Plenary I: Global governance and policy coherence for sustainable development: The challenge of Policy Coherence among International Organisations

Climate change and other environmental challenges affect all countries, whether developed or developing, but poorer countries and the poor in all countries will be the most affected as they have less resources to protect themselves against those new risks. The need for collective action is becoming more pressing by the day in order to ensure a development path that is environmentally and socially sustainable. In the absence of a global government, the responsibility for producing/protecting global public goods lies with national governments. But countries have diverse and often conflicting immediate interests. The need for global governance to meet the multiple challenges of sustainable development is becoming more acute in the increasingly interconnected world of today. International institutions within and outside the United Nations system have an important role to play in helping set the agenda for collective action and encouraging national governments to contribute a fair share to the common goals. But the goal of sustainable development does not only require coordinated action by governments and citizens, it also requires coherence in the elaboration and the implementation of policies among the different issue areas involved. Agenda 21 requests, in particular, that all relevant agencies, organizations and programmes of the United Nations contribute in their field of competence to the integration of environmental and development issues. This was reiterated again in 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. "Good governance at the international level is fundamental for achieving sustainable development. In order to ensure a dynamic and enabling international economic environment, it is important to promote global economic governance through addressing the international finance, trade, technology and investment patterns that have an impact on the development prospects of developing countries." (Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg 2002, para. 141.). To this end a process of policy coherence, coordinated by UNDP, has been initiated among the United Nations system and the Bretton Woods institutions.

The first plenary session of the EADI General Conference will look at the present state of affairs in the field of global governance and policy coherence for sustainable development. After a presentation of the major challenges of climate change agreed upon by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the following questions will be put to the speakers of this session:

How do international organisations/institutions perceive the new urgency to tackle both the environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development? How do they integrate it in their work and activities?
What should be done to improve policy coherence among international organisations? What are the major stumbling blocks in the drive to improve policy coherence?
How effective is the interplay between international organisations, national governments and the various groups of civil society in support of sustainable development?