About our Work

Global Natural Resource Control and Management

Current global economic policies tend to prioritize economic production over social development and environmental protection. Under such processes, developing countries have become even more marginalized, whether in terms of their access to and benefits from their own environmental and natural resources, their development prospects, or the standards of living of their peoples.

A major global governance problem relating to global environmental and natural resources is that, in large part, such resources continue to remain under effective open access regimes. Open access resources are prone to excessive human appropriation and overuse. Given the greater political, economic and financial power and resources of the industrialized countries, open access conditions will tend to favour their continued access to global environmental and natural resources to the detriment of developing countries.

There is need to address the governance regimes over global natural resources whose access conditions may not be open access, but whose importance to countries’ economic growth make them prime sources of conflict in order to ensure that such conflicts are averted or minimized, and to ensure that the access to and the use of such resources are equitable, environmentally sustainable, and supports the South’s development interests.

Management of Global Environment Conditions

Increasingly damaged and rapidly changing global environmental conditions may also make it more difficult for the South to shape and adapt their own domestic economic modes of production for optimum economic, social and environmental effect. Environmental protection is an important policy objective within the context of the development path of the South. This is because three-fourths of the world’s population live in the South and the environmental space is an indispensable prerequisite to the development process.

The South can and must learn lessons from the excesses of the North and choose a development path that, while increasing standards of living and providing for decent employment opportunities for the poor, is also at the same time environmental sustainable. The South can and must also be strategic, pro-active, and sensitive to the impact that changing perceptions about global environmental conditions have in terms of effecting changes in the policy language and perspectives of key Northern actors (e.g. governments, academe, civil society, and industry).

Without clear, participatory and transparent governance regimes that manage access to such resources and manage global environmental conditions, the South may find itself without either the natural resources or the environmental conditions necessary for it to develop and lift its peoples out of poverty into a life of human dignity.

Environment Governance Mechanisms: UNEP and the MEAs

"Sustainable" development essentially has three components: economic development, social development, and environmental protection. These are interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars. Poverty eradication, changing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and protecting and managing the natural resource base of economic and social development are overarching objectives of, and essential requirements for, sustainable development.

All countries need to collaborate and cooperate in order to achieve progressive, equitable and environmentally sustainable economic development in the South. It will require major structural and attitudinal changes in the North with respect to the adoption of sustainable life styles, patterns of production and consumption, in order to free up environmental space within which the South can use its resources and develop. It will also require changes in the global political governance system and in the global economic system that would allow the South to participate effectively, share in the benefits equitably, and flexibly adopt national policies commensurate to their needs and interests.

The real challenge is how to ensure that countries become effectively subject to global economic and environmental governance mechanisms that are transparent, democratic, more representative, participatory, accountable to all, and whose structures, agenda, and policies are not subject to the sole control of the North. Global governance regimes relating to global environmental and natural resources should be those that reflect the interests of all peoples and, in particular, are supportive of the developmental aspirations of the South as the best way of ensuring that global economic growth is socially equitable and environmentally sustainable.

In building on the thinking and analyses already done by the Centre on these issues relating to global environmental governance, the work under the Programme includes:

1. Understanding the governance structures and processes of existing global environmental governance mechanisms and the various multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) – with a view to making them more representative and transparent, to Southern governments, global civil society, and other relevant stakeholders
2. Proposing changes to their structures and policies to enable them to better support and promote equitable and sustainable development patterns in the South
3. Increasing the capacity and ability of the South and of global civil society to participate in decision-making processes and to evaluate the sustainable developmental impact of UNEP and MEA projects and policies
4. Promoting a process of dialogue, collaboration and partnership with UNEP, MEAs, Southern governments, civil society, academe, and other institutions with respect to improving global environmental conditions and standards, the development of global natural resource access and management regimes, innovation and transfers of environmental technology from North to South, improvements in the provision of technical and financial assistance, policy changes (in the areas of environmental management, natural resource management, and economic production and consumption) to shift both North and South to equitable and environmentally sustainable development paths, through the implementation of new or existing international environmental instruments within the UN system.

Publications