Experiences from Chairing the Negotiations of the Desertification Convention

This chapter is based on the practice of diplomacy, rather than academia, and it is not intended to break new theoretical ground. It is an effort to draw some conclusions from practical experience as an active participant in negotiations on sustainable development over the last fifteen years. More particularly, it deals with the 1994 UN Convention to Combat Desertification in those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa (Desertification Convention), where I served as chairperson of the UN committee that negotiated the Convention.

Some people might say that the Desertification Convention is not really an environmental instrument, but rather a multilateral treaty on development cooperation. However, the borderlines are not very clear, since the Desertification Convention is one of the three conventions established in connection with the Rio Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. Together with its sister conventions on, respectively, climate change and biodiversity, it is part of a major effort to tackle global environmental problems in such a way that the effort of reducing poverty in developing countries and secure equitable growth is not hampered. In fact, the UN World Commission on Environment and Development, known as the Brundtland Commission, in its 1987 report, Our Common Future, not only launched the concept of ‘sustainable development’, but also brought environment and development closely together through its insistence not only on inter-generational equity but also on intra-generational equity.