Celebrating 50 years of global environmental movement

Opinion
Saleemul Huq
The global environmental movement started in 1972, with the first global environment conference held in Stockholm, Sweden, hosted by then Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. Among the heads of governments who also attended was the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who famously declared that environment and poverty were two major global issues that needed to be tackled together.
Since that watershed event, the United Nations set up the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and different environmental treaties such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), and UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) have been enforced, which are moving forward with their respective annual conferences of parties (COPs).
To commemorate the event, the Government of Sweden, together with the Government of Kenya and UNEP, held Stockholm+50 in Stockholm last week, with participants from around the world to take stock of the environmental movement and plan the next phase.
I had the privilege of attending the event, and will share some of my reflections on both the event and what needs to happen next.
The two-day event started with a high-level opening session, where the heads of governments of Sweden and Kenya as well as the UN secretary-general and the head of UNEP all spoke, followed by plenary sessions for ministers from many countries, including Bangladesh Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen.
However, the most interesting sessions were the many side events where different groups such as scientists, women, youth, farmers, indigenous groups, businesses, and many others, were invited to share their work and views about the future.
The main theme of the overall conference was to reconnect the different strands of the original environmental movement, which has become divided over the last 50 years, as well as to galvanise actions at a faster pace involving all stakeholders, rather than just governments.
I had the opportunity to share my reflections at the concluding session of the conference and said the following While there is much to celebrate in terms of having raised global awareness of the importance of the environment over the last 50 years, as well as some progress on different aspects such as climate change, biodiversity and pollution control, the progress has been too little, too late, and hence we needed to change our approach going forward.
The first task is to stop relying on government leaders to come to global events once a year and make promises and then go home and fail to implement their own promises. This has clearly failed as a process. Hence, there is a need to have other global stakeholders involved in such meetings and in implementing the decisions once they are approved. This includes the private sector as well as civil society networks and groups.
The second new element that needs to happen is to make the youth more prominent in the decision-making process, and even the implementation, and not just in advocacy as they are now. Young people around the world have already
demonstrated their capabilities to take actions and support environmental causes locally as well as globally. I suggested that we turn the annual pre-COP of the UNFCCC into a Youth COP as well as an “Accountability COP” henceforth. This was in fact done quite successfully by Italy, who hosted the pre-COP26 in Milan last year before the main COP26 in Glasgow in November.
The upcoming pre-COP27 will be hosted by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in Kinshasa prior to COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt this year. This could be an opportunity to make it into a youth COP again.
Finally, the biggest shift we need to achieve is in the consciousness of every person in the world, where they start to think of themselves as the citizens of Planet Earth first, before thinking of themselves as the citizens of their countries and cities. This means that each and every one of us need to do whatever we can as conscious citizens to preserve our environment, while also looking after our own development and well-being. This is possible to do, but will require a major paradigm shift in our thinking and commitment starting from the individual level upwards.
It is important that we solve these problems in the next 50 years, or the future will be unthinkable for our children and grandchildren in the coming decades.

Dr Saleemul Huq is director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB).

Article originally published on The Daily Star                     Image courtesy: Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP

Related News

Will our universities survive in 25 years?

Views Syed Saad Andaleeb Quality education is the backbone of a wholesome and prosperous society. But finding the “quality” in quality education continues to be elusive in Bangladesh. The “so called” universities (more like community colleges) are rife with social, economic, political and ideological problems that work against building learning organisations. Teachers, the kingpins, don ... Read more

Can teachers be the pivot of change in education?

Views Manzoor Ahmed “No system of education can be better than its teachers” is an aphorism that remains meaningful. The nostalgic and idealised image of the teacher as a scholar, dispensing knowledge and wisdom to the young selflessly, who lives a simple life with little concern for material rewards and who is looked upon by ... Read more

Climate loss and damage are clearly visible in southwest Bangladesh

Views Ashish Barua, Sawkat Chowdhury The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) by Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that the sea level, over the last 120 years, has increased by 0.20 metres, and continues rising fast, caused by thermal expansion, glacier ice loss, ice sheet loss, etc. The sea level ... Read more

How can Dhaka solve its traffic problem?

Views Debra Efroymson If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that “traffic was particularly bad today,” I could have retired already. Over the years, people have hazarded various suggestions as to the cause of the terrible Dhaka traffic and its potential solutions. Causes include: not enough roads for all the cars; poor ... Read more

Saving earth from disasters

Opinion By Md Zillur Rahaman TODAY is World Earth Day. The day is celebrated worldwide each year to show support for the protection of the environment. It was first observed in 1970 and is now held globally by the Earth Day Network. The UN-sponsored conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from June 3 to June 14, ... Read more

Women for women

Opinion Faria Rashid PATRIARCHAL societies like to deceive women into thinking that women cannot get along, work together and stand in support of one another. Given the patriarchal history of society, it has mostly worked to keep women in their places and apart from each other. This is why we hear so much about women ... Read more

CSR and a new order of business

From being seen as mere philanthropy and ‘doing good’, corporate social responsibility is now at the heart of business sustainability and ethical and accountable corporate behaviour Bitopi Das Chowdhury CSR or corporate social responsibility has been a buzz phrase for quite some time now. Not a day goes by without it being mentioned, albeit in ... Read more

Harmful impacts of cartels on consumers

Munshi Abdul Ahad A cartel is an anti-competitive arrangement between two or more competing businesses. Anticompetitive agreements, particularly cartels, harm consumers in urbanised society, as well as in the emerging countries. In adding together, cartelised industrial sectors lack competition which certainly reduces competitiveness in the long run and may have a negative impact on the ... Read more

How to troubleshoot the economy

Sadiq Ahmed Bangladesh is facing serious macroeconomic challenges and I have written a lot explaining them in a series of articles published in The Daily Star and in The Financial Express. In this new article I am going to write specifically about how Bangladesh could address those challenges while also mobilising substantial external financing in ... Read more

Jute bag prospects in global arena

Md Rashedul Karim Munna Global consumer demand for eco-friendly products has increased in both developed markets (such as Western Europe, the United States and Australasia) as well as new markets with emerging opportunities (such as the Middle East) mainly because of heightened awareness of the ill effects of environmental pollution and global warming. Large chain ... Read more

Safeguarding citizen’s money

Sadiq Ahmed Banking is an entirely different ball game. When a licence is given to a bank to manage citizen’s money, the government is taking on a huge responsibility. By granting the licence, it is essentially certifying that it has confidence in the enterprise and trusts that the enterprise will safeguard the citizen’s money it ... Read more

Women entrepreneurship and our commitment

Tarique Afzal for The Daily Star “Entrepreneur” is a French word that means “undertake”. Women entrepreneurship is inherent as they are naturally endowed with the qualities of entrepreneurship. Instincts of a woman generate enormous strength and determination that drive the fear away from them. Entrepreneurship for a woman remains an innate quality and thus is ... Read more

Managing macroeconomy

Sadiq Ahmed for The Daily Star Bangladesh has achieved good economic performance over the past few years. It has successfully managed the transition from the global financial crisis of 2008-10 with relatively modest slowdown in economic activity. Economic growth has recovered and official data suggest that growth is on the upswing. While there is some ... Read more

Organisational culture

Mamun Rashid From an academic perspective, we can look at the way Edgar Schein, a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, defines organisational culture as ‘a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well ... Read more

The organisational machine

Sarwar Ahmed What is an organisation? As you reach for Wikipedia in today’s digital world, you have access to a whole repertory of knowledge for free. An organisation is a social arrangement that pursues collective goals, controls its own performance, and has a boundary separating it from its environment. An organisation consists of people who ... Read more

Women and workplace dilemma

Mamun Rashid I recently wrote a piece for The Daily Star business section on our lady colleagues. As usual, I received a few e-mails and phone calls. One of them was from a younger friend of mine, working for a regional conglomerate. He thought I did not do enough justice to the male colleagues, while ... Read more

A great leap in training

Mahmudur Rahman Technical and vocational education and training has come a long way. Once the mere acquiring of basic skills was considered enough to address the demand for technical expertise. Times and demands have changed. But in an age when emphasis is placed on technical competencies, especially in blue-collar jobs, Bangladesh faces a challenge. Parents, ... Read more

The black swan

Sarwar Ahmed It was a chilly April morning when Fakhruzaman, my Bangladeshi colleague who works for Syngenta in Europe, drove me for a sightseeing tour through the idyllic English countryside near Cambridge. We stopped over for some tea and muffins in a restaurant next to a small river. White swans floated on the cold water ... Read more

Chindia policy to boost domestic trade

Chindia policy to boost domestic trade Kingshuk Nag When the G7 was formed in 1976 as a major economic and political group of the seven largest industrialised nations, not even the optimistic of soothsayers would have predicted that 23 years later in Pittsburg, USA, the G20 would dethrone G8 as the primary council of wealthy ... Read more

Emotionally yours

Sarwar Ahmed Late at night, my mobile phone beeped with an SMS alert. I was startled and then enthused by the content: Sorry, my mom was around. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Please don’t get mad at me. Love you too. Poor thing. She must have been in a hurry to send this text and ... Read more