Science to the Rescue (Professor Calestous Juma, 1993 Laureate)

Science to the rescue
Preserving life on earth will take more than just new laws: greater technical investment is required.

Calestous Juma 

March 29, 2006 11:25 AM
More than 3,000 delegates from more than 100 nations have converged on the Brazilian city of Curitiba to discuss the loss of the variety of life on earth, often referred to as biological diversity or biodiversity. They seek to adopt a "road map" to significantly reduce the loss of biodiversity by 2010.

International environmental effort over the last three decades has focused on adopting laws and seeking to enforce them. But much of the needed effort will entail significant improvements in the technical capacity of the earth's citizens to solve environment problems.

In a passionate plea to the delegates, the executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Dr Ahmed Djoghlaf, said: "We are on the verge of the greatest extinction crisis since the dinosaurs vanished, millions of years ago. Nature is talking to us, and we should listen and act now."

Acting means taking considerable investment in the generational and environmental criteria for managing ecosystems. The work carried out by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) and the CBD shows the magnitude of the challenges ahead.

Conservationists can learn from other regimes and complement the legal law work with more detailed scientific and technical reviews and assessments.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO), for example, operates on the basis of more than 40,000 pages of technical information accumulated over decades of international experience.

Similarly, other effective agencies, such as the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), rely on the use of technical information to set safety standards for their work. Environmental negotiations are largely focused on normative exhortations, with little technical back-stopping. Where such information exists, it is held by non-governmental agencies and not readily accessible to government negotiators. For example, much of the
technical knowledge needed for biodiversity conservation is held in institutions such as the World Conservation Union (IUCN), Conservation International (CI), the Nature Conservancy (TNC), WWF (formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund) and the International Council for Science (ICSU).

However, these agencies have limited international convening authority. IUCN, for example, has accumulated a large body of technical information on protected areas. This information can provide a solid foundation for developing internationally shared criteria for managing protected areas.

This information can complement databases held by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) of the United Nations environment programme (Unep). On the other hand, the UN organs that host international environmental negotiations have the convening power but lack the technical expertise needed to set environmental standards or criteria. And even where such expertise exists, it is hardly put to effective use worldwide.

Take chemical safety, for example. The international programme on chemical safety, a consortium of UN agencies dealing with health, labour and the environment, has published more than 230 monographs on environmental health criteria. The documents provide "critical reviews on the effects of chemicals and combinations of chemicals and physical and biological agents on human health and the environment".

Granted, this information has contributed to the UN's work on creating new treaties on chemical safety. But the bulk of the information could be used in international efforts to set safety criteria and promote global learning on chemical safety.

Carrying out such tasks will demand a level of technical expertise and organisation not readily available in current UN environmental bodies. Today's diplomatic warriors working in such agencies will need to be complemented by a new generation of technology-oriented professionals with strong connections to universities and research institutions. There is indeed growing interest among UN agencies to seek partnerships with universities. Last year Unep signed a memorandum of understanding with the Swiss Technical Institute (ETH-Zurich) on areas of scientific assessment, monitoring and early warning of environmental problems. Such arrangement could help the UN strengthen its capacity to develop environmental criteria and standards.

In another interesting development, the UN University Institute for New Technology (UNU-Intech) has merged with the the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (Merit) of the University of Maastricht in what could become a leading research facility on science, technology and innovation policy. A similar arrangement on natural resources could pursued between the UNU Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU-Inra) and the University of Ghana.

Saving life on earth will take more than laws, advocacy and political pressure by civil society organisations: it will demand greater investment in building up the technical capacity needed to compile and advance environmental criteria and standards. This should be the primary focus on international environmental treaties. Everything else will fall on deaf ears.