Africa

The iconic blue whale looms over the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Peter Bridgewater and Rakhyun Kim
SHEFFIELD, UK / UTRECHT, The Netherlands, Sep 17 2025 (IPS)

Other articles in this series on clustering conventions that are addressed by the Triple Environmental Crisis of pollution (Stanley-Jones), biodiversity (Schally) and climate change (Azores) I have touched on the idea of clustering not only conventions but the science-policy bodies established separately to serve them. We address the question of the negative consequences of maintaining status quo and identify how “consolidating knowledge” might make a difference.

Azores notes the progressive evolution of environmental challenges and their governance from the 1972 Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, resulting in today’s institutional landscape – a complex web of multilateral agreements aiming to foster sustainable development, living in separate spaces with inefficient coordination mechanisms.

From 1945 onwards establishment of the UN and its specialised agencies including UNESCO and FAO, saw increased focus on the knowledge needed to address environmental issues. From its founding in 1974 UNEP also became increasingly active in this area.

UNESCO established a range of research agendas in biodiversity, earth sciences and water with a range of human-environment links, as did FAO for its areas of responsibility. This research pointed to the interconnected nature of global environmental challenges.

The links between climate adaptation, mitigation and biodiversity were identified in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (ipbes) “Nexus” assessment (ipbes 2024a).

Both Azores and Schally cite the successful clustering of the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm agreements demonstrating that formalised arrangements can enhance operational efficiencies, scientific coherence, and policy alignment.

They also suggest similar clustering of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the ipbes, and the nascent Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste, and Pollution (ISP-CWP) could similarly enhance better links between the knowledge – policy links in resolving the polycrisis of climate change, biodiversity and pollution.

Yet the question remains can such science-policy bodies be clustered easily, or is it preferable to seek ways to enable them to work more effectively?

The science-policy bodies.

Since its establishment in 1988, the IPCC has delivered six Assessment Reports at approximately seven-year intervals. Each of the reports is on climate change and approaches to mitigation and adaptation, yet with changing overall themes.

An independent science-led exercise on status and trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services funded by UNEP with support from UNESCO, UNCCD, the Ramsar Convention and a wide range of scientific support was launched in 2000. This Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was designed to help not only the CBD make more informed policy choices, but also influence all biodiversity-related Conventions, including UNCCCD.

But while it was always to be a “one-off”, the Millennium Assessment led to pressure for a “biodiversity counterpart to the IPCC”, resulting in an intergovernmental meeting that established ipbes in 2012.

Since its establishment, ipbes has developed in ways that are different from IPCC – producing a range of thematic, regional and global assessments on issues including; pollination, land degradation, regional and a global assessment on biodiversity and ecosystem services status and trends, sustainable use of wildlife, invasive species, and the values of nature.

Its most recent products are an assessment on how to achieve transformative change in managing the environment and an assessment of the nexus between climate change, biodiversity, human health, food and water. Crucially, it has embraced a range of knowledges beyond science.

The third Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel – on Chemicals, Waste, and Pollution (ISP-CWP) was officially established on June 20, 2025, by UNEA Resolution 5/8: The ISP-CWP Secretariat is Hosted by UNEP, with its first Plenary Expected in 2026.

After extensive negotiations, governments have agreed its role is to provide policy-relevant scientific advice to support sound management of chemicals and waste in the environment and to prevent chemical pollution and protect human health and ecosystems.

So, there are now three science-policy platforms dealing with apparently very different issues. Yet as the ipbes nexus report details there are multiple synergies between the topics covered, and the role for the ISP-CWP alludes to including ecosystems in its work.

The existence of a report from a workshop in 2021, sponsored by IPCC and ipbes, on biodiversity and climate suggested changes might be afoot, but thus far each silo remains resolutely separate.

How do the Science-policy bodies work?

The IPCC uses a rigorous, consensus-driven process where assessment drafts undergo multiple rounds of expert and government review to ensure accuracy and neutrality. In similar vein ipbes has drafts that are subject to a range of external reviews, culminating in the government- member plenary carefully reviewing the Summary for Policy Makers draft before approving it.

Both use a range of subsidiary bodies to manage technical and political issues. And both use scenarios and modelling in developing the assessments. Ipbes has had more emphasis on bringing a range of knowledges to bear in its assessments, and there is some evidence IPCC is embarking on a similar pathway.

It is not yet fully clear how ISP-CWP will operate, but it seems more focus will be on horizon scanning and links with the corporate world.

All three have a range of constraints: weak funding structures; the need to build capacity in the global south; the elaborate and frustrating approval processes; ensuring material is “confidential’ over the life of the assessment, which inhibits the flexibility needed in managing todays environmental pressures; managing data gaps; dealing with rapidly developing novel issues; balancing transparency while ensuring rigour; and avoiding capture by any particular sectoral voices.

Despite the activities of these global science-policy bodies, individual conventions have been producing “global outlooks”. The UNCCD has its own science-policy interface, with an unfortunate result that its first Global Land “outlook” was released at the same time as the ipbes assessment on Land degradation and restoration, a considerable duplication of effort.

The CBD has produced five Global Biodiversity Outlooks since 2001, the last in 2020. And the Ramsar convention has produced two Global Wetland Outlooks, one in 2018 and the most recent in 2025. A State of the World’s Migratory Species Assessment was published in February 2024 under the CMS.

While it could be argued that the more information available to inform policy development and implementation the better, this is not an evident result. Rather, production of the outlooks resembles “zombie activity” – producing material for its own sake, without reference to the wider global situation.

Do we need three separate Science-policy Bodies?

It can be argued that we already know which policies need implementation, yet many nations still argue strongly for the need to inform policy development through the best available knowledge. IPCC reports inform UNFCCC & its COPs, ipbes assessments inform CBD, and other biodiversity-relevant conventions, while ISP-CWP aims to support the “chemicals conventions” cluster and guide global regulation of chemicals and waste.

A major player is UNEP-GEO (Global Environment Outlook) that has been in operation since 1995. It has become more all-embracing in recent years and strives also to be a science-policy interface. Inevitably it covers some ground also covered by the IPCC, ipbes and the putative ISP-CWP.

GEO operates a more flexible approach, offering continuing assessment processes with regular reporting to provide updates on the changing environmental situation, the effectiveness of policy actions, and the policy pathways that can ensure a more sustainable future, with increasing focus on using a full range of knowledges.

How can this be made more efficient and this effective?

Clustering of the chemicals conventions was achieved relatively easily, resulting in considerable savings on efforts. Schally has alluded to the desirability of clustering the “ biodiversity regime” to replicate the practical synergies achieved in the chemicals and waste cluster – to avoid missed outcomes during a critical decade for nature. Should such clustering occur, there would be argument for greater synergy, if not fusion, between science-policy bodies.

Given the urgency of the polycrisis, time is of the essence, there are several possible ways co-operation between the bodies can be enhanced without full clustering. Such cooperation can lead to products that are policy-helpful, rather than simply policy-relevant, using, rejuvenating, and refining structures already agreed and in place, without damaging and time-consuming reorganisations. UNEP, through its GEO work, and with guidance from the UNEA, is certainly well placed to foster and manage such cooperative arrangements.

– Firstly, given the strength of links between Climate change, biodiversity, food water and human health demonstrated in the ipbes nexus report (ref), the biodiversity-related convention liaison group (BLG) should be strengthened by the addition of UNFCCC, UNCCD, FAO, WHO and UNESCO and meet regularly (at least 6 monthly) at secretariat level.

– Secondly, Chairs of the Scientific Advisory Bodies of the biodiversity-related conventions (CSAB) originally met as a sub-group of the BLG. However, CSAB met only five times before disbanding due to lack of resources, leaving coordination efforts solely to the secretariats. To ensure full co-ordination and buy-in from government, CSAB should be regenerated, and expanded to include the Chairs of the subsidiary bodies of UNFCCC, UNCCD, and the of the bureaux of IPCC, ipbes, ISP-CWP and GEO, with this group chaired by Deputy Executive Secretary of UNEP. This body should resolve overlaps and duplication and highlight crucial up-coming knowledge needs.

– Thirdly, continuous reporting should be adopted as the norm by all assessment bodies, with CSAB being the body that shapes the direction of assessments, with the concurrence of the plenaries of each organisation involved. GEO could supply horizon-scanning/Foresight to enable this work.

– Fourthly, the rationale for continued production of “outlooks” from conventions must be questioned, with efforts directed towards developing one key source of knowledge to assist policy development and implementation.

UN80 enables an opportunity of addressing how best science can support the Triple Environmental Crisis. Adopting these four strategies would decrease duplication, improve the quality and information in the assessment products, without upsetting the existing frameworks and systems that have been in place over a range of time periods.

This would allow also fusion and regrouping at a pace and direction that plenary members are comfortable with, without losing momentum. It can also help the UN system deliver transformative change as outlined in the ipbes Transformative change report (ipbes 2024b), and in the context of UN80.

Peter Bridgewater is an Associate Researcher at the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.; Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia; a former Director of the Division of Ecological Sciences in UNESCO; and Secretary General of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.

Rakhyun Kim is Associate Professor in Earth System Governance at the Copernicus Institute of Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

Ipbes 2024a Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on the Interlinkages among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13850289.

Ipbes 2024b Summary for Policymakers of the Thematic Assessment Report on the Underlying Causes of Biodiversity Loss and the Determinants of Transformative Change and Options for Achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11382230

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Harvey Dupiton
NEW YORK, Sep 17 2025 (IPS)

The recent IPS article, “UNGA’s High-Level Meetings: NGOs Banned Again,” served as a stark and painful reminder of a long-standing paradox: the United Nations, an organization founded on the principle of “We the Peoples,” often closes its doors to the very communities it was created to serve.

Yet, after sharing this article with our members, we were reminded of a powerful truth: in spite of these physical barriers, the NGO community is “better together” and remains a potent force capable of shaping the decisions of governments.

The ban, far from silencing us, has only amplified our resolve. As we speak, hundreds of NGOs are organizing side events outside the UN, participating with willing governments and continuing our vital work.

We are often told that access is restricted “for security.” IPS quotes voices across civil society who have heard that refrain for years. But the net effect is to marginalize the very partners the UN relies upon when crises break, when schools need rebuilding, when refugees need housing, when women and youth need pathways into the formal economy.

If the room is too small for the people, you don’t shrink the people—you build a bigger room.

This ban also speaks to the very heart of why our NGO Committee is so deeply involved in the 2025 UNGA Week (September 22-30) of International Affairs initiative. We are committed to expanding UNGA beyond the walls of the UN and into the vibrant communities of the Tri-State area and beyond.

Our goal is to transform this week into an “Olympic-caliber” platform where diplomacy connects directly with culture, community, and commerce.

As a private-sector committee of NGOs, we recognize we are sometimes perceived as being “on the side of governments” because we emphasize jobs, investment, and a strong economy. That has spared us some of the blowback that human rights and relief NGOs bear every September.

But proximity to government doesn’t mean complacency. Where we part ways with business-as-usual—both in some capitals and within parts of the UN system—is on the scale of joblessness that goes uncounted.

Official series routinely understate the lived reality in many communities. In Haiti and across segments of the LDC bloc, our coalition’s fieldwork and partner surveys suggest joblessness well above headline rates—often exceeding 60% when you strip away precarious, informal survivalism. If you don’t count people’s reality, you can’t credibly fix it.

That is why our 2025 agenda is jobs-first by design. Our Global Jobs & Skills Compact is not just a proposal; it is a declaration of our commitment to a jobs-first agenda, aligning governments, investors, DFIs, and diaspora capital around a simple test: does the money create decent work at scale—and are we measuring it?

We are mobilizing financing tied to verifiable employment outcomes, building skills pipelines for the green and digital transitions, and hard-wiring accountability into the process so that “promises” translate into paychecks.

Accountability also needs daylight. During the General Debate we will run a Jobs-First Debate Watch—tracking job and skills commitments announced from the podium and inviting follow-through across the year.

The point is not to “catch out” governments but to help them succeed by making the public a partner. Anyone who has walked with a loved one through recovery knows the first step is honesty. Denial doesn’t heal; measurement does. That is as true for addiction as it is for unemployment.

IPS rightly reminds us that NGOs are indispensable to multilateralism even when we are asked to wait outside. We agree—and we’ll add this: if the UN is “We the Peoples,” then UNGA Week must be where the peoples are.

In 2025, that means inside the Hall and across the city—on campus quads and church aisles, in galleries and small businesses, at parks and public squares. We’ll keep inviting governments to walk that route with us, shoulder to shoulder.

Until every door is open, we will keep building bigger rooms. And we will keep filling them—with jobs, skills, investment, and the voices that make multilateralism real.

Harvey Dupiton is a former UN Press Correspondent and currently Chair of the NGO Committee on Private Sector Development (NGOCPSD).

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Uniformed marines hand over UN and Turkmenistan flags to UN special representative on LLCDs Rabab Fatima and Turkmenistan's Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov during a flag lowering ceremony in Awaza. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

By Kizito Makoye
AWAZA, Turkmenistan , Sep 16 2025 (IPS)

The theater of diplomacy can be more revealing than the speeches. Under a scorching Caspian sun in Awaza, two marines lowered their flags with the precision of a ballet. The green silk of Turkmenistan, folded into a neat bundle before the UN’s blue-and-gold standard, fluttered briefly and vanished into waiting hands.

Delegates squinted in the glare. A security guard, drained after days of marathon negotiations, whispered, “We made it.” The applause that followed carried an implicit bet that geography would no longer condemn 32 landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) to economic stagnation.

“This is not the end,” Rabab Fatima, the UN’s top envoy for LLDCs, told the assembled diplomats. “It is the beginning of a new chapter for the LLDCs. LLDCs may be landlocked, but they are not opportunity-locked.”

Her words capped four days of bargaining that produced the Awaza Political Declaration and a ten-year Programme of Action—promising structural economic transformation, regional integration, resilient infrastructure, climate adaptation, and the mobilization of financing partnerships. But whether these ambitions become asphalt, fiber-optic cable, and trade corridors depends on what happens next—starting with the LLDC Ministerial meeting on September 26, on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly.

“For the first time, we have a programme of action for the LLDCs, which includes a dedicated priority area on climate action and disaster resilience,” Fatima said. “As we all know, digital technology is reshaping how the world learns, trades, governs and innovates. The Awaza Programme of Action puts digital transformation at its core through investment in science, technology and affordable infrastructure for e-learning, e-governance and e-commerce.”

The geography tax

Being landlocked remains one of development’s oldest handicaps. More than 600 million people live in LLDCs. Their exports must cross at least one international border—and often several—before reaching a port. Transport costs can be twice as high as those of coastal economies, eroding profit margins and discouraging investment.

Dean Mulozi, a delegate from Zambia, put it bluntly: “It’s not just that we’re far from the sea. It’s that the world’s arteries don’t reach us easily. We are always waiting—for fuel, fiber-optic cable, containers, investment.”

The Declaration seeks to unblock those arteries: freer transit, harmonized customs, integrated transport corridors, and digital transformation—policies designed to cut border delays, lower costs, and attract investors. For countries such as Rwanda and Burundi, this is not rhetoric. Rwandan coffee growers lose profits as trucks crawl over narrow mountain roads toward Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam port. Burundian tea producers navigate customs regimes that can turn a week’s delay into financial ruin.

Ambition Versus Reality

The Awaza Programme includes a proposed Infrastructure Investment Finance Facility, with a headline USD 10 billion commitment from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. In theory, this could carve reliable corridors linking East Africa’s heartlands to the African Continental Free Trade Area. In practice, similar pledges have evaporated in the past when political will or money ran dry.

Five priorities dominate the blueprint: doubling manufacturing output and services exports; deepening trade integration; building transport links; embedding climate resilience; and mobilizing partnerships with development banks and private investors. Fatima called it “a blueprint for action, not just words,” but the distance between the two is long.

Rwanda and Burundi: Land-Linked Potential

Consider Rwanda, which has embraced digital innovation and ranks among Africa’s top reformers in business climate. Yet moving a container from Kigali to Dar es Salaam costs more than shipping it from Dar es Salaam to Shanghai. Blockchain pilots between Rwanda and Uganda have already reduced border clearance times by 80 percent, but scaling such reforms requires regional cooperation—the very essence of Awaza’s call for “land-linked” thinking.

Burundi faces even starker challenges. Political instability has disrupted transit agreements with neighbors. Poor road maintenance and limited rail options mean Burundian manufacturers pay a hidden geography tax on every exported item. A coordinated East African transport corridor—funded under Awaza’s financing facility—could halve transit times and cut spoilage for perishable goods.

Testing the Promise Divine

The first test comes on September 26, when ministers meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. They are expected to name national coordinators, align budgets, and press for LLDC concerns at COP30 and UNCTAD XVI. As Turkmenistan’s foreign minister, Rashid Meredov, warned, the network of coordinators will make or break implementation.

The Climate Conundrum

LLDCs are among the most exposed to climate shocks: droughts paralyze Sahelian farmers, cyclones sever southern Africa’s trade routes, and glacial melt threatens Central Asia’s water supplies. Rwanda and Burundi, reliant on rain-fed crops, can see a single flood wipe out a season’s earnings. Awaza’s plan for an LLDC Climate Negotiating Group aims to amplify their voice at global talks. Shared hydropower grids and renewable energy corridors, if built, could stabilize supply chains and keep factories running.

Digital Detours

Physical infrastructure is not the only hurdle. Maria Fernanda, a Bolivian tech entrepreneur, captured the digital struggle: “Sometimes it feels like the internet is slower here because it has to climb mountains like we do.” Fiber-optic networks and regional data hubs—central to the Awaza agenda—could level the digital playing field. Rwanda’s ambition to be East Africa’s data hub and Burundi’s expansion of mobile banking are previews of what “land-linked” economies could look like.

The Politics of Pipelines

Awaza was also about geopolitics. Turkmenistan used its role as host to burnish its neutrality and to tout hydrogen energy schemes, circular economy frameworks, and Caspian environmental projects. Landlocked development, it signaled, is not merely a technical problem but a diplomatic one. Transit states and inland economies must cooperate, not compete, over corridors and pipelines.

As one UN development official observed, “Land-linked flips the narrative: inland countries become bridges, not barriers. With AfCFTA, LLDCs can turn geography into a competitive edge—moving goods, services, and data faster and more affordably across Africa and beyond.”

Bringing Civil Society and Youth to the Table

One innovation at LLDC3 was the deliberate inclusion of youth and grassroots activists “not outside the halls, but right here in the meeting rooms.” This multistakeholder approach could ensure that local voices—such as Rwandan farmers’ cooperatives or Burundian women traders—shape the policies affecting them. But inclusion must be sustained beyond Awaza’s photo ops.

From Awaza to Action

The Ministerial meeting will likely spotlight three urgent tasks:

Operationalizing the Finance Facility—Without timely disbursements, promised corridors and digital highways will remain on paper.

Integrating LLDC Priorities into Global Agendas—Ensuring COP30 and UNCTAD XVI address LLDC vulnerabilities.

Ensuring Accountability and Transparency—Regular progress reports, perhaps modeled on climate COP stocktakes, could keep momentum alive.

Fatima’s closing words resonate: “Let us make the promise of ‘land-linked’ not only a phrase but a new way of life.”

A Fragile Opportunity

For Mazhar Amanbek, the Kazakh trucker whose apples rot at customs, and for Burkinabe grain shipper Mohamad Oumar, Awaza’s words must become tarmac and telecoms. For Rwandan cooperatives betting on premium coffee exports, or Burundian entrepreneurs seeking markets beyond their borders, the declaration could mean the difference between subsistence and prosperity.

The UN will be pressed to broker the deals and financing that can make LLDCs competitive. These inland nations are not short of resources or ambition—minerals, fertile soils, and human talent abound. The challenge is converting potential into prosperity.

As the blue UN flag was folded under the Caspian sky, the marines’ boots clicked on the promenade, and the heat bent the air into shimmering waves. Awaza’s delegates boarded planes carrying a slender sheaf of paper with an outsized ambition: to turn geography’s oldest curse into an engine of shared growth.

The world’s attention will now shift to New York, where LLDC ministers must prove Awaza was not a mirage. If they seize the moment, the next decade could see East African trucks rolling on new highways, fiber cables humming under deserts, and landlocked nations from Bolivia to Burundi trading on equal terms. If not, the folded flags of Awaza will join the archive of fine promises that melted under a scorching sun.

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