the creation of UNEP, which emerged out of
the 1972 Stockholm conference and has since
played a catalytic part in international envi-
ronmental issues. The organization oversaw
the process that created the Montreal Protocol
of 1987, a treaty to phase-out ozone-deplet-
ing compounds. In 1988, UNEP joined with
the World Meteorological Organization to
create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. Four years later in Rio, UNEP and the
environmental movement shaped new inter-
national agreements on climate change and
biodiversity, and laid the groundwork for a
treaty to combat desertification. The climate
convention provided the road map for the
Kyoto Protocol — in which nations pledged
to cut greenhouse-gas emissions — and
established the process for the climate talks.
Bridge-building
For the Stockholm and Rio conferences to
succeed, Strong knew he needed to earn the
trust of developing countries. But he also built
bridges with the scientific and business commu-
nities and he opened up both events to partici-
pation from non-governmental organizations
— often against the wishes of governments.
“Maurice really pushed the door for public
engagement,” says James Gustave Speth, a
former administrator of the UN Development
Programme and founder of the World Resources
Institute, an environmental think-tank in
Washington DC. “You have to remember that
this had never happened before and it had
ramifications across all other UN processes.”
Yet despite Strong’s successes in bring-
ing people and nations together, the policy
architecture he created has done little so far
to make the world safer. Aside from the suc-
cessful global effort to protect the ozone layer,
international environmental agree-
ments have faltered. In particular, they
lacked mechanisms to verify whether
countries met their commitments or to
penalize those that fell short. This led
to the anticipated failure of the Kyoto
treaty, and will also doom the parallel
commitment to slow down the rate of
loss of biodiversity by 2010. The con-
sensus at the meeting in Switzerland
was that the fault lies with the current
environmental policy structure.
Strong acknowledges that the trea-
ties have suffered because they allowed
“governments to say one thing, but do
the opposite”. The fault may lie with
the expectations that Strong and others
had. The entire environmental move-
ment had a misplaced confidence in the
ability of governments to deliver on their
promises, says Speth.
That realization has tempered hopes for
the climate negotiations this year, and Strong
doubts whether December’s Copenhagen
climate summit will succeed. “Radical thinking
is needed,” he says, “but there is no evidence
that governments are ready for that.” There
is no point to an agreement, he says, unless
it has “binding real penalties, fines and trade
bans that are designed to make agreements
enforceable”, rather like what happens in the
World Trade Organization or the International
Atomic Energy Agency.
Another problem with past environmen-
tal agreements is the relationship between
the richer and poorer countries. Developing
nations have long insisted that if they were
going to be forced to grow sus-
tainably — unlike the richer
nations — then substantial
financial support should be
made available. But the wealthy
nations baulked at that request,
in part because they didn’t want
to be seen as accepting respon-
sibility for global environmental problems.
It has taken nearly four decades for a poten-
tial solution to emerge. UK Prime Minister
Gordon Brown proposed last month to start a
climate fund that would give US$100-billion to
developing countries each year, paid for by the
world’s wealthiest nations.
A third issue that has dogged Strong is his
poor relations with US administrations — and
his belief that global agreements can work
without the United States. “I did spend a lot of
time in America,” he says. “But America already
had many people who could speak on its behalf.
Yes, I could have put more time in, but even
the Americans were telling me ‘you’ve got to
get the developing countries on side’. I used to
tell the Americans that if I am seen to be in your
pocket, then I am of no use to anyone.”
To this day, Strong gets bad press in the
United States, where reporters often focus
on potential conflicts of interest that affected
him while he was working in the upper tiers
of the UN.
Little black book
Yet Strong has no shortage of supporters,
especially among the world leaders he helped
to groom. He has a legendary record in spot-
ting promising individuals, which is evident
in the roll-call of people whom he hired early
in their careers. Canada’s former prime min-
ister Paul Martin, James Wolfensohn, who
led the World Bank, Yolanda
Kakabadse, former environ-
ment minister of Ecuador
and now president of the
environmental group WWF,
and many serving heads
of UN agencies are Strong
protégés and cite him as a
major influence in their lives.
When the IUCN was having financial prob-
lems in the 1980s, “Maurice stepped in and
came to our rescue”, says Julia Marton-Lefèvre,
IUCN director-general. “He would make the
phone calls or get us a seat at the right table,”
she says. “Maurice had this ability to reach out
and grab world leaders by the arm, whether
they liked it or not,” says Jonathan Lash, presi-
dent of the World Resources Institute. “He used
his access and networks shamelessly for all of
us. Long before iPhones, the net and Twitter,
we had Maurice.”
At the start of the Rio conference, Strong had
insisted (and as usual got his way) on a private
meeting between himself, the UN secretary-
general and more than 100 heads of
government, without their minders
and attendants. In his address to them,
Strong said that the planet had only
one real chance, and that they stood
between success and failure.
Strong was wrong about the one
chance. The Rio climate treaty, and its
progeny, did not stop global warming,
and there is debate about whether they
have reduced the problem in any sub-
stantial way. But politics and the climate
have evolved since Strong urged lead-
ers towards action. The world has yet
another chance in Copenhagen and the
outcome depends largely on whether
countries have learned from their past
mistakes. ■
Ehsan Masood teaches international
science policy at Imperial College
London.
“There is no evidence
that governments
are ready for radical
thinking.”
— Maurice Strong
Maurice Strong (left, with former Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev) has been able to bring world leaders together.
J. PEREIRA/AP
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Vol 460|23 July 2009
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