Measuring Policy Coherence among the MEAs and MDGs
December 19, 2007 by amathew , amathew , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review
Duraiappah, Bhardwaj, Measuring Policy Coherence among the MEAs and MDGs, International Instiute of Sustainable Development, 2007This reference is a report published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, who in their mission statement says that they “contribute to sustainable development by advancing policy recommendations on international trade and investment, economic policy, climate change, measurement and assessment, and natural resources management”. Additionally they “report on international negotiations and share knowledge gained through collaborative projects with global partners, resulting in more rigorous research, capacity building in developing countries with better dialogue between North and South”. It is important to understand their charter because in this report the measuring parameters involving international agreements and goals are measured, benchmarked against one another, and critiqued thoroughly. They state that there are about 13 global Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and/or conventions and about 500 international treaties or other agreements related to the environment. This is cause for a fair amount of overlap and uncertainty regarding these programs. Many of these “agreements” such as the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have the interaction between developed and developing economies emphasized and processed in their charters. In this report the coherence across the main programs is analyzed. To this point, in research literature review, the UN’s MDG has been referenced. In this report we see the introduction of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Global Environmental Facility (GEF), International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and others. They accomplish this by benchmarking the policies against a Policy Coherence Matrix (PCM) that they developed and come to the conclusion that “we still have a long way to go before we achieve an acceptable level of policy coherence”.
Understanding the parameters and programs is required to comprehend our problems and the interaction of developing/industrialized nations. Various MEAs and the MDG in particular speak about this interaction and the MDG itself lists, specifically, underlying assumptions and understandings regarding this topic. This document will help to put it all in perspective and also to open the door that there is no one particular answer or approach – and the ones that are out there, and in use, have large inconsistencies.