Role of Global Partnerships in Environmental Sustainability

Sustainable management of ecosystems is increasingly recognised as essential for combating climate change, underpinning progress towards a green economy. It focuses on sustaining ecosystems to meet both ecological and human needs, and integrating social, environmental and economic perspectives to manage geographically defined natural ecological systems. The ongoing process of economic globalization and economic growth demands strong and sustainable environmental globalization. The intellectual as well as political world has realised that the environmental concerns need a holistic view. The decisions and activities of one nation could have a serious impact on the environment of the other nations. This demands systematically strategized efforts to assess ecological significance of economic activities and economic growth on the natural resources of the world as a whole. This makes global partnership imperative for environmental sustainability.

Critical environmental issues like climate change, ozone layer depletion, global warming, soil erosion, excessive use of non-renewable energy, controlling carbon dioxide emission, maintaining the bio-diversity etc. are global issues that could be resolved only through global partnerships. Resolution of these critical issues requires cooperation between large portions of international community. The entire concept of global partnership has to be premised on a need to reconceptualise the ecological management regimes, reconnect with stakeholders of the world environment.

United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) acts as a global platform to address issues related to environment. It has identified six priority areas for its focus as the environmental challenge of 21^st century. These are climate change, disasters and conflicts, ecosystem management, environmental governance, harmful substances, resource efficiency and other key thematic environmental areas. The UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is the leading body for the assessment of climate change that provides the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences.

Despite the presence of UNEP and numerous other organisations for global coordination on climate change, there is a striking difference of opinion on the implementation policies among the developed and the developing nations. There is a need of global leadership with commitment and competence to tackle the entangled issues of sustainable environment. Only a strong global leadership which can think globally and can act locally addressing the local issues of each nation on the basis of its socio-cultural structure could bring the entire world on a common platform. A good world leader can root the environmental diplomacy on the edifice of good governance rather than on the principles of business transactions. It is expected that a developed country would play this leadership role.

In principle countries across the world agree the dire need of controlling the disastrous and detrimental consequences of climate change. However, the developed and the developing countries find it very difficult to arrive at a consensus on the cap of carbon emissions. In per capita carbon emission, the developing countries are still much lower than the developed ones. They believe that big reduction in their emission will severely affect their growth momentum. Additionally these countries do not have ample facilities and infrastructure for the use of clean technology. They expect economic cooperation from the developed countries on building sustainable, clean and environment friendly technologies. On the other hand, the developed nations are in favour of reduction of emission by all countries despite the difference in their per capita emission. In the process one group has started visualising the other as an environmental fundamentalist.

Despite the differences, global partnership is inevitable to combat the challenge of sustainable environment. Each country needs to recognise its responsibilities by way of mitigation and adaptation. Mutually agreed global sustainable environment agenda, meaningful cooperation and commitment and compliance to the international agreements among the global partners could address the crucial issues of environment. At present many countries are willing to make environmental sustainability more effective by ensuring use of clean, sustainable technologies. Global partnership that respects the doctrine of interdependencies through commitment to common goal and compliance to international agreements on environmental issues would help to achieve the goal.