Environment and the role of emerging countries

Those new emerging countries represent an important part on the chessboard of international relationship even if they are no homogenous group. Their situations, their problems, and their challenges are often different. However, countries such as Brazil, India or China, are, because of their economic and demographic importance, a genuine challenge for the world governance. The emergence of those countries, whether it be on the diplomatic, economic or commercial scene, leads to a upheaval of the game of multilateral relationships. Those countries are described as developing countries by the international community, and thus liven up the traditional frame of multilateral relationships between developed countries, in particular amidst the international institutions (UN, WTO, IMF). The growing involvement of those emerging countries among those organisations now constitutes an unavoidable reality that the industrialized countries are to handle.
This new situation concerns all domains, influences all the issues that have been the core of international relationships for several year, and most precisely the environmental issues.

To illustrate my point, I will evoke three sites that pinpoint the more and more preponderant role of the emerging countries in this process of restoration of the world governance in the environmental domain : the climatic change, the project of an international environmental governance, and, eventually, the rewriting of the rules of international Trade.

As you all know, the 13th conference of the parties of the Climate Convention and the third meeting of the parties of the Kyoto protocol were held in December 2007 in Bali. The main issue of that conference was to boost negotiations about the reinforcement of the climate regime after 2012. Since the Conference of the parties of Nairobi of 2006, encouraging improvements have been made, but they are still too limited.

There are two reasons that can help explaining this restraint. First of all, one element which is highly linked to the still resentful position of the American administration. But a second element, perhaps not as well known, but as important, is linked to the resentment of emerging countries to undergo new constraints because of the climatic change within the frame of a multilateral regime. Of course, their position about the climatic change issue, and more precisely on the post 2012 future of the Kyoto protocol still remains heterogeneous. Strong divergences of appreciation remain between countries such as South Africa or Mexico who seems to be open, and countries such as China and India the priority of which is obviously their economic growth, added to that they don't want to bear the burden of the historical
responsibility of the climate dissoluteness in industrialized countries. Moreover, they resent the very idea of committing to the constraint of a multilateral regime that would lead to a redcing of their gas effluence entailing greenhouse effect.

In this context, the biggest industrialized countries along with new emerging countries don't have the choice and must find common responsible grounds. If they don't unite to deal with common objectives, they won't clearly get involved in a process of negotiation, and all the post Kyoto area will thus be questioned. It is compulsory that a dialogue is established between industrialized and emerging countries about the solutions to prevent climatic dissoluteness from growing bigger.
In the very handling of this process, industrialized countries, and most precisely the UN, ought to accept their responsibility and to bring concrete answers to the expectancies of emerging countries, whether it be on the issues of technology transfers, on the putting into place and the reinforcement of relevant tools and policies, and on deforestation. Only the development of new incentive tools, for those new emerging countries that are still able to save their environmental capital, will answer their expectancies.

France will be part of the creation of a necessary consensus in order to find reliable and bearable solutions for emerging countries. She aims at bringing all its contribution, with the support of the members of the EU, during the conference of Poznan that will be held under the Presidency of the EU in December 2008 to commit in a constructive way the
emerging countries to the creation of a new post Kyoto regime.

The second site in which emerging countries are to play a determining role is the one of the rewriting of and Environmental International Governance (EIG). France has already been working for several years on the reinforcement and the improvement of an international environmental governance. The project of an international environmental organization, within the UN system, shows it well. This project, which is supported by the EU, aims at creating a global environmental organization within the UN that would be built on the basis of the current PNUE. Its objective is to reinforce the capacities of development of those
countries and to help creating a more coherent international environmental action. In respect to that, a better international environmental governance is of course appealing to emerging countries, as soon as its target is to support those countries in the constructions of their own
national development policies.
Obviously, the definition of a new international environmental governance that could see the light of day as a UNE still raises many questions within industrialized countries like the US or Russia. Moreover, emerging countries see in that very project a possible restraint to their development. However, those positions are not definitive, and the latest meetings dedicated to this issue show that spirits are evolving. If India and Brazil previously resented this principle, other emerging countries such as South Africa or Pakistan are now being a lot more open on the debate over the content of such a GEI.

The meeting of Rio, which was organized by Brazil and South Africa in September 2007 with the main agents of international environmental governance and sustainable development clearly showed that emerging countries were willing to commit to the rewriting of a new environmental governance. It is obvious that in the years to come, a strong new environmental body, within the UN, will only be made possible with the support of the emerging countries that are the main actors of the environmental issues that are about to emerge.

A third site in which emerging countries are to play a more and more important role within a world governance deals with the definition of new rules in the domain of international trade. It is true that the WTO, as a specialized international organization, doesn’t pretend to directly deal with environmental issues. This said, commercial and environmental policies ought not to be defined in separate ways. To prove that,environment is inherent to the work planning of the WTO and it constitutes a major component of the cycle of negotiations of Doha. The "trade and environment" relationship is thus fully apart of the general frame of the international environmental governance, as it deals with making commercial and
environmental issues more coherent in order to deal with the environmental problems in a global perspective, whether it be as regards the diminishing of the biological diversity or
climatic change.

Everyone knows that the Program in favour in development that was launched in 2001 in Doha aimed at contributing to the reestablishment of the balance of the World trade system in favour of countries in development. In that perspective, emerging countries as important as Brazil, China or India intend to play a central part in the bringing into play of that Program of Development.

The influence of those countries in the cycle of negotiations is very important as they represent the areas where the quickest economy growths in the world are. Obviously, it is in their interest to get to a multilateral agreement within the WTO in order to make the market of the whole wide world more open, as regards goods and services. A primary international
commercial and political issue is here at stake, and emerging countries intend to push down on it with all their weight.