Spotlight
Connecting Generations of Environmental Leadership: Global Environmental Governance Forum Takes Place in Switzerland
1st July, 2009
The Global Environmental Governance Forum: Reflecting on the Past, Moving into the Future organized by the Global Environmental Governance (GEG) Project, a joint initiative of the College of William and Mary and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy is taking place now in Glion, Switzerland. The Forum brings together the architects of the international environmental institutions and subsequent generations of environmental leaders with three objectives: 1) inspire and foster renewed environmental leadership; 2) inject new vigor and innovative concepts into the current debate on international environmental governance reform; and 3) generate options for reform drawing on the collective knowledge of environmental leaders from several generations.
Key participants at the Global Environmental Governance Forum include all five executive directors of UNEP: Maurice Strong (1973-1975), Mostafa Tolba (1976-1992), Elizabeth Dowdeswell (1993-1997), Klaus Töpfer (1998-2006) and Achim Steiner (2007-present), as well as Bill Ruckleshaus, the first and fifth US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Yolanda Kakabadse, the former president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and founder of Fundación Futuro Latinamericano and Julia Marton-Lefèvre, the Director General of IUCN. Also present are representatives of the governments of Germany, Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines, Switzerland, Sudan, and the United States. In total, seventy four environmental leaders will participate in the conference from at least fifteen countries, representing business, industry, academia, government and international organizations.
The first two days of the Forum focus on ‘Learning Across Generations.' Through panel sessions and structured small-group discussion, participants are identifying lessons from the first forty years of global environmental governance. A highlight of the Forum is the Executive Directors' panel that took place yesterday, when, for the first time in history, all of the former Executive Directors and the current Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) were in one room, on one panel. The Executive Directors discussed the topic Where should UNEP be beyond 2012 and how can we get there? in a session moderated by Gus Speth, former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The panel was filmed by DEV TV, a television production company specializing in environment, development and humanitarian affairs, and will be distributed to media outlets around the world.
The last two days will focus on ‘Enhancing Future Leadership for Action and Reform.' In this phase, Emerging Leaders selected through a competitive application process will reflect on the lessons learned from discussions with the founding generation in the first phase of the Forum, and outline concrete commitments that each can take in the next two years in order to contribute to GEG reform. After the conference, emerging leaders are expected to work as part of an environmental governance network to further the GEG dialogue.
More information about the Global Environmental Governance Forum can be found on the GEG Project website. Visitors to the website can also watch The Quest for Symphony, a fifteen minute original documentary on the past, present and future of international environmental governance produced by Maria Ivanova and Joe Ageyo for the GEG Forum.