Expert Meeting on Synergies among the Conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change, Combating Desertification and the Forest Principles Sede Boqer, Israel, 17-20 March 1997

I. Introduction

Governments and the international community have declared specific goals with regard to sustainable development. These goals are contained in Agenda 21 and a range of individual instruments, including binding Conventions. These are not just environmental plans but rather international commitments concerning the integration of environmental protection and natural resources management with socio-economic development.

These sustainable development instruments share in common many environmental issues and contain numerous overlaps in terms of the obligations required of their Parties (such as requirements for research, reporting, training, and public education and awareness). These sustainable development instruments can be more effectively implemented through a greater understanding of the synergies between these instruments, and a coordinated and harmonized approach to their implementation at national and international levels. In this context "synergy is taken to mean ... a combined effect ... that exceeds the sum of individual effects" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 7th edition).

Four of these instruments -- the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Forestry Principles -- derive directly from the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (the "Rio Earth Summit"). We are now five years beyond UNCED, a time when the global community -- including the UN General Assembly -- is reviewing progress made on these agreements.

II. Purpose of the Meeting

To explore the issue of synergies among the Rio instruments, the United Nations Development Programme organized and convened a meeting in Sede Boqer, Israel involving some 40 experts representing every continent. The meeting was supported with funding from the Governments of Israel, Japan and Denmark, and by UNDP.

The meeting was designed to bring together experts at the national and international levels who are involved in helping to implement the four Rio agreements. Their task was to explore ways to create synergy between and among the instruments -- in particular at the national level -- to help foster better implementation and to improve the prospects for sustainable development. In doing so, they considered a number of questions. For example:

In a world in which governments work through sectors to effect national development and carry out their policies, how can cross-cutting environmental Conventions best be implemented through the sectoral mechanisms of governments? How can such sectors benefit from the implementation of the Conventions; how do they affect the Conventions; and what can the sectors do to support the goals of the Conventions? What do the Conventions share in common, and how can these overlaps be used to produce synergy?

The meeting focused on examining the possibilities for synergy at the national level among the instruments by exploring four key areas related to their implementation:

• Institutional requirements
• Capacity requirements
• National planning
• Reporting and information requirements
  

It was recognized that there would be overlap and complementarity between these four themes. Discussion notes were prepared to help guide the discussions.

III. Key Themes and Messages from the Meeting

Based on the work undertaken at this meeting, participants developed a number of proposals, options, and recommendations to better improve implementation of the Conventions, to reduce conflicts and overlaps, and to produce synergy among them. Among the larger themes and messages which emerged were:

Synergy

Synergies in implementing the Conventions -- at the international, national and local levels -- are clearly possible. Synergy could be achieved, for instance, through harmonized data collection and the establishment of common data sets, through better coordinated reporting processes and schedules, and through public awareness activities incorporating information about a range of environmental issues.

However, producing such synergy is no easy matter; it is the culmination of a process in which complementarities between the Conventions are identified and used to further implementation while overlaps are eliminated (or at least conflicts between them reduced). Taking advantage of the complementarities and reducing conflicts (e.g., the potential for conflict between a biodiversity strategy and a forest strategy) requires the ability to design necessary actions and then having the means to take these actions. Even before a potential point of synergy is reached, eliminating or reducing the conflicts can go a long way toward improving implementation of the instruments. In addition, complementary provisions of Conventions can be implemented in ways that improve cost effectiveness by achieving the same or greater results with fewer or the same resources.

Planning and Policy

The overlaps among the four instruments extend to other international agreements such as Ramsar, CITES, the Montreal Protocol, and the Law of the Sea. The requirements (including reporting obligations) of these instruments can lead to duplicative effort and place a substantial burden on countries -- particularly a strain on human and financial resources. To turn such potential burdens into possible synergies requires planning -- national and sectoral development planning and plans built specifically for national implementation of the Conventions. The key is to anchor implementation plans into national development priorities and policies. In many countries, there may be no cohesive planning framework, which makes the integration of the instrument-related plans into sectoral policies essential. One option countries may want to pursue is to identify a "strategic entry point" for analysis -- for example, a country with an extensive forest cover may find this a better entry point than the climate change issue -- and then direct its resources to addressing a range of environmental issues through this point.

Capacity Requirements

Conventions are implemented in countries at the national, regional, district and community levels. A high priority is to develop the institutions and capacities necessary to enable countries to translate these international agreements into action at these levels. One problem countries face is that capacities diminish from the national to the local level, therefore the well-justified efforts of governments to decentralize and devolve authority must be supported by additional resources of skilled, trained people and money.

Institutional Requirements

There are no quick institutional "fixes" for coordinating implementation of the agreements. Nor is there an institutional blueprint for most effective implementation. Coordination among the instruments must be nationally driven, with synergies allowed to form to support national priorities. Institutional structures aimed at coordinating implementation of international agreements need to fit into the existing institutional and planning frameworks to the extent possible. Coordinated implementation is likely to require horizontal structures to support inter-ministerial consultation and cooperation, as well as to involve multi-stakeholder participation at all levels. In this, the national focal points for each Convention can become important driving forces for synergistic action by carrying out their individual instrument responsibilities in coordination with one another.

Information Systems and Reporting

Underlying the challenge parties face in fulfilling the reporting requirements of the Conventions is the more fundamental issue of the lack of an information system in many developing countries. Where there is no information system, reporting is necessarily ad hoc and demanding. Worse, a country has no real means for saying whether the Conventions are being implemented or even whether progress is being made toward the goals of sustainable development. An information system not only allows a country to have the data necessary to fulfill its obligations and generate reports, but also to better define, guide and assess the progress being achieved on its development policies.

International Level Interventions

Interventions at the international level can support -- and may even be required in order to produce -- synergy at the national level. For example, instructions by the COPs to their Secretariats to work collaboratively/synergistically with the Secretariats of the other Conventions would contribute greatly to opportunities for national-level synergy.

IV. Messages Applicable to the International Community and the CSD

For synergy to be achieved at the national level, it needs to exist at the international level. While the Sede Boqer meeting focused expressly on national level concerns regarding implementation of the instruments, several messages emerged for the international community and the Commission on Sustainable Development. These include:

As already noted, the COPs of the instruments could support synergy by instructing their Secretariats to work collaboratively with one another.

Shared reporting schedules and other ways to streamline reporting requirements could be developed between instruments, thus lessening the reporting burden on Parties. In this regard, a useful reference document is the "Report of the Secretary-General on Proposals for the Streamlining of Requests for National Reporting" (E/CN.17/1997/6).

The four instruments could be analyzed in detail to identify data and information needed to monitor and assess progress. Such an analysis should be done at the international level as a resource to all parties; however, interpretation at the national level will be needed since data needs differ between countries, and scale, precision and definitions should be developed and agreed to locally.

The Convention Secretariats can contribute to the development and dissemination of training modules such as the CC-Train model based on the TrainX method. The Secretariats can also undertake efforts to provide information tools that increase understanding of and give greater access to the Conventions.

V. Supporting National Implementation of the Conventions

By the completion of the Sede Boqer meeting, participants were agreed that countries Party to the Conventions could benefit substantially from useful information on a range of ways to maximize complementarities, remove or reduce obstacles and overlaps, and produce synergies in the implementation of the Conventions. Such information could be in the form of a country-level handbook with approaches to promote implementation; it would not be prescriptive, but rather would contain information on options which might be applicable in certain settings.

UNDP, within its mandate on capacity building and sustainable development planning, could play the lead role in developing such an information handbook tool, working in close collaboration with the Secretariats to the Conventions and in consultation with national and international experts.

Based on the discussions and reports from the meetings four working groups (institutional requirements, capacity requirements, national planning, and reporting and information requirements), the following overall themes and topics could be included in such a handbook:

Overview, rationale and the possibility for synergy

The handbook could begin with a broad overview concerning:

• The nature of the environmental/sustainable development instruments associated with UNCED.
  
• The various commitments Parties to these Conventions have made.
  
• How the instruments overlap, where there are potential conflicts, where there are potential complementarities and synergies.
  
• The challenge of implementing cross-cutting instruments through a sectoral framework.
  
  

Implementation: How to move global Conventions to the local level

The chapter would identify the problems, challenges and issues to doing this, and offer a range of options appropriate for different settings. For example, options generated at the Sede Boqer meeting include:

• Integrate the Conventions into policies at all levels through a process of translating national policies into programmes and action plans at the regional and district levels, and then translating these into actions at the local level.
  
• Provide incentives and demonstrate clear benefits of enacting the Conventions to communities at the local level.
  
• Improve efficiency in policy implementation and orientation by promoting greater two-way exchange of information and expertise between national and local levels.
  

Implementation: How to deal with the fact that the instruments overlap and cut across one another

For example:

• Undertake an assessment of where the instruments overlap and the cross-cutting issues among them. Once analyzed, cross-compare to identify potential points of synergy.
  
• Improve communications between individuals and units responsible for the implementation of the different instruments -- such as by placing the responsibility for the Conventions in the same Ministry or by creating task forces of focal points based in different government units.
  
• Develop a matrix displaying how each Convention intersects with the governments sectoral policies, and compare these points of intersection to identify possible complementarities and conflicts.
  

How to meet the information and reporting requirements

For example:

• The essential factor is an information system that can provide information for analysis and to influence decision-making as well as for meeting reporting requirements. In other words, the problem is not the reporting requirements of the Conventions, but the lack of a system that can produce the necessary data for the reports; as a result they are burdensome.
  
• The Conventions have overlapping information needs -- in a general sense. If data set development is well planned and coordinated, data sets could fulfill the needs of multiple conventions.
  
• Sharing information about data holdings, project activities, and so forth among the various people working on the instruments in a country is a good first step toward more coordinated policy development and joint programming.
  

Awareness and Education

This chapter could address two primary issues:

• how do you influence the educational system
• how do you foster learning and awareness about the Conventions and what they cover
  

Develop curriculum for all levels which integrates the concerns of the four instruments and the link of socio-economic issues to environmental and resource management issues.

Utilize regional training facilities to provide training based on a combined multidisciplinary curriculum and the TrainX methodology.

Build public awareness of the four instruments through media, public service advertising, and on-going education of the press.

VI. Next Steps

UNDP will prepare a more detailed report of the discussions held and options identified at the Expert Meeting on Synergies among the Conventions which will be made available to the Special Session of the UN General Assembly in June 1997.

UNDP will continue the dialogue process initiated at Sede Boqer with other partners to identify ways national and international institutions can produce synergy to further the successful implementation of the instruments. As part of those discussions, UNDP will undertake substantial consultations with the Convention Secretariats to explore the feasibility of producing a handbook for national implementation.

Karen Jorgensen, Chair

Ted L. Howard, Chief Rapporteur