It may not have changed the world overnight but it was definitely a baby step in the right direction. “The remarkable thing was in less than 18 months the General Assembly enacted the decisions of that Summit, more than doubled the funding to UNEP from the regular budget of the UN.”
The intervening period has been equally eventful. In December of 2015, 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal and in January, the Sustainable Development Goals, came into effect.
Both also milestones for UNEP and for Steiner whose mantra has been environmental consciousness need not be the enemy of development and the two can and should co-exist side by side.
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And for those not aware, he’s sure to point out, the birthplace of COP21, was Nairobi.
“In some ways that journey actually began here in Nairobi because it was over 25 years ago that UNEP together with its sister agency the World Meteorological Organisation that first brought the world’s scientists looking at this phenomenon of global warming together to speak to public policy makers.”
Years later, the world’s environment ministers, environmentalists and scientists once again convene in Nairobi for UNEA-2 and the discussion, Steiner says, will focus on execution; steps towards realisation of the targets set in the Paris agreement and by the Sustainable Development Goals.
“What does the environmental dimension, this new agenda represent? What is the role of Environment Ministers, how does UNEP and how does the environmental community respond to the challenges of clean air, of public health? Where is the financing going to come from?”
In light of UNEA and the Paris agreement on climate change, it could be argued that the year 2014/15 was the year of the environment.
But green Steiner says, wasn’t always fashionable. Getting the world to sit up and pay attention to the perils of global warming wasn’t the easiest of tasks when he first took up office as UNEP Executive Director.
“Let me just make the connection here to Wangari Maathai. Often those who stood up for the environment at a time when it wasn’t fashionable in the larger sense of the word were not appreciated by their community, society and I have always argued that we shouldn’t be apologetic about a green agenda.”
For a long time, he says, those who, like him, advanced the notion that development did not necessarily need to be done at the expense of the environment, were seen as, “naïve,” to the detriment of mankind.
“The small island states are literally threatened with their survival… We are already living through the early signals of climate change affecting this continent whether in terms of rainfall patterns, droughts and floods but also sea-level rise. This continent according to some of the work UNEP has done, will in the coming decades probably be spending billions of dollars just in adapting to the consequence of global warming and that is money spent in just staying in the same place. Not in advancing.”
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