As one of the UN’s five regional commissions, the Economic Commission for Europe has the major aim of promoting economic integration across Europe – but its actual reach extends much further. In fact, not only are Canada and the United States both members, as well as former Soviet republics (a hangover from the commission’s origins in postwar reconstruction and Cold War dialogue), but any member of the UN, as well as professional and non- governmental organisations, is welcome to participate in some of its activities.
Executive secretary Sven Alkalaj met me recently to talk about the many facets of the commission’s work. It may be low-profile – as he told me, “We don’t make headlines” – but the results of its efforts are felt around the world, and in everyday life. Through establishing safety standards, addressing economic problems and smoothing diplomatic relations, the UNECE works to promote regional cooperation and improve the economic plight of its member countries in transition.
The surprising undercurrent of our conversation was the theme of security. Energy security, environmental security, road safety, and even security from conflict – these are all key concerns, and outcomes, of the UNECE’s work. As he showed me, we all benefit directly from its work every day, without realising it.
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon noted in 2011 that the UNECE’s work benefits many countries beyond Europe. How is this achieved?
Our work is norms, standards policy recommendations and technical cooperation. Our work has been praised outside our region because a number of countries realise they can benefit from joining our conventions.
We have eight programmes: environment, transport, statistics, trade, forestry, housing management, sustainable energy and economic cooperation and integration. (See panel for some details of the transport programme impacts.)
On the environment UNECE is a custodian of five environmental conventions. Our flagship is the Water Convention on the protection and use of transboundary water courses.
Ninety percent of the world’s population lives in countries that share transboundary river and lake basins. And you know when countries are sharing water, there might be disputes; and water management between upstream and downstream countries is very important. Non-cooperation can provide a flare for instability and even possible tensions and eruption of conflict among the states. Our convention was adopted in 1992 and has now become global.
The second issue that is very interesting for the environment is the question of access to information and public participation. For example, when infrastructure projects are planned that have an impact on the environment, the larger community should be consulted. These principles are enshrined in the Aarhus Convention.
Then what is also developing now is public-private partnerships. Many projects can not be dealt with only by the public or private sector. So especially in transition economies, we are trying to develop this participation. We developed the PPP Centre of Excellence here in Geneva, which works with different countries, identifying best practice.
And in the Philippines we opened a Centre of Excellence for health. At WEF (this month), I expect to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology of Azerbaijan to establish a specialist PPP centre on ICT in Baku. We are a hub, dispersing the best practices and knowledge to these centres of excellence in different countries.
So it’s economic, it’s agriculture and transport, it’s energy, it’s environment – name the issue and ECE is involved with it. Within all this our scope is enlarging, in that we focus now also on innovation and how to increase economic growth and sustainability in our member states.
Talking about sustainability, what does sustainable development mean to you?
Sustainable development was first defined in 1987. (From a UN report: “Development which meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”) The big conference Rio+20 (the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development) in June 2012, launched the global process that will lead to the adoption of sustainable development goals, after the expiry of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015.
As you know the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) were developed in order to eradicate poverty and famine, and through them world poverty has been cut in half. So what we see is that through our work we can contribute to the sustainable development of these countries – to build their capacity.
As one of the five regional commissions, we have the task of pushing the MDGs to achieve as much as possible, and to define the next goals. We are very much engaged, with our colleagues in New York, through talking with our member states, with the public, with NGOs, in developing the post- 2015 agenda.
Then, people speak a lot about sustainability, but how do you measure it? The framework for measurement of sustainable development is very important. UNECE collects and shares statistics on this and last June we adopted a framework to measure sustainable development.
We are trying to work through a nexus of water, energy, food and agriculture – to see how all this is combined. Sustainibility is something that we are putting in all our programmes, not looking at one aspect independently.
Do you find there is a tension between trying to promote your goals of economic development and the need to contain emissions?
It’s a big challenge. Environment and development are not themselves contradictory. They go hand in hand. But we must do all this prerequisite activity, like making energy efficiency more applicable, moving toward renewables (with the goal that they should be doubled by 2030). Economic development and environmental protections go hand in hand. For the developing world it’s a problem of disparity, comparing themselves with the developed countries which went through the industrial revolution. But that is a problem of the transfer of technology. And here I see a role for PPP projects. There is a need for the private sector to come with modern technology – in renewables, in energy efficiency – which would have an impact. Now, after the recent negotiations in Warsaw, we hope that the 2015 summit in Paris (the UN Conference on Climate Change) will contribute to our ultimate goal and that we will have agreement of all member states to move on this issue.
We talked earlier about international cooperation. Are you finding that the nature of the work is changing?
Definitely. There is no single institution that can achieve all the goals that are before us. The agenda is growing from day to day. We are trying to diversify, not to duplicate our work, we have to cooperate with other agencies within the UN system, and act as one. We cooperate with a number of organisations in our region and beyond: the European Union, Eurasian Economic Commission, Organisation for Security & Cooperation in Europe and multilateral financial institutions. Having said that, we should not neglect the role of NGOs, civil society and academia, in order to shape our future tasks and how to fulfil them. If we listen to those who would benefit from our work, we are able to reply to their needs and requests. That’s why defining the post-2015 agenda having listened to all this is very important. (A wide-ranging consultation took place before Rio+20, under the banner of “The Future We Want”.) It’s based on real feedback from those who would benefit.
The UN is changing, to become more efficient. The budgets are shrinking. So we have to work as one, to avoid duplication, and bring all the synergies and expertise which accumulate over the years to bear on improving efficiency.
You have spoken recently about the triple challenges of energy security, affordability and sustainability. Do you think these problems are different in Europe to in Africa?
Energy security is a universal problem. It can be defined in different ways but it is something we have to deal with in every part of the world. The core business of the UN is to promote peace and stability, and energy security can be one spark that can ignite.
I would put environmental security in the same basket. Take a nuclear disaster in one country – nuclear radiation doesn’t recognise borders. For us, the Secretary General’s initiative “Sustainable Energy for All” is key. This initiative comprises three pillars: access to energy for all (one in seven people in the world do not have access to electricity and more than 2.6 billion people rely on using biomass for cooking, which causes harmful indoor air pollution); energy efficiency, where UNECE has a lot of expertise to share; and renewables.
What do you consider your greatest achievements in the role, and what is your next priority?
I believe we have achieved good results in our member states;
they have moved from poverty to the next level and in the end, more countries in our region are middle-income countries. And I would also mention our flagship activity, this water convention. It needed a lot of effort but I think the benefits are much larger than we can see even now.
The next priorities are progressing in the implementation of the MDGs, defining the post-2015 development agenda and continuing to improve the lives of all the people in our region.
So you’re working to improve lives on two levels – economics and security.
Yes. I visited Syria some years ago and now it’s in total ruins. You can imagine how many billions of dollars are needed to rebuild, not to mention how many lives are lost. So prevention is key. We too often take it for granted, but we should all be working to make the world a safer place, working toward the future we want
