The NAP Process and Peacebuilding: Briefing Note. International Institute for Sustainable Development: Winnipeg. (https://napglobalnetwork.org/resource/naps-and-peacebuilding/)

Image credit: Moinak Ahmed, IISD Impact Images Project.

Devotha Tumainieli farms on the steep western slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. She has a small plot of two hectares where she grows bananas for her family and as a cash crop. But over the past decade the productivity of Devotha’s land—and that of other farmers around her—declined dramatically, almost to the point where her family began to starve (GEF, UNDP & UNCCD, 2017, pp. 20-21).

Land degradation such as this occurs when land cover is lost or removed, causing vulnerable soil and organic matter to be washed or blown away. Salinization of soil can produce similar effects, reducing land productivity. The symptoms are many and alarming: expansion and movement of sand dunes, diminished rainfall, depletion of pastureland, erosion from wind and rain, and loss of biomass and biological integrity.

The resulting human suffering is severe. For farmers like Devotha, this means greater food insecurity and financial hardship.

People have long depended on the land and the resources it provides to meet their basic needs and support their families. At the same time, population growth, unsustainable consumption, intensive agricultural practices, the use of damaging extractive or mining technologies, growing conflict over rights to land, forced migration of people, and climate change are pushing the planet to its limits, causing land degradation on a vast scale (GEF, UNDP & UNCCD, 2017, p.3). In economic terms, the World Bank calculates global land degradation to cost USD 85.8 trillion annually (Reinl, 2019).

Concerns about, and efforts to address, land degradation are not new. During the colonial era in West Africa, government officials identified a process that soon became known as “desertification” and started to prioritize conservation efforts to address it (Tal & Cohen, 2007, p.163). In the 1930s, the southern plains of the United States suffered massive soil erosion due to inappropriate farming methods and drought during the “Dust Bowl.”

Today, 25% of the total land area across the globe is degraded. While 3.2 billion people are directly affected by land degradation, especially smallholder farmers and rural communities, millions more are affected through food insecurity, higher food prices, climate change, environmental hazards, and the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Scientists have warned 24 billion tons of fertile soil are lost each year, largely due to unsustainable agriculture practices. If this trend continues, 95% of the Earth’s land areas could become degraded by 2050 (GEF, 2019). The international community has been trying to combat land degradation and desertification for decades, but challenges remain.

The Birth of International Land Governance

The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment convened in Stockholm, Sweden, in the midst of severe drought in the Sahelian region of Africa. Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, approximately 100,000 people died due to food shortages and disease. The drought led to fears the Sahel was turning into a permanent desert due to mismanagement of natural resources, overgrazing, and overpopulation (Giannini, et al., 2003). The Stockholm Plan of Action responded by recognizing international cooperative research on soil degradation needed to be strengthened and broadened. Recommendation 20 recognized economic and social factors contribute to soil degradation, including the “payment of inadequate prices for agriculture produce of developing countries, which prevents farmers in those countries from setting aside sufficient savings for necessary investments in soil regeneration and conservation.”

Five years later, the UN Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) convened in 1977 and adopted a non-binding Plan of Action to Combat Desertification (PACD), which aimed to improve land-use practices and social and economic welfare at the national level and in rural areas and local communities (Kong, et al., 2021). The PACD’s 28 recommendations acknowledged the local specificity of desertification and the need to incorporate rural land users when planning policy responses (UN, 1977, p. 5).

The PACD was largely ineffective, in part due to a lack of political will and funding (Mabbutt, 1987; Danish, 1995; Kong et al., 2021). From 1977-1992, implementation efforts focused on large-scale, top-down efforts that were not always appropriate to the realities of farmers and communities on the ground. Increasingly, experts suggested the circumstances surrounding “desertification” were too locally specific to be effectively addressed with regional schemes conceived solely by governments and international organizations (Danish, 1995, p. 147).

However, the PACD boosted dryland science and advanced understanding of desertification (Mabbutt, 1987). While it had been hypothesized that human mismanagement of natural resources, especially the reduction in vegetation cover, had sparked the Sahelian drought, scientists discovered human impact was not the only problem. Studies determined climate variations and changes in global sea surface temperatures have an impact on rainfall patterns (Giannini, et al., 2003), which partially explained the end of the drought in the mid-1980s. Yet, land degradation continued.

At the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, African countries mounted a campaign for a global convention to combat desertification. As a result, Chapter 12 of the resulting action plan, Agenda 21, called for the UN General Assembly to establish “an intergovernmental negotiating committee for the elaboration of an international convention to combat desertification in in those countries experiencing serious drought and/or desertification, particularly in Africa, with a view to finalizing such a convention by June 1994.”

Two years later, governments adopted the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The Convention, which is often called the first “sustainable development” convention, is committed to improve living conditions for people in drylands, to maintain and restore land and soil productivity, and to mitigate the effects of drought. The UNCCD moved away from the PACD’s centralized, prescribed “top-down” strategies. Instead, it embraced local-level, community-based actions and knowledge—a more bottom-up approach (Kong et al., 2021). Thus, the Convention calls for national governments to channel a certain degree of authority and resources to local land users and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Land Degradation Neutrality

During the UNCCD’s first fifteen years, most countries affected by desertification developed national action programs in line with the Convention, but implementation was slow. The UNCCD lacked financial support to implement its programs. There was also a need to bring more scientific knowledge into the work of the Convention and communicate that knowledge in a policy-relevant way so decision-makers and landowners alike could understand and take steps to restore degraded land and prevent further degradation. Furthermore, the UNCCD’s policies, procedures, and programs suffered from the absence of a clear overarching goal and quantitative, time-bound targets to guide action and make measurable progress (UNCCD, 2016).

Recognizing the value of a shared goal to drive progress, then-UNCCD Executive Secretary Luc Gnacadja, among others, proposed a new concept to combat desertification—“a land degradation-neutral world.” This proposal was taken up by the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June 2012 in paragraph 206 of its outcome document, The Future We Want, which called for achieving a land degradation-neutral world in the context of sustainable development.

We recognize the need for urgent action to reverse land degradation. In view of this, we will strive to achieve a land-degradation neutral world in the context of sustainable development.

The Future We Want, Paragraph 206

In 2015, the global objective to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN) was incorporated into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 15.3: By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world. The same year, UNCCD parties adopted a decision acknowledging that striving to achieve SDG target 15.3 provides a “strong vehicle for driving implementation of the UNCCD” (UNCCD, 2015). Countries were invited to set voluntary targets to achieve LDN as a key step to implement this new centerpiece of the Convention.

According to UNCCD decision 3/COP.12, land degradation neutrality is “a state whereby the amount and quality of land resources necessary to support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security remain stable or increase within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems” (UNCCD, 2015). LDN represents a paradigm shift in both land management policies and practices. It counterbalances the expected loss of productive land with the recovery of degraded areas, and strategically places measures to conserve, sustainably manage, and restore land in the context of land use planning (UNCCD, n.d.).

The UNCCD recognized LDN implementation efforts require a firm grounding of the “neutrality” concept in national policies and procedures. Thus, a first step was to develop a Scientific Conceptual Framework for Land Degradation Neutrality to provide a scientific foundation for understanding, implementing, and monitoring LDN. The Framework was designed to create a bridge between the vision and the practical implementation of LDN.

At the same time, policymakers had to incorporate LDN in national agenda setting and state budgets. In 2014, the UNCCD financed a pilot project to assist 14 countries to set voluntary targets. This led to the LDN Target Setting Programme, which takes countries through a structured process to help leverage, assess, measure, and achieve their LDN commitments. To date, 128 countries have committed to set LDN targets.

LDN Implementation Challenges

LDN sets a clear, measurable goal for the UNCCD. Its integration with the SDGs and national development plans improved the visibility of land degradation, creating a pathway to channel and mobilize resources to tackle it (Kong et al., 2021). However, challenges remain, including those that have existed for decades: the need for equitable land tenure and gender equality, national support and coordination, and funding.

Land Tenure

Land tenure refers to the relationship among people, as individuals or groups, with respect to land. It defines the conditions under which land can be occupied, held or managed, by whom, and for how long. There are different types of tenure; it may be based on written policies and laws (statutory land tenure) or on unwritten customs and practices (customary land tenure) (UNCCD, 2020a). Although land tenure security may not be sufficient to stop land degradation, land tenure insecurity often prevents farmers from adopting sustainable land management practices (Chasek et al., 2019).

The UNCCD Secretariat estimates 2.5 billion rural people derive their livelihoods from agriculture and natural resources (UNCCD, 2020a). If people have land tenure security, they are more likely to have sustained food security and predictable sources of income. Secure land rights also enable the use of land as collateral to access other opportunities, such as credit markets. Moreover, landowners manage their land better than “tenants,” thereby reducing land degradation.

Gender Equality

Strengthening women’s land rights and equal access to resources increase food security, improve livelihoods, reduce poverty, and increase investments in sustainable land management practices. Yet, in more than half of the world’s countries, laws or customs hinder women’s ownership or access to land. Evidence shows women’s share as agricultural land holders vary from 0.8% in Saudi Arabia to 51% in Cabo Verde, with an overall global average estimated at 12.8% (UNCCD, 2020a).

Almost one-third of women’s employment globally is in agriculture. Women are at the frontline of LDN, struggling to salvage the large area of agricultural land already affected by degradation. The inaugural 2017 UNCCD Gender Action Plan (GAP) mandates gender mainstreaming to advance the efforts of countries to achieve their LDN targets. The GAP outlines four priority areas:

• ensure women’s participation in decisions taken during the design, planning, implementation, and evaluation of LDN initiatives;
• integrate women’s economic empowerment in implementation activities in order to eradicate their extreme poverty;
• strengthen women’s land rights and access to resources; and
• enhance women’s access to improved knowledge and technologies that relate to effective UNCCD implementation, including LDN (Global Mechanism, 2019).

Support and Coordination

Even if strong policies are in place, LDN policy implementation will not be successful if the main agency at the national level lacks the personnel and knowledge to coordinate integrated land use planning and LDN implementation. Some governments lack the scientific knowledge and data to develop integrated land use planning, including uncertainties about the influences of global drivers, like climate change, on national and local land use. Poor coordination between national governments and local authorities, and lack of knowledge and systems for enforcing, monitoring, and evaluating LDN measures can also prevent effective implementation. Finally, some national governments still need to create incentives and pathways so local officials, decision makers, land users, and other stakeholders are involved in planning processes (Chasek, et al., 2019).

Funding

Increased resource mobilization is essential to effectively implement LDN policies. While there should be funding available from national budgets, these funds are often insufficient where they exist at all. To avoid additional land degradation and rehabilitate 12 million hectares of degraded land each year, traditional financial sources, official development assistance, and national government resources alone will not suffice (Chasek, et al., 2019, p. 186). Furthermore, the UNCCD’s financial mechanisms—the Global Mechanism and the Global Environment Facility—may not be able to mobilize enough resources to achieve the LDN target.

With this in mind, the UNCCD created an independent Land Degradation Neutrality Fund (LDN Fund) to mobilize blended public and private sector funding to support the large-scale rehabilitation of degraded land and land degradation avoidance through sustainable and productive land management. Potential projects must be land-based projects that can avoid, reduce, or reverse land degradation while producing financial returns (UNCCD, 2020b).

Moving Forward

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which was formally declared by the World Health Organization in March 2020, the UNCCD, governments, stakeholders, and other partners have been making LDN a reality. At the same time, a number of related initiatives are underway.

The UNCCD Secretariat has demonstrated how land use change and land degradation is a primary driver for emerging infectious diseases. The 2020 report “Supporting the Global Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Land-based Solutions for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet” explains how land can move from being part of the pandemic problem to being central to the solution. The report argues the foundation for building back better in the face of climate change and the pandemic must take future land-use decisions into account.

Each of us holds the power to protect the land for each choice we make in our daily lives. And we can still choose to protect nature. By doing so, we in fact protect our future.

UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw

The Great Green Wall initiative is often celebrated for its ambition. Launched in 2007 by the African Union, this initiative aims to restore Africa’s degraded land and transform millions of lives in one of the world’s poorest regions, the Sahel. By planting trees, grass, and shrubs in more than 20 countries across Africa, the initiative aims to restore 100 million hectares of currently degraded land, sequester 250 million tons of carbon, and create 10 million green jobs by 2030. Thus far, progress has been made in restoring the fertility of Sahelian lands, including the planting of more than 18 million trees in Senegal, 8 million in Nigeria, 129 million in Eritrea, and 146 million in Niger.

Drought is one of the most far-reaching natural disasters, bringing short- and long-term economic and social losses to millions of people worldwide. Countries across the globe that face the impacts of intense drought still lack comprehensive early warning plans. The UNCCD, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Meteorological Organization, the Global Water Partnership, the European Commission, the National Drought Mitigation Centre, and the UN Environment Programme, has produced a Drought Toolbox. The toolbox provides stakeholders with easy access to real-time data and resources to support action on drought preparedness to boost the resilience of people and ecosystems.

Combating desertification and land degradation and mitigating the effects of drought will secure long-term socio-economic benefits for people living in the drylands and reduce their vulnerability to climate change. LDN—with conservation, sustainable use, and restoration as its three pillars—provides an effective framework. Creating an enabling environment for LDN can help policymakers and planners to navigate social, economic, and environmental tradeoffs so food security, energy needs, land tenure, gender equality, access to clean water, and biodiversity are considered—and addressed—together. (UNCCD, 2020c).

As UNCCD Executive Secretariat Ibrahim Thiaw said, “If we choose to work in harmony with nature, we will avert land degradation, we will curb our emissions, we will reverse biodiversity loss. If we choose to restore the land rather than destroy it, we can create jobs and opportunity.”

Works Consulted

Chasek, P., Akhtar-Schuster, M., Orr, B. J., Luise, A., Rakoto Ratsimba, H., & Safriel, U. (2019). Land degradation neutrality: The science-policy interface from the UNCCD to national implementation. Environmental Science & Policy, 92, 182–190. doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.11.017

Danish, K. W. (1995). International environmental law and the “bottom-up” approach: A review of the desertification convention. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 3(1), 133-176.

Giannini, A., Saravanan, R., & Chang, P. (2003). Oceanic forcing of Sahel rainfall on interannual to interdecadal time scales. Science, 302, 1027–1030. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1089357

Global Environment Facility. (2019). Land degradation. thegef.org/sites/default/files/publications/gef_land_degradation_bifold_2019.pdf

Global Environment Facility, United Nations Development Programme, & United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. (2017). Listening to our land: Stories of resilience. thegef.org/sites/default/files/publications/UNDP%20Listening%20to%20our%20land.pdf

Global Mechanism. (2019). Land degradation neutrality interventions to foster gender equality. catalogue.unccd.int/1222_UNCCD_gender_briefing_note.pdf

Kong, Z.-H., Stringer, L., Paavola, J., & Lu, Q. (2021). Situating China in the global effort to combat desertification. Land, 10, 702. doi.org/10.3390/land10070702

Mabbutt, J. A. (1985). Implementation of the plan of action to combat desertification: Progress since UNCOD. Land Use Policy, 4(4), 371-388. doi.org/10.1016/0264-8377(87)90060-3

Reinl, J. (2019). Desertification costs world economy up to 15 trillion dollars. UN Inter Press Service. ipsnews.net/2019/09/desertification-costs-world-economy-15-trillion-dollars-u-n/

Tal, A., & Cohen, J.A. (2007). Bringing “topdown” to “bottom-up”: A new role for environmental legislation in combating desertification. Harvard Environmental Law Review, 31(1), 163-217.

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United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. (2020b). Operationalization of the Land Degradation Neutrality Fund. Report by the Global Mechanism. ICCD/CRIC(19)/3. unccd.int/sites/default/files/sessions/documents/2020-12/ICCD_CRIC%2819%29_3-2015637E.pdf

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IISD recently undertook an exercise to hear from our staff, civil society, and policy partners about what they see as some of the biggest challenges in charting a path to sustainable food systems in Canada. We wanted to know:

• What do experts, civil society organizations, and social movement actors see as some of the major sustainability challenges to food systems in Canada?
• Are there themes and topics that are currently under researched and require more policy attention? Are there ways of doing research or bringing partners together that are missing in current approaches?
• Could IISD better contribute to sustainable food systems policy dialogues in Canada now or in the future? 

To try and answer these questions, we conducted surveys and workshops with IISD staff who have worked on food and agriculture issues, in addition to conducting interviews with 17 academic, government, private sector, and civil society experts. 

What We Heard 

Our findings revealed that many urgent questions exist regarding the sustainability of Canada’s food systems. In particular, we heard concerns about the sustainability and resilience of Canada’s food supply chains, the critical need for rapid decarbonization in the country’s food and agriculture sectors, and the need to better address equity and justice concerns across Canada’s food systems.

Some examples of questions we heard:

• What are strategies to build complementarities between export and domestic food markets? 
• How can we balance self-reliance and exports, as well as increased yields, with sustainability and equity?
• How can we deal with succession in Canada’s farming population?
• How can we support and plan for adaptation to the impacts of climate change on agriculture and the impacts of agriculture on our climate?
• How can we adopt a “systems approach” to address different dimensions of sustainability and ensure a more comprehensive multisectoral approach to food systems policy? 
• How can we transition to a more equitable and sustainable food system as part of recovering from the pandemic and improving the country’s wealth?
• How can we mainstream equity and justice considerations in food policy, including by ensuring decent work for all and supporting Indigenous food sovereignty as a key step to further reconciliation?

We heard that there are various existing challenges to effective, sustainable food systems policy in Canada: these include, for example, a lack of incentives for sufficient climate action in agriculture, and challenges navigating municipal, provincial, and federal jurisdiction. We heard that there is a need for multistakeholder dialogues to build a shared vision and consensus on sustainable food systems in Canada, as well as for more inclusive policy discussions that highlight sustainability, equity, and justice issues across the food system. The announcement of a Food Policy for Canada and the accompanying Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council represent landmark progress by the federal government, but there is still much work to be done to achieve sustainable food systems transformation. 

Examples of Sustainability Issues Facing Canadian Food Systems

Despite the valiant efforts of many policy advocates, organizations, and researchers, some sustainable food systems issues and themes appear to lack the attention they require to tackle the scale of the challenge. Below are five examples. One recurring and overarching piece of feedback we heard is a need for an equitable and holistic approach to food systems research and policy development, encompassing healthy people, animals, and ecosystems.

1. Trade and sustainability tensions: How can Canada balance self-reliance, increased yields, and exports, including the export goals outlined by the federal Advisory Council on Economic Growth, with sustainability and equity commitments such as the Paris Agreement, Aichi Biodiversity Targets, and the Sustainable Development Goals? See our infographic on international trade. 
2. Labour and market issues: This includes issues such as barriers to farming for historically marginalized groups, trends in producer income, labour shortages and foreign worker issues, market concentration in Canadian and global food systems, and more. 
3. Access, agency, and food security: Organizations such as Food Secure Canada, as well as community-based groups across the country, are at the forefront of advocacy in this area. There is much work to do in government policy to improve holistic thinking about food production systems and equity and to make the connection to overall ecosystem health and people’s well-being (for example, sustainable diets).
4. Climate risks and impacts in food production: Climate change will affect the entire food system, from crop production, contaminants, and food safety to the disruption of food supply chains, impacting exports and trade and more. See our infographic on agriculture and greenhouse gas emissions.
5. Agricultural land use, water use, and biodiversity: Many organizations already work on these issues—given the scale of the climate and biodiversity crises, we need all hands on deck. It’s crucial to connect social, economic, and environmental issues related to land and water use: for example, determining how sustainable or regenerative agriculture can put money in farmers’ pockets. See our infographic on water use in Canadian agriculture.

Sustainable Food Systems Must Be Central to COVID-19 Recovery 

COVID-19 has brought to light systemic issues and gaps in the Canadian food system that need to be addressed. We heard from many that the pandemic exposed major gaps in our food systems, including shocking levels of food insecurity and income precarity, labour force challenges for Canadian farms, the plight of migrant workers and racialized communities working in the food sector, and more. Yet the pandemic has also put a spotlight on opportunities for sustainable food solutions, such as the increased desire Canadians have demonstrated for local food and self-reliance, such as through community gardening and farmers’ markets.  

A key challenge for Canada is how to transition to a more equitable and sustainable food system as part of recovering from the pandemic. See our infographic on the impact of COVID-19.

IISD has been actively pushing for governments to adopt green recovery policies in response to the pandemic. In Canada, our president took part in the Task Force for Resilient Recovery, aimed at fostering a recovery that gets Canadians back to work while ensuring the country is competitive, prosperous, and climate-resilient. We also took part in a farmer-focused task force led by Farmers for Climate Solutions, which made robust federal budget recommendations to spur climate action on Canadian farms while supporting farmer livelihoods. 

Momentum Is Building for Sustainable Food Systems Work in Canada

Internationally, IISD has a strong track record of working on issues related to food security, food policy, farmer incomes, and sustainable production. Food and agriculture issues have cropped up across all of IISD’s programs of work. A great example is the Ceres2030 partnership, which brought together IISD, Cornell University, and the International Food Policy Research Institute to provide the donor community with policy options to best direct their investment to move toward a world without hunger while supporting sustainable food systems. 

IISD has significant expertise (e.g., on measures and indicators, community tools, financial instruments, etc.) that could be useful to apply to specific food system areas (e.g., risk management strategies, labour displacement, non-market food distribution systems) to address key sustainability and equity food system issues (e.g., reduce environmental footprints, redistribute wealth along the value chain, rethink markets). There is ample opportunity for more collaboration and synergies among IISD programs in Canada to link science to policy-making and increase work on projects that enhance social equity.

We are inspired by the work of many who are tackling Canada’s food system challenges with dedication and tenacity. Here are just a few examples of recent work from leaders in the field that have caught our eye:

• The Green Budget Coalition, on which IISD sits, charts key federal policy actions to help Canada transition to environmentally sustainable agriculture.
• Farmers for Climate Solutions is bringing together farmer organizations and supporters across the country to help improve agricultural policy and find practical solutions to ensure the sector is part of climate action. 
• Food Secure Canada’s ongoing work bringing people and organizations together for food security and food sovereignty. For example, check out their recommendations for a Canadian food policy action plan in response to COVID-19. 
• Grassroots organizations are working to advance the rights of migrant workers, including in Canada’s food systems, such as the Migrant Rights Network and Migrant Workers Alliance. 
• Greenbelt Foundation and Équiterre’s The Power of Soil study charts how addressing soil health is key to a sustainable transition and how Canadian policy-makers can support it.
   

Carbon markets have been exuberant lately. Anticipating the final agreement from the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow, carbon offset markets for airlines have grown by 900% and corporate carbon offsets by 170% so far this year. With the Article 6 “rulebook” negotiations of the Paris Agreement finally completed in Glasgow, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) with the University of Maryland forecast that additional financing from carbon markets could exceed USD 1 trillion by 2050. 

When the Paris Agreement was approved in 2015, its Article 6 was viewed as a major advance for achieving the objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the evolving international climate regime, given that it embraced more clearly the notion that “cooperative approaches” (often indicating “markets”) could help governments achieve their national carbon reduction and removal targets. This advance could occur through international transactions in carbon reduction credits, and cooperative approaches could also encourage the private sector to contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions. Notably, the Paris Agreement also embraced outright “non-market approaches” among two or more parties. 

In the six years that followed, however, negotiators struggled to agree upon the detailed rules for how these “cooperative approaches” would function. The outcome of the UNFCCC’s Twenty-Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP 26) in Glasgow marks a breakthrough in finalizing these rules and opening up the promise of carbon markets. 

Learning From the Past

A key question, however, is whether the recent exuberance for the new carbon market rules is fully warranted. This concern has particular resonance given that prior international carbon market-style arrangements and the UNFCCC Kyoto Protocol’s “flexibility mechanisms”—most notably the Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)—have a controversial track record in actually lowering GHG emissions. Moreover, some past CDM projects had adverse social impacts. 

Governments spent years creating CDM rules, which were administered by a centralized supervisory body charged with overseeing thousands of projects intended to help developing countries reduce or avoid GHG emissions. Years of work in refining the CDM rules helped create the first global carbon market. However, controversy plagued the CDM after it began approving projects in 2004, a process that kicked off after the CDM’s rules were adopted as part of the Marrakech Accords in 2001. 

For example, some observers contend that the CDM has been a centralized bureaucracy hampered by unclear measurement tools for verifying the quantity and quality of emission reductions or removals through offsets. There were also questions about whether these emission reductions were additional and permanent, including because there were unclear accounting rules to prevent carbon emissions being counted twice. In some cases, CDM project financing led to perverse incentives that generated additional GHG emissions, notably for industrial gases such as hydrofluorocarbons and nitrous oxide. Others criticized the CDM for focusing too widely on sustainable development outcomes, with project approvals delayed and hamstrung by complex environmental and social safeguards, arguing that projects should narrowly focus on the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas mitigation objectives. 

Throughout the course of the Article 6 negotiations, governments sought to ensure that the new international market rules would learn from the mixed record of the CDM. The conclusion of Article 6 rules at the Glasgow COP is therefore a notable achievement on several fronts. The new rules are designed to ensure that GHG emission reductions cannot be counted twice. The rules limit the number of past CDM projects that a country can count toward its reporting under its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). And the new rules establish a new international mechanism to oversee one portion of international carbon market activity. 

Perhaps as important as these and other details, Glasgow has reaffirmed that international carbon markets are an important means toward reaching the Paris Climate Agreement goal of limiting average global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.

What Does the Glasgow Climate Pact Say on Article 6?

The Article 6 negotiations at Glasgow finalized three key sub-articles through “decisions” reached by the parties to the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, namely CMA 12a, CMA 12b, and CMA 12c. CMA refers to the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement—in other words, the forum under which countries gather to oversee how the Paris Agreement is being put into practice. There are also Annexes on Guidance (6.2), Rules (6.4), and a Work Programme (6.8). 

Article 6.2 covers bilateral actions to reduce or remove GHG emissions. Article 6.4 creates a new multilateral mechanism to replace the old CDM. Article 6.8 addresses non-market international cooperation among governments. These new rules cover both government-to-government and government-to-private sector markets. Some early signals suggest these new rules will guide the practices of fully private sector or voluntary carbon market activities. 

Below, we look at some of the most important details of the 6.2 and 6.4 outcomes, and what needs to happen to make them work effectively. For a more detailed analysis of the Glasgow Article 6 outcome, the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition provides a comprehensive breakdown of what these rules entail. 

Notably, neither Article 6.2 nor 6.4 mentions the term “markets.” The absence of the term may reflect the wariness of some developing countries toward the use of capital markets to resolve adverse environmental impacts, given the concern that this could absolve rich countries of the need to take actions regarding the harmful effects of their own economic growth. Instead, the legal text sets out the norms and tools to ensure “common approaches” contribute to a country’s NDC. Such approaches can range from one country financing another’s energy or transport sector efficiency upgrades or purchasing carbon offsets in its forests, peatlands, or wetlands. 

The Glasgow Climate Pact finalized what the UNFCCC refers to as those “fundamental norms” intended to ensure international carbon markets are real, additional, and verifiable in delivering further reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The Article 6 text clarifies how international carbon markets involving governments should function. To help ensure reductions and that these are real, additional, and verifiable, private markets should follow those norms and detailed standards, or consider more stringent approaches, regardless of whether they are directly regulated to do so. 

Article 6.2 sets out guidelines covering internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) between two governments that are Parties to the Paris Agreement. (The term ITMOs has been used since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to refer to internationally traded carbon credits between two governments.) Article 6.4 establishes a new, unnamed multilateral mechanism that resembles the function of the former Clean Development Mechanism—notably in a Supervisory Board that would approve all 6.4 projects—while potentially allowing some technical flexibility. For example, instead of using a set formula for establishing a baseline of carbon emissions, this new mechanism will examine individual party baseline estimates and allow them to be adjusted to their circumstances. 

Ensuring Environmental Integrity

The Glasgow Pact includes common metrics to ensure the “transparency, accuracy, completeness, comparability, and consistency” of carbon measurement systems. Notably, governments have adopted new environmental integrity rules that aim to ensure all recorded carbon credits use verifiable and comparable accounting systems, and that no traded unit—or ITMO—leads to “a net increase in emissions of participating parties within and between NDC implementation periods.” This is set out in Article 6.2. D.17.

The infrastructure to ensure environmental integrity is so comprehensive that it will be technically challenging to assemble and function. Under Article 6.4, it comprises a centralized project authorization system overseen by a new supervisory board, a central accounting framework, a central registry, and an Article 6 database. The details of these administrative systems will take months to set up. A recent report by the Asian Development Bank points out it could take until 2030 for all the requisite measures to be put in place so that the Article 6 “common approaches” can be developed. Confirming this view, the COP decisions on Article 6 note a range of interim activities to implement this infrastructure that could stretch out to 2030.

Since Article 6 is about carbon markets, Article 6 environmental integrity provisions do not stray beyond carbon credit measurement and ongoing verification. Clearly, projects based on Article 6 will need to include a wider definition of integrity that embeds wider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards and safeguards to avoid perverse or environmentally destructive outcomes. Examples of this include single-species large-scale afforestation projects that can uproot Indigenous and local communities, harm biodiversity, or ruin downstream freshwater tables. Indeed, the decisions on 6.2 and 6.4 show consensus for the need for transactions to address sustainable development, and environmental and social safeguards. (For the purpose of the Article 6.4 mechanism, this means that, as was the case with the CDM, it will need to consider these issues and develop rules for how they are to be taken into account.)

Second, Glasgow resolves long-standing concerns that the same ITMO-connected carbon reduction credit could be counted twice by the home and host country. New rules to avoid double counting—set out in the details of corresponding adjustments—are welcome, notably in empowering the host country to decide if it will forgo booking carbon credits within its own NDCs, or if it will instead sell those credits to an international government purchaser. Corresponding adjustment rules take effect immediately. 

Negotiators left for another day whether ITMOs will include “emission avoidance.” They will need to come up with ways to ensure reporting is consistent among these offsets, along with how these are recorded in both domestic and international registries. They will also need to address how to ensure parties can reach the ambition of these ITMOs, while not interfering with the “nationally determined nature” of NDCs. Reporting will also have to demonstrate how the aforementioned “environmental integrity” is being implemented. 

An unwelcome outcome of the Article 6.4 corresponding adjustment rules is what appears to be the disallowance of any sharing of carbon credits from cross-border electric power projects. There is growing interest, particularly among Asia-Pacific, Central Asian, and Central American countries, in building joint low-carbon electric power generation projects. These projects consist of cross-border transmission grid connections, with common regulations, standards, pricing, and integrated systems, and are designed to increase regional energy security, reduce development costs, and reduce GHG emissions. 

For example, work has been underway for more than a decade in cross-border energy integration in the Greater Mekong region. In September 2021, Laos signed a power purchase agreement with Vietnam to import 600 MW of power generated from wind. The new Article 6 rules create disincentives for these kinds of deals by disallowing any splitting of avoided emissions between two or more countries that share a single electric power generating facility. 

Third, the Glasgow negotiators agreed that an equivalent of 5% of the “share of proceeds” from carbon markets linked to the 6.4 multilateral mechanism will be transferred to the Global Adaptation Fund to help developing countries finance their efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change. This is set out in Article 6.4.VII, 67. Despite months of haggling, this rule does not cover Article 6.2, where instead governments are strongly encouraged to do the same. Article 6.4 transactions will also be subject to a 2% cancellation fee, in order to help ensure a guaranteed net reduction, albeit at this relatively small share of the overall ITMO. These transactions may also be subject to an administrative fee. Certainly, the “international tax” related to Article 6.4 transactions bears watching to see what impact or potential disincentive it has on future transactions, how the tax is paid, and how this share of proceeds contributes to adaptation benefits in practice. 

Fourth, Glasgow reached a compromise to weed out some, but not all, legacy carbon credits. That no one knows how many carbon credits have been generated from past CDM financing in itself highlights some of the flaws of the previous regime. Estimates by the UNFCCC suggest that past CDM certified emission credits were anywhere between 300 million to 2.3 billion credits. Other estimates put the total at 4 billion credits, making labels like “zombie credits” hard to shake. The Glasgow compromise allows credits generated after 2013—anywhere between 120 and 300 million credits—to be eligible for inclusion in the first tranche of a country’s NDC. It does not allow any such inclusion for activities that were “REDD+” transactions for avoided deforestation.

Rather than being the final word, Glasgow should now initiate a detailed review at the national level of those post-2013 CDM credits, with a view to removing those CDM credits that not only have weak guarantees regarding additionality and permanence but also that do not complement NDC conditional ambitions like closing coal-powered facilities. Among the largest recipients of CDM projects are China, India, Brazil, and South Korea.

Implementation: The role of development finance

A key concern as Article 6 moves ahead is to ensure that developing countries have the capacity to benefit from international market transactions.  The complex administrative machinery set out in Article 6.4 is intended to do just that. However, multilateral development banks and bilateral agencies need to support the capacity of developing countries to benefit from the new Article 6.2 and 6.4 rules. This support should include helping countries assess their own potential carbon market opportunities, including their carbon sequestration options, along with helping build their capacities for measurement, accounting, and verification. If international carbon markets reach anywhere near the levels projected by IETA—and it is unclear right now to what extent the United States, the European Union, or China will look for offset credits outside of their borders—then more work will be needed within developing countries to embed wider ESG standards and safeguards. 

Some of this work is already underway, given that most of the COP 26 rules were anticipated well before governments met in Glasgow. For example, initiatives like the San Jose Principles, adopted in 2019 by 32 of the parties to the Paris Agreement, aim to bolster market integrity and transparency details. These principles show that some governments have been steadily working on key measurement, accounting, and auditing rules. International financing initiatives like Japan’s Joint Crediting Mechanism, which is comprised of 65 projects valued at over USD 500 million in 17 developing countries, and the World Bank’s Transformative Carbon Asset Facility of USD 210 million, have further helped developing country governments and the private sector prepare for carbon markets. Joint work under a Switzerland–Peru–Ghana agreement is the first country-to-country agreement to put Article 6.2 rules into practice. These pilot activities can develop the data to help ensure the future Article 6 market activities fully address environmental and social safeguards.

Ensuring Additionality and Permanence

While the Article 6 rules from Glasgow show a marked improvement compared to earlier approaches under the Kyoto Protocol, there are potential pitfalls that governments and private actors alike would do well to learn from.

As noted above, environmental groups were correct in noting that too often Kyoto Protocol offsets were claimed for activities that were not truly additional. In other words, they were claimed for emissions reductions that either would have happened anyway or were the result of a deliberate increase in GHG emissions-related production that was undertaken in order to market the subsequent emission reductions.  

Even with the rules adopted in Glasgow, a number of NGOs and developing country stakeholders still contend that the market approach creates a perverse incentive for host parties to keep their NDC ambition low. This would allow them to keep the baseline lower than it otherwise would be and offer marketing opportunities for rich countries to continue business as usual and still fulfill their NDCs. Once again, we see the essential element of upward ambition as tied to the credibility of the market.

Furthermore, some environmental groups are concerned about the permanence of offsets. In other words, they question whether the emissions reductions claimed for offsetting activities, such as planting trees, will last in perpetuity (or at least for as long as the carbon emission equivalent will last in the atmosphere). However, it may be that the more ironclad the permanence of the offset, the more expensive the transaction. For example, higher costs may result from the purchase of a buffer asset or political risk “insurance” should the offsets fail to deliver. Failure could occur because of fire or blight or a host party government that reverses a commitment to maintain forest cover or to renewable energy or sustainable agricultural policies. 

There is more work being done to improve our understanding of the full costs involving in protecting against such threats. Already there are examples concerning the purchase of pledged buffer assets, and discussions for some form of guarantee, such as political risk insurance against government breach or interference in the carbon contract. For these reasons, market advocates have noted that advances in carbon monitoring technology and real-time data tracking of carbon emissions and retention could help address concerns of permanence to some degree by enhancing the credibility and enforceability of offsets.

Government Versus Private Markets 

The Paris Agreement provides governments with a new set of rules to make international carbon markets work. A big question coming out of Glasgow is to what extent will purely private sector, voluntary carbon markets conform with the new Article 6 rules.

Moreover, how will governments, particularly those in host countries, react to and/or regulate private carbon offset transactions that impact lands they consider as sovereign? How will they approach transfer payments into their country for private transactions that involve payment to Indigenous and other communities for services on lands they consider to be their own? These questions remind us that in many countries there remains a lack of clarity on how governments will treat and define carbon rights. 

Steps by the Task Force on Voluntary Carbon Markets on the demand side and recommendations from the Voluntary Carbon Market Initiative on the supply or seller side are encouraging in trying to address these questions, while underscoring how much more needs to be done. Recently, an informal outline of where Japan may head with regards to a greater role of private markets is intriguing, while the private sector third-party carbon offset body Gold Standard, which already requires that projects address environmental and social safeguards, has also signalled that it will require corresponding adjustments within its voluntary markets. Since there are dozens of leading voluntary carbon market certification bodies, a practical challenge for the private sector involves multiple and diverging financial accounting standards. The November 2021 launch by the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation of a new International Sustainability Standards Board with an initial release of a proposed standard for reporting on climate change could provide some early guidance for Article 6-related treatment in corporate financial and non-financial statements.

Non-Market Approaches 

While the focus in both this article and in the press overall has mostly been around the “markets” side of Article 6, we should also note the resolution of the rules related to Paris Article 6.8, the so-called “non-market approaches” (NMAs). The Glasgow decision on Article 6.8 notes that NMAs may include social inclusivity, financial policies and measures, circular economy, blue carbon, just transition of the workforce, and adaptation benefit mechanism. The decision also notes that these approaches should involve more than one party. However, NMAs are not “transactions” and would not be “regulated” under the rules of 6.2 or the 6.4 mechanism. 

For those who have concerns about market approaches, NMAs may offer the brighter hope for emission reductions or at least represent “low hanging fruit.” For example, about 75% of European building stock is energy inefficient and responsible for more than a third of EU GHG emissions. Regulations tackling this inefficiency would not have to rely on a market transaction. Indeed, policy measures aimed at improving efficiency as well as climate finance to upgrade buildings can be effective mitigation and adaptation actions at the same time while also meeting the Glasgow Pact objective of a “just transition” through construction-related employment. 

A notable example of potential Article 6 NMA actions may emerge from the China–U.S. Joint Declaration, which identifies areas for joint cooperation such as regulatory actions to cut methane emissions, energy-efficient policies and standards to reduce electricity waste, steps to phase out coal, and efforts to reduce fossil fuel subsidies.

The Road Ahead

While the completion of the Article 6 negotiations in Glasgow marks an important milestone in sorting out crucial details to stop double counting of credits and limiting the carry-over of legacy credits, thereby promising to improve past mechanisms, the administrative steps to make Article 6.2 and 6.4 actually work are complex and will take time to implement. At this early stage, it appears that those seeking to engage in cooperative approaches may find it simpler to follow an approach under 6.2, which appears to be a more streamlined and less prescriptive system than 6.4. On the other hand, the possibility that an approach under 6.4 will have more oversight may give some comfort to other Article 6 participants, especially developing countries that have not had much experience in such transactions and would like assurance of some proceeds going toward adaptation funding. These very distinctions between the two articles raise risks of two dissimilar international carbon markets emerging. 

In the months ahead, caution will be needed to temper markets—especially private markets tenuously linked to the Article 6 outcomes—from irrational exuberance. Already, some traders have proposed using cryptocurrency to back trades, a proposal both daunting for many developing countries struggling with global financial markets, and worrisome that carbon markets may become increasingly volatile and speculative. Given the sheer number of net-zero corporate promises around the Glasgow COP, there are risks that markets overestimate the carbon offset potential of investments. In turn, investors may pour funds into large-scale, single-crop afforestation projects reminiscent of agricultural land grabs. There are also potential development risks, whereby developing countries sell their least-cost carbon mitigation or removal options, only to face more expensive domestic NDC actions down the road that worsen their overall development prospects.

While the fundamental rules are now settled, the myriad details to make them function are not. Now the hard work begins to see if the promise of the market can deliver real and additional benefits to the climate and society.
 

Deliberately sinking a ship bigger than the Titanic would be unimaginable, right? But that is exactly what happened in 2020 in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Mauritius when the Japanese-owned, Panama-flagged ship, Wakashio, ran aground. After hitting a coral reef en route from China to Brazil, the ship began leaking up to 1,000 tonnes of oil, devastating the surrounding ecosystem. The ship split in two in mid-August of that year. The larger front of the vessel was towed by Maltese-flagged ships for deliberate sinking, with the consent of the Mauritian government. The Indian Ocean’s biggest ecological disaster alarmed experts and activists alike.

Renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle said sinking the ship for disposal was “unconscionable” when “strict littering rules prevent anyone from so much as discarding a plastic bottle in the ocean” (Degnarain, 2020). Even Pope Francis weighed in, offering prayers for Mauritius and urging respect for nature. An estimated 100,000 people marched in the streets of Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, to protest the government’s inaction in one of the largest demonstrations the country has ever seen. The Wakashio incident resulted in the contamination and destruction of ecosystems in the lagoons and shoreline of Mauritius, leading to the death of some 50 whales and dolphins, and threatening the livelihoods of many who depend on tourism and fishing. Efforts to determine who to hold to account and how are complex and ongoing.

Considering this recent tragedy, and after nearly 50 years since the adoption of the first global treaties on ocean dumping, reviewing what exactly the international community has accomplished and what more needs to be done is both timely and worthwhile.

The World’s Dumping Ground

Covering about 70% of the Earth’s surface and accounting for 97% of its water, the ocean is the lifeblood of our planet. More than three billion people depend on the ocean for their livelihoods and food security. The ocean is also home to millions of plants and animals. It produces over half of the world’s oxygen, regulates climate and weather patterns, and provides medicinal ingredients that help fight cancer and other diseases.

Yet many take the ocean for granted. For hundreds of years, we have used the ocean as a dumping ground for waste, with little consideration given to the impact on human and ecological health, biodiversity, and livelihoods. Dumping waste not only threatens the ocean we know, but also the 80% of the ocean that has yet to be explored. In the words of Sylvia Earle, the ocean is like a “library of priceless knowledge that can be carefully extracted without destroying the source. Changing the chemistry of the ocean with pollution closes the book on information vital to our future and future generations” (Degnarain, 2020).

The ocean is not a dumping ground. It is quite likely where life originated from. While we can forgive previous generations for not fully recognizing the importance of a clean ocean for life on this planet, there is no excuse today. The science and knowledge about how important the ocean is to the existence of life—ours included—is now widely understood.

Sylvia Earle, legendary ocean explorer

An “out of sight, out of mind” attitude and the belief that dumping waste far enough from land would not cause harm led to the dumping of millions of tonnes of waste in the ocean annually by the late 1960s and early 1970s. This waste included dredged material from ports and rivers, waste from land-based mining (or tailings), industrial waste, and ash from power stations. At the same time, growing awareness led to increased concern about the impacts of dumping on the marine environment. Accumulation of waste and toxic materials in the ocean damage and often destroy entire habitats and ecosystems, are detrimental to marine and human health, and threaten livelihoods and economies. Ocean currents can carry and spread toxins, impacting regions far from where the dumping occurred.

Did you know?

• Dumping of wastes at sea contributes an estimated 10% of the overall input of pollutants into the sea.
• Dredged material makes up about 80-90% of all licensed materials dumped.
• On average, 500 million tonnes of dredged material are dumped annually in waters of London Convention and Protocol Contracting Parties.
• Approximately 10% of dredged material is contaminated by shipping, industrial, and municipal discharges, or by land run-off.

Source: IMO website.

Origins of Global Action on Ocean Dumping

With growing awareness of environmental issues overall and marine pollution, in particular, governments attending the Stockholm Conference in June 1972 considered draft articles of a new treaty on ocean dumping. Less than six months later, governments meeting in London adopted the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (London Convention), one of the first global treaties aimed at protecting the marine environment from human activities. The Convention’s preamble recognizes the limited “capacity of the sea to assimilate wastes and render them harmless, and its ability to regenerate natural resources.”

Dumping, as defined in Article III of the London Convention, refers to the deliberate disposal at sea of wastes or other matter from vessels, aircraft, platforms, and other man-made structures at sea, as well as to the deliberate disposal at sea of vessels, aircraft, platforms, or other man-made structures themselves.

The Convention, which entered into force in 1975, banned dumping of specific wastes, such as those containing mercury, cadmium, oil, and high-level radioactive wastes. In 1993, the treaty was amended to: ban the dumping of low-level radioactive wastes; phase out dumping of industrial wastes; and ban incineration of industrial wastes at sea.

London Protocol

The more restrictive 1996 London Protocol, which updated the Convention, entered into force in 2006. It prohibits all dumping of wastes and other matter, except for those on a prescribed list that undergo a rigorous assessment and permitting process. In addition, the Protocol regulates disposal of wastes from land-based mining operations and implementation of marine geoengineering, which it allows for research purposes only. The London Protocol also bans the exportation of waste to other countries for dumping, as well as the burning of waste at sea. While initially used to limit the dumping of dangerous chemical waste into the ocean, incineration produces emissions of hazardous chemicals that can end up spilling into the ocean as well.

Countries that engage in illegal dumping often lack the capacity to implement safe and sound dumping strategies. Thus, the London Protocol, in its preamble, recognizes the interests and capacities of developing countries, particularly small island developing states, which often lack the necessary resources to properly dispose of their waste and enforce regulations. The Protocol also includes a provision promoting support for access to and the transfer of environmentally sound technologies and know-how, and adequate resources for implementation to developing country parties that request it.

Importantly, the Protocol applies a precautionary approach. This means lack of conclusive scientific evidence regarding damage to the marine environment from dumping cannot be used to justify lack of action and preventative measures.

Radioactive Waste in the Ocean

Radioactive waste provides one example of growing acceptance and application of a precautionary approach in the context of ocean dumping. While the London Convention initially banned dumping high-level radioactive waste and allowed dumping low-level waste, a 1993 amendment prohibited dumping of all nuclear waste.

The United States was the first country to dispose of radioactive waste in the ocean in 1946, with the advent of nuclear power, but halted the practice in 1970. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than 55,000 containers of radioactive wastes were dumped at three sites in the Pacific Ocean between 1946 and 1970. Other nuclear powers, however, continued dumping millions of litres of radioactive waste until 1993, when Greenpeace documented a Russian navy ship dumping 900 tonnes of nuclear waste into the Sea of Japan.

Expanding the scope of regulations to include social and political concerns, in addition to scientific and technical matters, combined with growing acceptance of the precautionary approach, allowed the parties to the Convention to respond to Russia's actions (McCullagh, 1996). As a result of international pressure, Russian President Boris Yeltsin halted the dumping.

Governments continue to grapple with large amounts of nuclear waste and contaminated water. For example, the Government of Japan is planning to dump 1.25 million tonnes of contaminated radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean as storage space at the plant runs out—enough to fill 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools (BBC, 2021). While protests and debate delayed plans, dumping could now begin in the spring of 2023 and take decades to complete. In April 2021, Japan approved a plan to begin releasing the contaminated water and in August, the Japanese utility company, TEPCO, said it would build an undersea tunnel to release the water.

However, opposition has been and remains fierce. Local fishers say dumping the wastewater will devastate their livelihoods and industry. Environmental groups are also vehemently opposed, as is neighboring Republic of Korea, which still bans seafood imports from the Fukushima region and argues dumping the contaminated water would threaten its marine environment. The Republic of Korea, Chile, and China raised their concerns at the 2019 meeting of the Contracting Parties to the London Convention (Greenpeace, 2019). Following the recent announcements, the Republic of Korea expressed its “strong regret” over Japan’s actions and said Japan should “immediately halt” its plan to release radioactive water into the sea and “consult and communicate sufficiently beforehand” with neighboring countries (Yonhap, 2021). While China has urged Japan to revoke its “highly irresponsible unilateral decision,” the US believes the planned release is in line with global standards (Clark & Masumi, 2021). These protestations are expected to continue.

Using the Ocean to Mitigate Climate Change

The urgency of addressing climate change and the debate over mitigating technologies, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and marine geoengineering, propelled Protocol parties to take steps to ensure these technologies are controlled and regulated, given their potential to harm the marine environment. While conclusive scientific evidence regarding their damage and harm is still elusive, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) views CCS as a short-term technological option for reducing net CO2 emissions, and as a requirement in IPCC scenarios to keep temperature rise below 1.5°C.

In 2006, the Protocol was amended to allow CCS under the seabed when deemed “safe” and to regulate the injection of CO2 waste streams into sub-seabed geological formations for permanent isolation. In October 2019, Protocol parties agreed to permit the provisional application of a 2009 amendment allowing for the transboundary export of CO2 for CCS, under certain circumstances, even though the amendment has not yet entered into force.

In 2013, parties adopted an amendment to allow marine geoengineering activities for research purposes only, although it has not yet entered into force. Marine geoengineering, as defined under the Protocol, refers to “a deliberate intervention in the marine environment to manipulate natural processes, including to counteract anthropogenic climate change and/or its impacts, and that has the potential to result in deleterious effects, especially where those effects may be widespread, long-lasting, or severe.” One marine geoengineering technique, ocean fertilization, refers to the practice of dumping iron or other nutrients into the ocean to manipulate the marine environment in a manner that draws CO2 from the atmosphere. However, balancing climate mitigation with protection of the marine environment remains a challenge.

Many governments and environmental activists alike oppose such activities. For example, the German government’s scientific Advisory Council on Global Change opposed introducing CO2 into seawater because “the risk of ecological damage cannot be assessed and the retention period in the oceans is too short” (The Guardian, 2008). A March 2019 report from the Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection calls for a precautionary approach with respect to marine geoengineering, given lack of scientific evidence on the impacts on the marine environment (Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection, 2019).

Other Treaties Addressing Ocean Dumping

Since the 1972 Stockholm Conference and the adoption of the London Convention, the international community and regions have also adopted other treaties to combat ocean dumping. The 1973 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) aims to prevent and minimize pollution of the marine environment from ships from operational or accidental causes, including dumping of oil and other harmful substances. All ships flagged under parties to MARPOL are subject to its requirements, regardless of where they sail. In 1990, the US National Research Council Marine Board credited MARPOL with making “a substantial positive impact in decreasing the amount of oil that enters the sea” (Riviera Newsletters, 2008). In 1998, the volume of oil spilled was over 5,000,000 gallons less than that in 1978.

The 1992 Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention) deals with the prevention and elimination of pollution by dumping or incineration. It entered into force in 1998, replacing the Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping from Ships and Aircraft (Oslo Convention) and the Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution from Land-based Sources (Paris Convention). In 2007, amendments to the Convention allowed for storing CO2 in geological formations under the seabed. OSPAR cooperates with the London Convention in such areas as radioactive substances and CCS.

The 1976 Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Coastal Region of the Mediterranean (Barcelona Convention), the first regional seas convention entered into force in 1978. The Barcelona Convention has seven protocols, including the Protocol for the Prevention and Elimination of Pollution of the Mediterranean Sea by Dumping from Ships and Aircraft or Incineration at Sea. The Protocol obligates Contracting Parties to take “all appropriate measures to prevent, abate and eliminate to the fullest extent possible pollution of the Mediterranean Sea by dumping of wastes or other matter.” Amendments, yet to enter into force, prohibit dumping activities except for wastes or other matters listed in the Protocol, including dredged material, fish wastes, and uncontaminated geological material. The Mediterranean Pollution Assessment and Control Programme helps parties meet their obligations under the Dumping Protocol, including through the development of guidelines containing procedures to evaluate wastes and other matter considered for disposal at sea.

The Future of International Governance of Ocean Dumping

Banning ocean dumping is, unfortunately, not enough to eliminate it. Ocean dumping is tightly controlled and regulated in some countries but not in others. Some countries have not ratified the London Convention and Protocol. Some regional agreements are more robust than others. This has led to an uneven application of and adherence to the ocean dumping regime, and the various international and regional instruments it entails, resulting in a piecemeal approach to ocean dumping governance. Reporting, compliance, and enforcement challenges persist, with countries often not living up to their obligations in practice (Ringbom and Henriksen, 2017). Encouraging broader participation in and implementation of these agreements will determine the effectiveness of ocean dumping governance.

On the other hand, advocacy, activism, international pressure, and media campaigns have spotlighted the impacts of dumping on the marine environment and countries that cause damage. This has led to increased international and regional action to regulate and outright ban some ocean dumping, as well as hold those responsible for dumping to account. In this sense, international governance of ocean dumping has achieved significant success since its humble beginning fifty years ago. Countries that dump with impunity will be called out. Governments often respond when faced with bad press or boycotts, lest they be viewed as pariahs. Shining a light on the impacts of dumping on the marine environment has progressed the cause of strengthened ocean dumping governance, albeit slowly.

As Sylvia Earle said, while previous generations can be forgiven for not fully recognizing the importance of a clean ocean for life on this planet, the science and knowledge about the ocean’s importance to the existence of life is now widely understood and no excuses can justify such deliberate action.

Works Consulted

BBC. (2021). Fukushima: Japan approves releasing wastewater into ocean. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56728068

Clark, A., & Masumi, S. (2021). Why Japan Is Dumping Water from Fukushima into the Sea. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-japan-is-dumping-water-from-fukushima-into-the-sea/2021/08/26/4648e788-0649-11ec-b3c4-c462b1edcfc8_story.html

Degnarain, N. (2020). Sylvia Earle demands Japanese shipowner remove sunk Wakashio wreck from Indian Ocean floor. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/10/07/sylvia-earle-demands-japanese-shipowner-remove-sunk-wakashio-wreck-from-indian-ocean-floor/

Fukushima 311 Watchdogs. (2019). South Korea brings Fukushima radioactive water sea dumping issue at international London Convention and Protocol of marine pollution. https://dunrenard.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/south-korea-brings-fukushima-radioactive-water-sea-dumping-issue-at-international-london-convention-and-protocol-of-marine-pollution/

Greenpeace. (2019). China, Korea, and Chile challenge Japan over Fukushima contaminated water crisis at United Nations maritime meeting. Press Release. https://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/press/2698/china-korea-and-chile-challenge-japan-over-fukushima-contaminated-water-crisis-at-united-nations-maritime-meeting/

International Maritime Organization. (2012). Origins of the London Convention: Historic events and documents leading up to the 1972 adoption of the London Convention.

International Maritime Organization. (2016). The London Protocol: What it is and why it is needed. https://wwwcdn.imo.org/localresources/en/OurWork/Environment/Documents/London%20Protocol%20Why%20it%20is%20needed%2020%20years.pdf

International Maritime Organization. (2019a). The London Protocol and London Convention: How global regulation can deal responsibly with climate change mitigation technologies to protect the marine environment. https://wwwcdn.imo.org/localresources/en/OurWork/Environment/Documents/London%20Protocol%20Climate%20Change%20Leaflet%202019%20_FINAL_online%20version.pdf

International Maritime Organization. (2019b). Precautionary approach over marine geoengineering solutions for climate change. Press Release. https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/PressBriefings/Pages/04-marinegeoengineeringGESAMP.aspx

Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection. (2019). High level review of a wide range of proposed marine geoengineering techniques. GESAMP Reports and Studies, 98. http://www.gesamp.org/publications/high-level-review-of-a-wide-range-of-proposed-marine-geoengineering-techniques

Lebling, K., & Northrop, E. (2020). Leveraging the ocean’s carbon removal potential. World Resources Institute. https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/10/ocean-carbon-dioxide-sequestration

Marine Defenders. (2018). Introduction to the MARPOL treaty. https://www.marinedefenders.org/oil-pollution-laws.html

Maritime Executive. (2019). IMO allows transboundary carbon capture and storage. https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/imo-allows-trans-boundary-carbon-capture-and-storage

McCullagh, J. R. (1996). Russian dumping of radioactive wastes in the Sea of Japan: An opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of the London Convention 1972, Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, 5(2), 399-427.

OSPAR Commission. 2020. From Our Executive Secretary. https://www.ospar.org/about/introduction

Ringbom, H., & Henriksen, T. (2017). Governance challenges, gaps and management Opportunities in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Global Environment Facility – Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel. https://www.thegef.org/sites/default/files/publications/51193%20-%20STAP%20ABNJ%20-%20lowres.pdf

Riviera Newsletters. (2008). MARPOL 73/78 has a proven record of achievement. https://www.rivieramm.com/news-content-hub/news-content-hub/marpol-7378-has-a-proven-record-of-achievement-52821

Sjoblom, K., & Linsley, G. (1994). Sea disposal of radioactive waste: The London Convention of 1972. IAEA Bulletin, 2/1994, 12-16. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazines/bulletin/bull36-2/36205981216.pdf

United Nations Environment Programme. (n.d.). Programme for the assessment and control of marine pollution in the Mediterranean. https://www.unenvironment.org/unepmap/who-we-are/institutional-set/med-pol

US Environmental Protection Agency. (2019). Ocean dumping: International treaties. https://www.epa.gov/ocean-dumping/ocean-dumping-international-treaties

US Environmental Protection Agency. (2020). Learn about ocean dumping. https://www.epa.gov/ocean-dumping/learn-about-ocean-dumping

Yonhap. (2021). S. Korea expresses ‘strong regret’ over Japan’s Fukushima water. The Korea Herald. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20210825001034

In 1972, 15-year-old Shinobu Sakamoto left her fishing village in Japan to attend the world’s first global conference on the human environment in Stockholm, Sweden. The journey was a long one, but especially so for Sakamoto, who was disabled due to methylmercury poisoning in utero. She is one of the many afflicted with what would become known as Minamata disease, named after the city where the poisoning took place.

Sakamoto is one of the survivors who has bravely spoken out about the effects of Minamata disease. In Stockholm, their stories resonated with people who had recently read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, about the dangers of pollutants. Many might have also seen “Death-Flow from a Pipe,” a photo essay documenting the effects of Minamata disease, put together by photojournalist W. Eugene Smith for Life Magazine in June 1972. The perils of chemical pollution and mercury poisoning had become mainstream news, heightened by the efforts of Sakamoto and other survivors.

These dangers remain with us today. In the United States in 2010, more than 200,000 children were born to mothers with methylmercury levels high enough to put their babies at risk of neurological disease. Children in the Faroe Islands suffer developmental delays as their traditional food sources are contaminated with methylmercury (Selin & Selin, 2020, p. 4). Inuit communities in Canada face similar dangers, due to contamination in whales, walruses, and fish.

The fetal Minamata disease patients including myself are getting worse, year by year. Many people are still suffering and struggling from pollution. Today, I must repeat my message — Minamata disease is not over. Pollution must end.

SHINOBU SAKAMOTO

In 2017, 45 years after her first journey to Stockholm, Sakamoto travelled to Geneva, Switzerland. She gave an opening address to the parties to the Minamata Convention, a treaty named after Minamata disease. The treaty aims to reduce mercury releases into the atmosphere, land, and water to protect human health and the environment.

It has been a long road from when mercury was identified as an issue of global concern to action under a global, legal-binding treaty. Yet why has mercury successfully moved from agenda setting to action, while other heavy metals that are toxic and persistent in the environment, such as cadmium and lead, still lack legally binding global action? And what still needs to be done to protect human health from heavy metals?

Quicksilver: Useful, but Dangerous

Mercury is sometimes called quicksilver because is it the only metallic element that is a liquid at room temperature. For centuries, the shiny, silvery liquid has been used for a wide range of products and processes. Mercury is present in some consumer goods, such as fluorescent lightbulbs, thermometers, and dental amalgam. It is a naturally occurring element, released into the air and water through the weathering of rock containing mercury ore.

Increasingly, mercury releases are due to human activities. Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM), industrial processes, waste incineration, and fossil fuel production contribute to mercury releases into the atmosphere and water (see Table 1).

Source: UNEP (2019). Global Mercury Assessment 2018.

The largest contributor is non-industrial gold mining, where workers use mercury to extract gold from the surrounding rock. This process has been in use for centuries. In 1558, the “patio process” was invented to separate silver from the surrounding ore using mercury. It helped fuel the colonial empires. For example, Spanish colonies in the Americas used mercury shipped from Southern Spain and Peru to mine silver for the empire. Today, more than 500,000 workers in seven countries work in the sector. The Democratic Republic of the Congo employs the most globally, but Sudan, China, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, and Tanzania also have significant workforces in the ASGM sector (IGF, 2017).

It is a complex development issue with few easy answers. The sector is informal and unregulated. Many of the workers are poor and this work is an important source of income. They use mercury because it is the most economical option, while larger mining facilities use more expensive processes. It has long been, and continues to be, one of the central implementation challenges of global efforts to reduce the use of mercury.

Building the Foundation of Heavy Metals Governance

The Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment catalyzed action on heavy metals through legal instruments that referenced the Stockholm Declaration and Action Plan. Several were agreements to prohibit the dumping of mercury, lead, and cadmium into the marine environment, particularly the waters around Europe and the North Atlantic. The International Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and other Matter (London Convention) and the Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping from Ships and Aircraft (Oslo Convention) were adopted in 1972. The Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution from Land-Based Sources (Paris Convention) joined the list in 1974. The Baltic Sea was protected by the Helsinki Convention in 1974 and the Mediterranean Sea by the 1976 Dumping Protocol to the Barcelona Convention. By 1984, the European Economic Community set limits and water quality objectives to eliminate mercury emissions from the key polluting industries (Selin & Selin, 2006).

Action to protect the marine environment from mercury strengthened over time but remained regional. The Oslo and Paris Conventions joined to form the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR). It set a goal that “every endeavour will be made to move towards the target of cessation of discharges, emissions and losses of hazardous substances of concern by the year 2020.” But, as noted in 2000, the Convention alone cannot address all sources of mercury pollution and would have to work closely with other international bodies (OSPAR, 2000). The Mediterranean Action Plan set a 2025 goal for reducing mercury pollution from land-based sources.

In the 1980s and 1990s, countries began to expand controls of heavy metals beyond the marine environment. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal was adopted in 1989. Waste containing, contaminated with, or consisting of mercury, cadmium, and lead were included as hazardous wastes. Any international trade in these wastes would need the prior informed consent of the importing country. Countries also developed technical guidelines to help manage these wastes in an environmentally sound manner.

The Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) was established by European and North American countries under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. In 1998, parties adopted a Protocol on Heavy Metals, which included mercury, lead, and cadmium. Thus, for Europe and North America, efforts to protect the air and water from mercury were well underway.

But evidence about the global extent of heavy metal pollution continued to mount. The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) reported in 1998 that levels of heavy metals were increasing, even though mercury is not produced or used in the Arctic. The findings showed that despite reductions in mercury emissions in North America and Western Europe in the 1980s, global emissions were increasing (AMAP, 2002). The report also showed atmospheric deposition of lead was drastically reduced where the use of leaded gasoline was banned. There was less data available on cadmium. AMAP recommended further monitoring to establish trends.

In response to the AMAP report, the Arctic Council called for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to undertake a global assessment of mercury. The CLRTAP executive body separately sent its own call for a global assessment. In 2001, the UNEP Governing Council responded and launched a global mercury assessment, which concluded in 2003 there was “sufficient evidence of significant global adverse impacts to warrant international action to reduce the risks to human health and/or the environment” (UNEP, 2013). Nearly 30 years after the Stockholm Conference, mercury was on top of the global agenda.

Mercury Moves on Alone

Countries were divided on how to respond to the Global Mercury Assessment. Switzerland, Norway, and the European Union (EU) called for a global treaty on mercury and perhaps heavy metals more broadly. Such a treaty would have included cadmium and lead, like the CLRTAP Protocol on Heavy Metals. But others, including the US, Canada, Japan, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and several developing countries, preferred a voluntary approach (Selin, 2014; Sun, 2017). They suggested the time and expense of negotiating a treaty could be better directed to more targeted, flexible approaches. There was also treaty fatigue, given recent negotiations to adopt the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade in 1998 and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001 (Bai, et al., 2005; Selin, 2014).

The stalemate continued until 2007, when the UNEP Governing Council established a working group to explore the options. The Open-ended Working Group to Review and Assess Measures to Address the Global Issue of Mercury recommended a mix of measures, one legally binding option and three voluntary measures. But in 2009, following the election of US President Barack Obama, a “tipping point” occurred, when the US agreed to negotiate a legally binding instrument. This convinced Australia, Japan, China, and India (Selin, 2014; Sun, 2017). The UNEP Governing Council agreed to launch negotiations, but for mercury only. But the disagreement of whether to include cadmium and lead persisted. While the EU and other countries pushed for a wider scope, countries ultimately agreed that any change to the negotiating committee’s mandate to move beyond mercury would require the Council’s agreement. Effectively, this ruled out a broader treaty on heavy metals.

The Global Mercury Partnership, a voluntary arrangement hosted by UNEP, played a valuable part in the negotiations. The Partnership, which includes governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academics, and the private sector, was created in 2005, and has seven partnership areas that target key sources of mercury pollution, including ASGM, chlor-alkali production, and coal combustion, as well as waste management, supply and storage, and research on mercury air transport (UNEP, 2009). Partnership membership grew rapidly once treaty negotiations began. The range of expertise in the Partnership led to a series of briefings on key issues before each negotiation session, that were attended by delegates keen to ask questions (Sun, 2017).

Negotiations continued between 2010 and 2013. As with every negotiation, there were difficult issues to sort out, including supply and trade, use in products and processes, emissions and releases, support to developing countries, and compliance (Selin, 2014). In 2013, the treaty was adopted and opened for signature. The ceremony took place in Minamata, giving its name to the Minamata Convention on Mercury.

The Minamata Convention on Mercury

Finally, the world had a dedicated legal instrument for mercury emissions and releases regardless of the source or where the mercury ends up in water, air, or land. The Convention covers the entire life cycle of mercury, from production to waste (Selin 2014; Selin & Selin, 2020). The Minamata Convention, which entered into force in 2017, became the first global agreement on human health and the environment in nearly a decade and is unique for extensively considering health and engaging with the health community.

The Convention sets ambitious objectives that could have a rapid effect on the supply of and demand for mercury. It bans new mercury mines and existing mines can continue for only 15 years after a country joins the treaty. The Convention also phases out and phases down the use of mercury in a number of products and processes. Several of these phase-outs had a 2020 deadline, meaning that beginning in 2021, parties can no longer manufacture or trade in products that use or contain mercury. Such mercury-containing products include some batteries, compact fluorescent lamps under 30 watts, cosmetics (such as skin lightening creams), pesticides, and thermometers. Chlor-alkali production using mercury, formerly a major source, is to end in 2025. But countries can apply for an extension of five years.

“The name Minamata Convention contains the world commitment that serious environmental pollution and human health damage like Minamata disease must not happen again anywhere in the world.

MASAHARU NAKAGAWA, MINISTER OF THE ENVIRONMENT, JAPAN

The role of other bodies, particularly the World Health Organization (WHO), and their expertise is visible in many of these recommendations (Selin, 2014). The WHO and the World Dental Federation supported a phase down, leading dental amalgam to become the only product listed for restricted use. Vaccines are excluded from the controls of the Convention. Given the lack of evidence of negative effects of mercury use in vaccines compared to the risks associated with limiting access to some vaccines, the WHO urged parties to exclude these products.

The Convention carefully handles ASGM and its use of mercury to mine gold. Countries with “more than insignificant ASGM” are to develop national action plans for the sector. These plans include national objectives and reduction targets, which could help promote accountability and transparency of efforts. Baseline estimates of the mercury used, and the practices of the sectors, will help formulate these goals. The plans also call for steps to formalize or regulate the sector, strategies to reduce emissions, releases, and exposure to mercury in the sector, and a public health strategy to protect and treat ASGM miners and their communities.

For mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants and coal-fired industrial boilers, there is a similar nationally driven approach. China and India preferred a voluntary approach while developed countries, the African Group, and NGOs wanted mandatory limits. The Convention allows countries to choose which technologies and practices are economically viable. There are provisions on waste and storage, and a financial mechanism to provide resources to developing countries to implement the Convention.

It is too early to tell if the Minamata Convention will be effective. A common way to assess a treaty’s effectiveness is through a formal effectiveness evaluation, with a list of agreed-upon indicators of success. The Convention parties agreed to a “minimized” version of the effectiveness evaluation at its 2019 meeting, after disagreements about which indicators to use (Wagner, et. al., 2019). Only after the first evaluation is completed will we have a sense of the Convention’s impact on the environment and health.

What About Other Heavy Metals?

Why did countries separate mercury from the other heavy metals? Regional approaches considered the heavy metals together, particularly to protect marine environments from dumping. There was support from the EU, Switzerland, Norway, and others to address cadmium, lead, and mercury together in one treaty. All three heavy metals are dangerous to human health. Cadmium can damage the kidneys, liver, and heart. Lead damages the brain, kidneys and, like mercury, the nervous system. But other countries disagreed that the three heavy metals should be grouped together. Potentially, two reasons may explain why their arguments prevailed and led to a treaty for mercury alone. Both can tell us a lot about why we see global treaties arise for some issues, but not others.

First, the mercury treaty is focused on a single issue with a discrete list of sectors involved in its production and use. A global treaty that included lead and cadmium would have to address numerous sources that are largely different. Coal can lead to mercury and cadmium emissions, and batteries contain lead and mercury. But there are many differences, which would complicate negotiations. A heavy metals treaty would have to address the range of sources, from industrial processes and fertilizers to everyday products, such as paint and cosmetics. That is a big list for a single treaty. There would a wide range of interests on the table to reconcile for many sectors. Focusing on a single issue helped conclude a treaty with timelines for phase-outs and phasedowns.

Second, science played a strong role in presenting mercury as a pressing, global threat. The AMAP assessment showed increasing levels of mercury in the Arctic but cited a lack of data for cadmium. In 2007, the UNEP Governing Council requested additional data on lead and cadmium to help fill information gaps (Decision 24/3 III). Individual countries had already taken strong action on lead. Leaded gasoline had been banned in most countries and by 1999, unleaded gasoline accounted for 80% of worldwide sales (OECD, 1999). In the 1990s and 2000s, the price of mercury was historically low, but started to rise in 2003 due to increased demand from the ASGM sector, despite import bans from the US and the EU (Selin & Selin, 2020, p.60-1). When the UNEP Governing Council agreed to form the Global Mercury Partnership and later to start treaty negotiations, demand in some parts of the world was increasing. Coupling science with evidence of an increasing threat put a spotlight on mercury.

Lead and cadmium are not completely forgotten. The UNEP Governing Council, now the United Nations Environment Assembly, discusses these heavy metals regularly. UNEP has a mandate to provide capacity building support, particularly to eliminate and safely dispose or recycle lead-acid batteries and lead paint. There are also voluntary partnerships, including the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles and the Global Alliance to Eliminate Lead Paint.

Moving Forward

The world is safer from mercury poisoning than it was 50 years ago, because of the tireless and brave activism of those with Minamata disease and decades of scientific monitoring. The Minamata Convention aims to protect those vulnerable to mercury exposure. It is too early to tell if this relatively young treaty will reach its lofty objectives. Thus, parties need to move forward with the effectiveness evaluation and strengthen its list of indicators and data collection.

Other difficult tasks lie ahead. The Convention needs to protect those working in remote areas in the ASGM sector. ASGM takes the environmental treaty into the world of global development, trying to address the need for poverty alleviation at the same time as reducing mercury use. This is uncharted territory for many environmental treaties. It will test the provisions in the treaty and the ability of countries to work together to achieve multiple goals at once.

How they address these challenges will be the legacy of the Minamata Convention and those victims it is named to honour.

Works Consulted

Bai, C., Barrios, P. Larsson Ortino, M., Sherman, R., Vavilov, A., & Xia K. (2005). Summary of the Twenty-third session of the UNEP Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum: 21–28 February 2005. Earth Negotiations Bulletin. https://enb.iisd.org/vol16/enb1647e.html

Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development. (2017). Global trends in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM): A review of key numbers and issues. https://www.iisd.org/publications/global-trends-artisanal-and-small-scale-mining-asm-review-key-numbers-and-issues

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (1999). Phasing lead out of gasoline: An examination of policy approaches in different countries. OECD.

OSPAR. (2000). OSPAR Background Document on Mercury and Organic Mercury Compounds. https://www.ospar.org/documents?v=6904

Selin, H. (2014). Global environmental law and treaty-making on hazardous substances: The Minamata Convention and mercury abatement. Global Environmental Politics, 14(1), 1-19.

Selin, N. E., & Selin, H. (2006). Global politics of mercury pollution: The need for multi-scale governance. Review of European Community & International Environmental Law, 15(3), 258-269.

Selin, H., & Selin, N. E. (2020). Mercury stories: Understanding sustainability through a volatile element. MIT Press.

Sun, Y. (2017). Transnational public-private partnerships as learning facilitators: Global governance of mercury. Global Environmental Politics, 17(2), 21-44.

UNEP. (2009). 2007-2008 - Reporting of the mercury waste management partnership area. 

UNEP. (2013). Mercury: Time to Act. https://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/27436

Wagner, L., Jackson, L.C., Ripley, K., & Hengesbaugh, M. (2019). Summary of the third meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Earth Negotiations Bulletin. https://enb.iisd.org/vol28/enb2859e.html

As a child, Kongolo Mashimango Reagen spent many days carrying 25-kilo sacks of cobalt from small mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His long days started at 5:00 am. Accidents were common. Tunnels dug by hand into the bright red earth often collapsed. He saw many children like himself die in the mines. His uncle sold the cobalt—a critical metal for electric car batteries—to local traders, and Kongolo received free food and board as his payment (Sanderson, 2019).

For more than a decade, informal mines in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo have enabled the global digital revolution. The world’s largest mining companies rub shoulders with miners who dig copper and cobalt by hand with little or no safety precautions (Sanderson, 2019). Small-scale mining is a double-edged sword for these local communities, providing employment but negatively affecting human health and the environment. Large-scale mining also affects communities both positively and negatively, albeit through different dynamics and obligations. The international community has not had much success in regulating mining activities, which remain largely under the purview of national governments. 

Yet many countries with rich mineral deposits do not have the capacity to govern mines effectively, with political elites often syphoning off the proceeds.

The Impact of Mining

The extractives or mining industry cause some of the most dramatic impacts on the natural environment and human health. The footprint of mining operations is often visible from outer space, with large areas of excavation standing out in a sea of green forest. Technological advances have amplified the sector’s environmental impact while reducing local economic benefits, since they allow for removal of plant biomass more rapidly. While this is true in many sensitive ecosystems where companies do not respect their contractual obligations, some newly developed technologies favor the environment, such as waterless and zero-waste mines. 

Mining activities can affect social and environmental systems in direct and indirect ways. Mine exploration, construction, operation, and maintenance may result in land-use change, leading to deforestation, erosion, contamination and alteration of soil profiles, contamination of local streams and wetlands, and an increase in noise level, dust, and emissions. Mine abandonment, decommissioning, and repurposing can also result in significant environmental impacts, especially soil and water contamination. The infrastructure that supports mining activities, including roads, ports, railway tracks, and power lines, can affect migratory routes of animals and increase habitat fragmentation (Haddaway et al., 2019).

The disposal of tailings is commonly identified as the single greatest environmental impact for most mining operations (Vick, 1990). The volume of tailings requiring storage often exceeds the total volume of the ore being mined and processed, with a dramatic increase over the last century as demand has increased and lower grades of ore are being mined through advances in extraction and processing technology. The rate of tailing production over the past 50 years increased exponentially with some individual mines producing more than 200,000 tonnes of tailings per day (Jakubick et al. 2003). It is therefore critical to research the characteristics and chemical composition of mine tailings during pre-feasibility pilot studies, and to establish the behaviour of the tailings once deposited in their final storage location to determine liabilities and environmental impacts. Following the Vale mine’s tailings dam collapse in Brudaminho, Brazil, in 2019, the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) led an industry initiative in setting the standards to eliminate similar accidents. 

Mining activities can create many jobs, which have the potential to unlock economic opportunities, both directly and indirectly benefitting community members. These economic benefits may not match the scale of profits extracted by mining companies, however, since many mines are also a possible source of child labour, poverty, pollution, and disease. (See Table 1.)

Furthermore, despite providing jobs, for decades most of the revenue from mining has eluded those most affected. Reporting on mining in Ghana, Daniel Twerefou, et al. (2015) note: “... in many mining communities today, the relationship between mining companies and the local community cannot be described as the best… [this] may have downstream impacts on the sector if measures are not put in place to improve the relationship.”

In addition, mineral resources are not renewable. After a period of production and peaking revenues, the productivity and accompanying revenue will inevitably drop, until the resource is depleted and operations cease. Without preparation for this inevitability, host communities will be plunged into poverty, worse than before mining began. This is the so-called “resource curse.” Such over-exploitation coupled with weak resource governance are challenging for many mineral-rich developing countries (Fitriani et al., 2015).

Two extreme pictures emerge when investigating the impacts of mine activities on the surrounding communities. In this sense, mining challenges all three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social, and environmental. When governments and mining companies do not address these challenges, the areas around mine sites often become degraded landscapes filled with informal settlements and scrambling artisanal miners eking out a living adjacent to the garish mine infrastructure and swarming monster trucks.

The Challenge of International Mining Governance

Traditionally, the international community has taken a “hands-off” approach to mining, although it has been referenced at the sustainable development mega-conferences. It is a general principle of international law that countries have sovereignty over their own natural resources. In fact, this was codified at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, as Principle 21 in the Stockholm Declaration.

Recommendation 56 of the Stockholm Action Plan called on the UN Secretary-General to provide a platform for the exchange of information on mining and mineral processing, including the environmental conditions of mine sites.

States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.

Stockholm Declaration, Principle 21

Twenty years later, at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the adopted action plan, Agenda 21, called for more environmentally sound mining in Chapters 11 (forests), 13 (mountains), and 17 (oceans). Principle 2 of the Rio Declaration, however, reiterated countries’ sovereign right to exploit their own resources.

Ten years later at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), paragraph 46 of Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI) recognized the importance of mining, minerals, and metals to economic and social development. Paragraph 46 of the JPOI called on governments to: (a) support efforts to address the environmental, economic, health, and social impacts and benefits of mining, minerals, and metals, including workers’ health and safety; (b) enhance the participation of stakeholders to play an active role throughout the life cycles of mining operations, including after closure for rehabilitation purposes; and (c) foster sustainable mining practices.

The WSSD also contributed to the establishment of the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development (IGF) to improve governance and decision-making to leverage mining for sustainable development. The IGF now supports 79 member states through capacity building, including improving sustainable mining practices, addressing tax base erosion and profit shifting, and ensuring resource governance and social progress.

Finally, in 2012, at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the outcome document, The Future We Want, recognized in paragraph 228 the “importance of strong and effective legal and regulatory frameworks, policies and practices for the mining sector that deliver economic and social benefits and include effective safeguards that reduce social and environmental impacts, as well as conserve biodiversity and ecosystems, including during postmining closure.”
 
Despite attention to mining, these conferences never called for a comprehensive international treaty. But there are treaties with provisions that can help regulate the industry. Three categories of international law are relevant to mining: international investment treaties, international human rights law, and environmental conventions and treaties (Pring et al., 1999).

International investment treaties establish the terms and conditions for private investment by nationals and companies of one state in another state. Home country governments enter into these agreements to protect their companies’ investments abroad. Host country governments do so to promote foreign investment in their countries. While these agreements provide strong and effective economic protection for investors, they do not provide similarly strong protections for people and the environment affected by mining investments.

There are human rights agreements that can protect people who work in and live near mining operations. These include the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child addresses child labour, and the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 on the rights of Indigenous Peoples is based on respect for the cultures and ways of life of Indigenous and tribal peoples. The nonbinding 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights also fall under this category. The UN Guiding Principles have driven many mining companies to undertake policies that have a positive influence on host communities, such as creating plans for community development.

The environmental treaties that affect mining the most are those that protect natural areas and resources. A “listing” under one of these treaties can place areas off limits to mining development (Pring et al., 1999). Examples include: the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance; the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage; and the 1979 Bonn Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals. The 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty designates Antarctica as a “natural reserve, devoted to peace and science,” and prohibits all activities related to mineral resources. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea governs mining on the seabed and subsoil beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. These activities are regulated under the International Seabed Authority.

There are also international treaties that address the transboundary movement of hazardous waste, which can include the disposal of tailings. These include the 1989 Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the 1991 Bamako Convention and the 1995 Waigani Convention.

Finally, the 2013 Minamata Convention on Mercury addresses the use of mercury in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). These miners, primarily in developing countries, use mercury to extract gold from ore because it is relatively inexpensive and easy to use. Nearly all the mercury used in ASGM is eventually released directly into the environment and pollutes the atmosphere, soils, and waterways, exposing miners and their communities to serious health risks.

The Challenge of Domestic Regulation

Despite these international agreements, mining governance still largely relies on national and local institutions and legal frameworks. The biggest challenges are implementation of regulations where they exist, and either a lack of strong penalties, or lack of political will to enforce penalties.

Many governments have adopted the “polluter pays” principle, which has become embedded into environmental frameworks with increasingly stringent requirements. Governments have traditionally used prescriptive approaches (called technology standards) that specify technologies to reduce pollution, but recently performance-based regulation with specific targets for environmental performance and economic instruments have become more widespread (UNDP, 2018). The main tools used to reduce environmental and social impacts are environmental impact assessments, through which governments and mining companies can conduct cumulative and strategic assessments to formulate plans and policies.

The greater dilemma relates to implementation of domestic policies. Governments and mining companies, recognizing the social impacts of mining, have increasingly introduced laws and regulations that require community consultation throughout the life of a mine. The United States, through the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) and in the European Union through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Due Diligence frameworks developed strong obligations for companies listed in their stock markets to track their supply chains for conflict minerals. Such initiatives show promise, although they do not necessarily focus on the root cause of the problem, and do not include all minerals.

Unfortunately, some developing countries have been much slower in accepting community consultation and engagement principles, and even where this practice has become enshrined in national laws, proper implementation is often problematic. Some challenges include instances where mine company staff with limited social development expertise either make random decisions about community benefit projects without proper consultation, or social performance spending follows corrupt routes through flawed tender processes with no benefit to the community.

Forging Win-Win Solutions

There is a need for more innovative solutions to optimize the mining industry’s benefits and reduce its negative social and environmental impacts. Public-private partnerships, given enough political will and business commitment, are one such option.

In 2011, Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani combined forces with the Kellogg Innovation Network’s Peter Bryant to find solutions to the complex challenges facing mining companies. A chronic lack of investment in innovation had reduced productivity, leading to increased costs and subpar returns on capital. At the same time, legacy environmental, health, and safety issues had diminished mining’s social license to operate in many communities. The solution was to recast the mining business model as a development partnership, and to work with stakeholders to pursue shared goals. This initiative saw the development of joint regional plans among government, community, and mine partners, with the southern African region as one of the first to implement such an initiative. These partnerships can jointly improve infrastructure, education, health services, and capacity building for these communities (KIN Development Partner Framework, 2014).

Other similar initiatives are illustrated by the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM). In collaboration with academic researchers, the Council has developed a matrix approach to identify technology solutions for the mining sector across six UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):  nutrition and agriculture (SDG 2), good health and wellbeing (SDG 3), clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), industry and innovation (SDG 9), and sustainable communities (SDG 11).

Most mining companies now have some form of corporate social responsibility approach through their activities, or are required to implement environmental, social, and governance principles, a key funding metric used by investors.

Our success as an industry is not only measured by the ounces, carats, or tons we mine, it is also measured by whether we improve people's lives.

Mark Cutifani, CEO, Anglo American

Some mining companies have introduced the SDGs into their work. For example, in addition to focusing on energy efficiency, mining companies can leverage their energy demand to extend power to undersupplied areas through partnerships that enable shared use of energy infrastructure, helping to achieve SDG 7. At Semafo’s Mana mine in Burkina Faso, Windiga Energy is building a 20MW solar plant, the largest in sub-Saharan Africa. The Mana mine will purchase energy from the plant, and the surplus will feed the national grid. Similar opportunities exist for the mining sector to contribute to the other SDGs, including catalyzing economic growth and employment (SDG 8), creating more resilient infrastructure (SDG 9), and combating climate change (SDG 13), among others (UNDP, et al., 2016).

At face value, sustainable mining appears to be an oxymoron, since minerals, once extracted, cannot be replaced in their original form. While this is true, it is undeniable that the high value placed on minerals can unlock huge benefits for a community or country. Many recent initiatives have been driven by national government policies or, in some cases, through mining companies that recognize the value of acting justly and introducing sustainability as an objective. The COVID-19 pandemic emphasized the need to prioritize the health and wellbeing of any mine’s most important asset: its labor force. This highlights the need for forging private-public partnerships to strengthen government support services, particularly in rural communities. The key to any sustainable development intervention is to consult with those who can benefit most, the immediate communities. Without addressing their real concerns, they are forced to pay the highest price—far beyond the actual value of the minerals extracted.

Works Consulted

Cutifani, M. & Bryant, P. (2015). Reinventing mining: Creating sustainable value. Kellogg Innovation Network.

Fitriani, E., Hutapea, M., & Tumiwa, F. (2014). Dare to transform: Governing extractive industries in Southeast Asia. In E. Fitriani, et al. (Eds.) Governance on extractive industries: Assessing national experiences to inform regional cooperation in Southeast Asia (pp.1-31).  UI Press. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309152110

Haddaway, N.R., Cooke, S.J., Lesser, P., Macura, B., Nilsson, A.E., Taylor, J.J., & Raito, K. (2019). Evidence of the impacts of metal mining and the effectiveness of mining mitigation measures on social–ecological systems in Arctic and boreal regions: A systematic map protocol. Environmental Evidence 8, 9. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13750-019-0152-8

Jakubick, A.G., McKenna, G., & Robertson, A.G. (2003). Stabilisation of tailings deposits: International experience. Mining and the Environment III. https://rgc.ca/files/publications/Sudbury2003_Jakubick_McKenna_AMR.pdf

Pring, G., Otto, J., & Naito, K. (1999). Trends in environmental law affecting the mining industry (Part II), Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law, 17(2), pp. 151-177, https://doi.org/10.1080/02646811.1999.11433164

Sanderson, H. (2019). Congo, child labour and your electric car. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/c6909812-9ce4-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb

Twerefou, D.K., Tutu, K., Owusu-Afriye, J., & Adjei-Mantey, K. (2015). Attitudes of local people to mining policies and interventions. International Growth Center Working Paper E-33107-GHA-1. https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Twerefou-et-al-2015-Working-paper-1.pdf

United Nations Development Programme, Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, Sustainable Development Solutions Network, & World Economic Forum. (2016). Mapping mining to the Sustainable Development Goals: An atlas. https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/poverty-reduction/mapping-mining-to-the-sdgs--an-atlas.html

United Nations Development Programme. (2018). Managing mining for sustainable development: A sourcebook. https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/poverty-reduction/Managing-Mining-for-SD.html

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. (2017). Impact of illicit financial flows on domestic resource mobilization: Optimizing revenues from the mineral sector in Africa. https://repository.uneca.org/handle/10855/23862

Vick, S.G. (1990). Planning, design, and analysis of tailings dams. BiTech Publishers. https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubccommunityandpartnerspublicati/52387/items/1.0394902

This article was originally published in IISD's Earth Negotiations Bulletin and distributed in the Linkages Update newsletter.

There is less than a month before the Glasgow Climate Change Conference. It is the first meeting since the Paris Agreement officially started in 2020. It is a time to consider if this landmark deal can deliver on the change we need to address rapid climate change.

One central pillar of the Agreement is under particular scrutiny: the nationally determined contributions (NDCs). These are countries’ pledges to the Paris Agreement and, among other issues, detail their planned efforts to reduce their carbon emissions. There is no international oversight of their content. There are few rules governing what an NDC should contain; it is up to countries to decide.

This pledging approach has been called “bottom-up” governance - that countries feed their plans into international frameworks. It isn’t unique to the Paris Agreement. Other multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) and other global initiatives feature similar types of participant  pledging. As we approach COP 26 following a devastating year of climate change impacts, it’s worth examining how bottom-up governance works in theory and in practice.

The Popularity of Pledging

Pledging has emerged as a popular, flexible way to govern the environment. Countries can pledge to do what makes sense in their national context and for their capacities. They put forward pledges - or contributions - toward a shared goal in the hopes that the sum of these pledges will safeguard the environment. With enough transparency, pledging can enable the global community to hold countries accountable to their promises and push them if their pledges are not ambitious. Prolonged negotiations over contentious issues like burden sharing will not hold up implementation. Countries still need to agree to the “shared” aspects of environmental action—such as the overarching goal or information the pledges should contain, or reporting formats to track progress. But the rest is left to each country (or perhaps companies, cities, and others). In theory, pledging can be a shortcut of sorts, allowing for rapid implementation of each countries’ promised actions.

In the context of treaties, pledging has found a foothold. International treaties generally involve rules that guide or explicitly set out what countries will do. By reversing that logic and allowing countries to set their terms, more countries may be willing to sign up. It makes participating easier. Treaties based around the logic of national determination could have wider participation. And, for many environmental issues that require global solutions, wide participation is highly desirable. 

Let’s face it: setting stringent rules can scare away major countries that are integral to solving the problem. Most MEAs do not have enforcement mechanisms, so they are self-enforcing by nature. Parties are going to implement what they voluntarily decide to anyway, so pledging mechanisms can make this voluntary feature central to the design. 

Allowing countries the flexibility to choose their policies is also an attractive idea because of the different capacities of countries and the various challenges they face. Not all countries contribute to environmental problems equally. Developed countries have a lot to answer for, from climate change to toxic chemical production. Emerging economies are following this development model, increasing their contributions to some global environmental problems. The poorest, however, suffer the worst effects, whether it’s land degradation, biodiversity loss, or climate impacts. All these varied responsibilities and experiences are difficult to encapsulate in one, top-down treaty. National determination can allow each country to do what's best, according to their responsibilities and needs. 

But there are benefits of globally-set rules. First, they form a common playbook for all countries. Everyone knows what to expect from one another, and the expectations have legal certainty. This can help alleviate worries about protecting economic advantage. Second, countries that are affected by environmental damage are moral voices in the negotiations and can use their levers (such as withholding consensus) to push for more ambitious rules. As a result, many express concern these treaties could lead to lowest-common denominator pledges. These are presumptions - as yet, we haven’t found systematic studies of the ambition of bottom-up versus top-down treaties. The lack of comparative studies on this design question might be because most people focus on climate change, ignoring the other ways bottom-up governance appears in global environmental governance.

Nationally Determining Global Responses

Pledging comes in a range of forms. The Paris Agreement is perhaps the most well-known, but other treaty bodies and frameworks have called for countries to make voluntary commitments. Some leave the nature of the pledges open, while others define the scope and nature of the pledge.

The NDCs to the Paris Agreement try to balance flexibility for all countries with the need to ensure some clarity and comparability among pledges. These pledges are contributions toward a goal… which is actually a contested term. In the negotiations for the Paris Agreement, the notation “####” was used because some parties preferred commitments, or plans, or actions, or contributions, or some combination. The contribution label stuck, in part because developing countries argued it better suited their needs, and their lesser historical responsibility for the problem. In Katowice, countries agreed to most of the Paris Agreement rulebook. It included NDC guidance to help countries prepare more similar pledges. For developed countries (or others) that include a numerical target, they have to specify the base year, scope of the NDCs, and other technical information. Countries should also detail why they consider the NDC fair and ambitious, in light of its national circumstances.

In 2015, it wasn’t only the climate change negotiators thinking in terms of pledges. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) adopted the approach. After considerable debate, and some pilot projects, countries agreed to develop “voluntary targets to achieve land degradation neutrality according to national circumstances and priorities.” The same COP set in place a process to develop guidelines for reporting and review processes related to the targets, and a target setting programme has delivered financial and technical assistance to support countries in setting set baselines and targets. So far, over 80 countries have set and are pursuing actions to achieve their LDN targets.

A voluntary approach made sense for the UNCCD because it was aiming to do its part to achieve SDG 15.3 that aims to “combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world.” The SDGs are a voluntary set of goals and targets - more of a roadmap than a detailed list of rules to follow. Countries are encouraged to conduct “regular,” “country-led and country-driven” reviews of their progress. These Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) are provided to the High-Level Political Forum. Approximately 40 countries do so each July, with almost all UN Member States having presented at least one VNR. 

Global conferences have also sought to leave a mark by encouraging announcements of pledges or initiatives as a central focus for the event. The World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, for example, encouraged governments and non-governmental stakeholders to announce new partnerships. 

This year, the pledging trend continued. The UN sought pledges from a wide range of actors - looking to countries, companies, and cities and more to do their part. The High-Level Dialogue on Energy called the pledges “Energy Compacts.” The online register catalogues the Energy Compacts; the private sector leads with 51 pledges, followed by 31 countries. The Compacts had to meet the submission guidelines and guiding principles, but otherwise the content was up to the one making the pledge. Similarly, the Food Systems Summit solicited commitments from all actors - whether they were “collective commitments” or institutional ones. The Commitments Registry shows the wide range of commitments made, totalling over 220 across all the Summit’s action areas.

What’s emerged is a landscape of mixed pledging systems - some that seek diversity and others that focus on countries. Some systems are open to any type of pledge while others try to define (at least in broad terms) what the pledge should look like to facilitate analyses of the collective impact from all pledges.

Has Pledging Worked? Can It?

By one standard, pledging has worked because it helped unlock agreement on important issues. By the other much tougher standard of whether it leads to positive change for the environment, it is too early to tell. We’ve done considerable damage to the planet that will take decades to repair. And, time is running out to address the most serious challenges.

The new pledges to the Paris Agreement show a mixed picture. According to the UN Climate Change Secretariat’s synthesis report, the new NDCs represent a 12% decrease in emissions (for those that submitted pledges). But, this puts us on track for a 2.7°C warmer world by the end of the century. That’s if the pledges are fully implemented. Under the Paris Agreement, countries must have an NDC as a legally-binding requirement, but reaching the targets an NDC might set out is not legally required. The new round of NDCs are a step, but a small one.

Pledging systems can benefit greatly from reporting mechanisms. Transparency matters when we think of the large number of unmet pledges from the New York Declaration on Forests. Promises were made, in speeches only. The actions never materialized and there was no reporting system to hold the businesses and others to account. Without transparency and a deadline to report back to the world, pledges can provide short term glory but little follow-through. A bottom-up world requires scrutiny to hold everyone to their promises. Only some of the pledging systems have such transparency mechanisms. The reporting for the Paris Agreement is still being finalized, hopefully to be completed at the Glasgow meeting this year. 

That’s the paradox of pledging: it helps to reach agreement or to mobilize a wide range of actors toward environmental goals. But, at the end of the day it’s a non-legally binding promise to be fulfilled in the future. Odysseus needed to be tied to the mast so he wouldn’t stray from his course and be tempted by the sirens’ song. Pledging systems rely on those making the promise today to stay the course, implement those pledges, and put forward more ambitious ones. In the urgency to reach agreement and bring all on board, pledging is a flexible option. But they necessitate mechanisms for transparency and accountability to safeguard the promises, and with them the future of the planet.