bratislava

Hearing the news: last week's biodiversity meeting heard Töpfer (inset) spell out his proposals. Credit: EARTH NEGOTIATIONS BULLETIN

Only four months after taking over as head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Klaus Töpfer, formerly Germany's environment minister, is already creating waves with his plans to reform the 25-year-old organization.

Töpfer said last week he wants UNEP to play a stronger role in the way countries implement the five UN conventions that relate to conservation, including taking a lead in developing relevant science advice.

Controversially, however, he wants much of this advice to come from non-government environment groups — including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) — as well as through the conventional route of other UN agencies.

In a speech to representatives of 172 countries at the fourth conference of the parties to the UN Biodiversity Convention in Bratislava, Slovakia, Töpfer said he was keen both to strengthen UNEP within the UN system and to bring non-government groups closer to the policy-making process.

Although few dispute the first goal, the initial reaction from delegates to the second was shock. A representative of a European Union state said bluntly that Töpfer's plans were “not even worth responding to”. Another said more diplomatically: “We are in for some interesting times ahead.”

But environment groups were delighted. Frank Vorhies, head of the IUCN economics unit in Geneva, said it was good news: “IUCN is well placed to play a role as UNEP's technical agency.”

In a nine-page paper outlining his proposals, Töpfer says UNEP has a mandate from the UN general assembly to take a closer involvement in the conventions that UNEP helped to set up. These include the biodiversity convention, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the convention on the conservation of migratory species of wild animals, and the wetlands convention.

At present, each convention has its separate agenda and reporting requirements, and its own advisory body of scientists. Scientists are drawn from different governments; they provide advice and help set research agendas. They report to a conference of country representatives for each convention, known as a Conference of the Parties.

Töpfer says he wants more “synergies” between conventions, by harmonizing scientific advice, programmes of work and reporting requirements. And he sees no reason why outside organizations with similar conservation aims should not be involved.

Science, says Töpfer, will be a key focus of his proposed reforms. Resources can be saved, he believes, if UNEP takes over from individual secretariats the job of defining research methodologies and setting research priorities. UNEP, in turn, would seek help from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as other UN agencies.

“I want to be as close as possible to organizations such as IUCN, and WWF, as well as other NGOs,” he says. “The IUCN has an outstanding tradition. I intensely believe that they can be a part of the process.”

Töpfer is in for a choppy ride. His plans to bring in environment groups to help implement the conventions will be strongly opposed, although it is unclear if he wants the groups to have a formal role in monitoring implementation.

Developing countries, in particular, are likely to consider this to be interference in their internal affairs. They are also likely to oppose plans to use environment groups for scientific advice.

The question of advice is particularly sensitive. At present, each convention takes scientific advice from a panel of scientists appointed by government delegations. The less developed countries prefer this arrangement, arguing that it gives them ‘ownership’ of the scientific advisory process.

Concern within the biodiversity convention that the advisory body was becoming too politicized (see Nature 391, 215; 1998) led some developed and advanced developing countries to suggest setting up independent panels of scientists in different disciplines, along the lines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But even this suggestion is controversial, despite promises from its supporters that panel members would be drawn from as many countries as possible.

Some of the least developed countries question the need for scientific advice at an international level, given the biodiversity convention's emphasis on conservation in individual countries. They fear that new scientific panels will be dominated by scientists from developed countries, introducing a biased perspective to the advice they give.

Similarly, panels set up with environment groups will be seen as partial to the environmentalist view. The role of IUCN may be particularly controversial, as many of its members appear to see conservation as more important than development.

“Conservation is a simple concept made difficult by high-paid consultants,” says Rabi Bista, special secretary in the ministry of forests and soil conservation in Nepal. “In my country, we know which areas need to be conserved. We have no difficulty at the professional level. Local people often know more than people like me in the cities. We don't need more committees [of scientists], we need local action.”

Tewolde Berhan Egziabher, general manager of Ethiopia's environmental protection agency, believes a committee of outside scientists setting generic research priorities on issues that affect individual countries amounts to interference in sovereign matters. Individual countries, he says, should be left to commission their own research.

“Take research on the impact on biodiversity of deforestation,” says Egziabher. “Whatever it finds, it will have implications for forestry policy. Science itself may be neutral. But there is no such thing as politics-free science at this level.”

But Töpfer says he is confident that governments will take to his plans for UNEP and that its governing council of world environment ministers will endorse them when it meets at the end of this month.

He says he has the backing of the UN secretary-general Kofi Annan who, he says, appointed him to bring in new thinking. “Whether I want it or not, I need to deliver ideas. If they think I am wrong, they should show me the red card.”