The United Nations is facing a budget crisis. The culprit? Perennial delays in Member States paying their dues, exacerbated by slashed aid from the United States. This poses a serious risk to the functioning of one of the most important institutions of our international system.
According to a leaked internal memo, UN Secretary General António Guterres is reportedly considering responding to the crisis with a number of measures designed to cut costs and improve the efficiency of the UN. These purportedly include consolidating UN functions under four broad themes, with work on climate change to sit under a ‘sustainable development’ pillar. To do this, the memo proposes effectively integrating the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) into the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), based in Nairobi, and moving away from the operation of global climate meetings in their current form.
The current crisis—avoidable if Member States paid their dues—presents an opportunity to consider how reshaping the UN can make it fit for purpose for the 21st century. Mired as it has been for years in reform process and various attempts to bring about systemic change, such as through Our Common Agenda, the UN 2.0 initiative, and the Pact for the Future, it seems the UN has reached a point where reform is its only path to survival.
For the international climate regime, this moment represents a particular opportunity to reflect on what changes are needed to move from incremental progress to the transformational levels of action needed to address the climate crisis.
There are many things that could be done to reform and improve the UNFCCC process. It is essential that synergies between climate action and development are leveraged to maximum effect. But this needs to be done in a considered and thoughtful way: the UN climate regime needs a radical evolution, not a revolution that risks undermining momentum and losing the progress that has been made since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015.
Lessons from past efforts to reform the UN that have focused on improving effectiveness, transparency, and representation need to be learned, including in relation to the Security Council, General Assembly, peace and security architecture, human rights, and the development system. Some of these initiatives had partial success, but not nearly enough compared to what is needed, hampered by lack of support from Member States. The hope is that the urgency of the current crisis means that reform proposals will have a greater chance of succeeding.
The Way Forward
Going forward, locating climate action under a new sustainable development pillar of the UN could make sense. Rather than integrating the UNFCCC into UNEP, serious thought should be given to whether the UN Development Programme (UNDP) would be an effective partner, including by taking on the implementation of outcomes and commitments emanating from the UNFCCC. This would have a double positive impact: (i) it could leverage the UNDP’s role—endorsed by the UN Secretary General—to support countries in developing and implementing NDCs through the outstanding work of the Climate Promise; and (ii) it would show clear institutional commitment to delivering on what the UN has long been saying that climate action and sustainable development are the same thing. It would also breathe new life into the Sustainable Development Goal process and the 2030 Agenda.
Such an arrangement would allow the UNFCCC Secretariat to use its relatively small budget to focus on its core functions. At the same time, a partnership with UNDP would provide a solid framework for the increasingly important action agenda to be more mainstreamed within the UN system and used to maximum effect to deliver implementation.
Whichever path forward is chosen for the UNFCCC, it is vital to maintain its independence to deliver its core functions.
As to the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) process itself, it is clear that there is a need for reform. If left unchanged, the process risks irrelevance or collapsing under its own weight—while participation at climate meetings have grown significantly (together with the cost of hosting them), the messages emanating from them are struggling to cut through. It is important, however, to recognize that the UN Secretary General exercises no direct legal authority on the COP process or how it functions. The COP is the supreme authority of the UNFCCC process, and so the Parties are effectively in charge.
In a decision-making process that requires consensus, change will be difficult and real reform could take some time. But there are things that could be done now. The current Troika of COP Presidencies could play an important part in this, and the incoming COP30 Presidency has made its perspective clear: the international climate regime needs to change.
At the Petersberg Climate Dialogue earlier this year, ministers from around the world were clear in their commitment to the multilateral process in general to solve common global problems, and, in particular, that COP30 must send a strong signal in that regard in relation to climate action. Countries must now turn that rhetoric into action by paying what they owe to the UN, supporting the UN Secretary General to seize the opportunity of this unwelcome crisis, and bringing about essential reform.