Call for an Earth System Council

A concept that has recently emerged in my consultations on global environmental governance is the need to define within the United Nations (UN) system a responsibility for the protection, management and governance of the global Earth System. This would go beyond the current recognition of the environment, climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution as some problems to be addressed, often with separate processes and institutions. We must accept that the Earth System is a complex, dynamic and integrated global system that first created and now maintains the conditions necessary for life on this planet, in what could be called the common good of all living things including us. We are a single human family sharing one common home, the planet Earth. We must accept responsibility in solidarity for its maintenance today and as trustees for passing it on to future generations in the best possible condition.

The word environment does not appear in the UN Charter of 1945. One of the most significant changes since its adoption has been the emergence of the environment as a global problem, with both a growing scientific understanding of the Earth System with the biosphere and its ecosystem services that make life possible, and the rapid growth in the human population and its technological civilization which have eroded the Earth’s resources and capacity, pushing far beyond safe and sustainable planetary boundaries. The many multilateral environmental agreements to address these problems within the present paradigm of national sovereignty and voluntary global governance have failed to prevent environmental threats from becoming existential challenges and catastrophes already happening.

Our essential needs for food, water and shelter are in danger. For example, rising seas from climate change pose “unthinkable” risks to billions around the world, creating new sources of instability and conflict, with profound implications for security, international law, human rights and the very fabric of societies, with ever-fiercer competition for fresh water, land and other resources as low-lying communities and entire countries disappear forever, with mass population exodus on a biblical scale.1 All these problems are interrelated in a single Earth System. Urgent action is needed to address such loss and damage. In a world where non-state actors including multinational corporations are major drivers of resource extraction, unsustainable production, and unlimited pollution and waste generation illustrating the tragedy of the commons, governance should extent to all contributors to environmental degradation. Fortunately solutions exist and the means are there; it is the political will to implement what has already been agreed that is lacking, with no real accountability and liability for those most responsible. The world must rapidly adopt system-wide transformations to secure a sustainable, climate-resilient future.

The UN Charter started with two pillars, peace and security, and economic and social development. A third pillar was added almost immediately with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and what is now the Human Rights Council. It is now obvious that a fourth pillar of environmental responsibility for the common good of a liveable planet must be added, initially with reforms within the present structure, and ultimately in a revised Charter with specific text on the environment in the preamble and separate chapters for each pillar.

The UN High Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism (HLAB) in its report A Breakthrough for People and Planet (p.26) states: “The central importance of the environment to all aspects of our lives and collective well-being must be accompanied by an elevation of the environment within our global governance system. This requires strengthening UNEP and the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) with mandates and resources comparable to the UN’s development, peace and security, and human rights institutions. Specifically, UNEP should be empowered to act as a more effective global environment agency, able to track our interrelated impacts on the environment, consolidate and measure our commitments, condition our global financial investments, and drive a transformative agenda for people and planet across multilateralism.”2 This report drew on a previous paper which Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen and I prepared for the Climate Governance Commission, Towards a Global Environment Agency: Effective Governance for Shared Ecological Risks3 which calls for a capacity to negotiate, adopt and enforce globally binding environmental legislation.

The 2023 Climate Governance Commission report Governing Our Planetary Emergency4 has called for the immediate implementation of enhanced international scientific capacity for Earth System Governance, elevating environmental governance within the multilateral system to strengthen accountability for international obligations, and more innovative international law and international legal institutions. It then proposes to build out planetary governance over 5-10 years by establishing a Global Environment Agency (GEA) and an International Court for the Environment (ICE), to adapt environmental law to the Anthropocene.

One difference between governance of the environment and of human society is that environmental realities, processes and limits are defined by science, which can provide an objective basis for policy and decision-making. The planetary environment extends to those dimensions and processes beyond the capacity of any nation to manage independently, including outer space, the electromagnetic spectrum, the atmosphere and climate system, the water cycle, the oceans, the biosphere and its ecosystems and genetic resources, the sustainable exploitation of natural resources, chemical pollution, wastes and their disposal, and the conditions necessary for human health and well-being. A strong scientific advisory capacity is a necessary foundation, as already demonstrated in the environmental conventions. This also means that judicial processes for the interpretation and implementation of environmental law require unique competences on the part of judges and investigative processes, requiring at least a specialized chamber in the International Court of Justice.

The proposal for Earth System governance as the fourth UN pillar should define the scope of planetary environmental governance and provide for executive, legislative and judicial functions. This strengthened environmental governance can build on existing institutions, including the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) as the embryo of an Earth System Council, and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) as the basis for a Global Environment Agency, orchestrating, bridging and eventually combining the many multilateral environmental agreements to increase their global authority, coherence and more effective implementation. Some form of international environmental court is also needed.

Earth System Council

The Earth System Council could be upgraded from the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), which already has universal membership. It should negotiate and approve binding legislation necessary to protect the essential functions and resilience of the planetary environment and Earth System as the common good of all peoples, to ensure that planetary boundaries as determined by science are not exceeded, and to require that human impacts are returned to levels consistent with those boundaries. The Council should also allocate responsibility for respecting those limits among states and other responsible actors in accordance with justice, equity and capacity for implementation.

One of its functions should be to adopt legislation that combines and increases coherence between the texts of existing conventions, multilateral agreements and international regulations, for increased efficiency and effectiveness. Its global environmental legislation should include the means of implementation, both within countries and in the global commons beyond national jurisdictions. Where countries have insufficient capacity, assistance should be provided either to build that capacity within country or to establish regional or international collaboration and joint implementation. Such global environmental legislation should apply not only to States and subnational entities, but to non-state actors including corporations and other economic actors, civil society, other institutions and individuals.

Scientific Advice

An independent International Panel on Earth System Science, advisory to the Earth System Council, would bring together experts from the natural and social sciences and other knowledge systems including Indigenous knowledge, to prepare regular reports and assessments of the state of and changes in the Earth system and essential planetary boundaries, as the basis for legislation and management.

The Panel should coordinate the collection of data, provide an independent review and analysis of environmental parameters and trends, prepare projections and scenarios, recommend the building of capacity in all countries to contribute to the science, and provide reports and recommendations for policy and decision-making. Environmental data collection should be institutionalized, coordinated, and properly supported at the global level to ensure effective and transparent coverage of all countries and planetary systems, to assist underserved regions, and to facilitate access by all users to scientific data. Scientific information should be freely accessible to all.

In application of the principle of precaution, the lack of scientific certainty should not prevent regulation or prohibition of activities or substances likely to have a significant adverse impact on the environment. Information about environmental damage or the likelihood of such damage, and the possible need for preventive action or emergency response, should immediately and publicly be made available.

A Global Environment Agency

A Global Environment Agency should be created with the responsibility to implement the protection, management and sustainable use of the planetary environment and Earth System. It should have the capacity to orchestrate and coordinate all the relevant specialized agencies and organizations inside and outside the UN system to ensure the common good of all life on Earth.

The Agency should assemble and if necessary extend a framework of global and regional institutions of environmental governance responsible for the implementation of planetary environmental legislation, while respecting national autonomy in applying each state’s responsibility in ways appropriate to local conditions and capacities. The existing specialized agencies, programmes, conventions and other bodies with environmental responsibilities, should be gradually harmonized and incorporated into an efficient and coherent set of mechanisms to manage the various planetary environmental challenges.

An international funding mechanism should be established to ensure the proper functioning and implementation of global environmental governance. Such a mechanism could include taxes on environmentally damaging activities, fines for breaking global environmental regulations, and assessed contributions from states in proportion to their environmental responsibility and impact. In accordance with the polluter-pays principle, prevention, mitigation and remediation costs for pollution, and other environmental disruptions and degradation should, to the greatest possible extent, be borne by their originator, including the original producer or mandator of a damaging substance or action and not just the user impacting the environment. Petroleum-producing countries and companies, for example, should be liable for the damage caused by the resulting climate change, which they have known about for decades.

Effective environmental governance requires public participation by all stakeholders at an appropriate stage, to build public support for implementation. Environmental education should be provided at all levels to inspire responsible conduct in protecting and improving the environment. Since the Earth system is constantly changing and evolving both through natural processes and as the result of human impacts, environmental governance needs to provide for processes of learning from these changes to maintain flexibility and to adapt legislation and institutions to a dynamic and constantly changing world.

International Environmental Justice

To complete the institutions for global environmental governance, a mechanism is needed to provide access to environmental justice, including affordable access to administrative and judicial procedures, and providing redress and remedies for environmental loss and damage. This could be a separate International Court for the Environment, or an Environmental Chamber in the International Court of Justice. It should have the competence at the global level to interpret legislation, resolve disputes and ensure access to environmental justice.

Conclusion

There are a variety of proposals now being explored that go in this direction, such as for a Global Environment Agency as mentioned above, and a Global Resilience Council. The UN Summit of the Future in September 2024 would be a logical place to discuss these proposals, but the zero draft of the Pact for the Future to be adopted there places the environment as a sub-theme within Sustainable Development, which does not recognise the integrated systemic nature of the Earth System and limits it to aspects of human development. Other proposals will emerge from the Global Governance Forum and the Climate Governance Commission. Given the urgency of effective action on a variety of environmental threats and unfolding catastrophes, we need to go further and faster, hence my proposals.

REFERENCES

1. UN Security Council debate 14 February 2023, UN News https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/02/1133492

2. High Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism (HLAB) A Breakthrough for People and Planet. United Nations, 2023.

3. Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, Sylvia and Arthur Lyon Dahl. 2021. Towards a Global Environment Agency: Effective Governance for Shared Ecological Risks. A Climate Governance Commission Report. Stockholm: Global Challenges Foundation. 77 p. https://iefworld.org/fl/dkarlsson_dahl21.pdf

4. Climate Governance Commission. Governing Our Planetary Emergency. November 2023. https://ggin.stimson.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Governing-Our-Plane…