Launch of the book Environmental Lobbying at the United Nations

IISD/ENB - Kiara Worth

You can watch the book launch on the UN Publications Facebook page here. 

Felix Dodds - comments at the book launch. (copies still available at the UN Bookshop)

I have had the pleasure of working with member states, UN staff and stakeholders on many of the critical issues that have challenged us since the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. Over the years, I have accumulated a set of knowledge on how to advance policy both in positive times and in difficult times, such as the ones we live in now.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Winston Churchill’s famous maxim feels very relevant today, when multilateralism and many environmental causes seem to be in retreat. We now face a triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

Yet, the existing international environmental agreements and science bodies are not addressing these interconnected crises as effectively as they could. Can we turn the current situation into an opportunity for positive change and progress?

IISD/ENB - Kiara Worth

The idea for this book originated from mine and Chris’s concern that we needed a stronger, better-equipped stakeholder movement to both contribute to protecting the gains in multilateralism we have made, such as the Paris Climate Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals, and also to identify better where we can work together to create the next step toward a more sustainable, fair, and equitable planet.

Understanding the past helps to be effective in the future this is why I did the books  Only One Earth with Maurice Strong and Michael Stauss, From Rio +20 to the New Development Agenda with Ambassador Liz Thompson and Jorge Laguna, Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals with Ambassador David Donoghue, Jimena Leiva Roesch and most recently Champions of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage with Chris These we hope give you insights into how success can be built and what it looks like.

This book is more of a how-to-do book – some tricks of the trade that we have learnt over the years.

A significant amount of money is wasted by stakeholders sending unprepared staff to multilateral meetings. All of us in this room today will recall our personal experiences of attending our first UN meeting. Could you have been better prepared? 

I wanted to briefly focus on a few of the chapters.

As a stakeholder lobbyist, you need to understand why you are attending the meeting – we have a chapter going through the different reasons.

I believe there is too much conference tourism. If you don’t need to go without a clear idea of what you will achieve, then don’t go.

For example, I am not attending COP30 – not because COP30 isn’t essential, it is, but because I am not involved in a negotiation relevant to my current work. I did attend the preparatory meeting in Bonn in June because I am working with a client on an issue that we are preparing for future negotiations.

Our book discusses the following four areas for attending a UN meeting:

1. 1.      Setting agendas
2. 2.      Negotiating outcomes
3. 3.      Conferring Legitimacy
4. 4.      Implementing Solutions

It includes case studies for each of these to provide further insights.

The book also includes chapters on preparing for a meeting and what to do during the meeting, depending on the stage of negotiations.

We have a chapter on what it is like to be a government representative. It’s vital to understand what pressures they are under and what you can do to help them and advance the issue you are campaigning on. Also, remember that they are civil servants working to deliver the objectives of the political party in power. They may agree with you, and there may be a different government in power next year. So even if you can't advance your issue this year, you should always treat them positively and professionally.

Chris and I will be runningtraining courses on the book for interested organisations in the autumn, so letus know if you are interested.

Chris and I are strong supporters of multilateralism.

We live in perilous times, but we can't just support the status quo.

We must look for ways to strengthen the institutions that we have.

This week, Chris and I co-authored an article for Inter Press Service on how to strengthen the environment as we face the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, chemicals, and waste.

Our solution is to continue the work started by UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toeper and continued by his successor Achim Steiner on clustering the environmental conventions. This approach needs to be at the centre of our work on addressing the triple planetary crisis again.

 As the great Journalist Walter Lipman said in 1955, “If right or wrong depends on what people feel, then we are outside the bounds of civilization.” 

The challenges we face in the coming years, as we approach 2030, will define how sustainable, fair, and just a world we leave to the next generation. We need to reclaim science to underpin political decisions.

We hope our book will provide this generation with some of the tools and approaches that can help them address these challenges.

IISD/ENB - Kiara Worth