22 - Climate Negotiations: the North/South Perspective

Summary

Editor's Introduction

Among the objectives of the UN Conference on Environment and Development, three stand out particularly strongly for this chapter. One goal involves preparing conventions on climate change, biodiversity, and forestry in time for signature in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. Second, commitments will be sought for new and additional resources to help developing countries integrate environmental issues in their development plans. And, third, new financial mechanisms and institutions must evolve to manage those resources efficiently and effectively. Realizing all three of these goals will require complex, sensitive, and far-seeing negotiations. In that context, the climate negotiations now being carried out under the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC) are a significant model for the entire UNCED process.

Tariq Osman Hyder, the Director General for Economic Coordination of the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, is a keen political observer of, and an active participant in, the international negotiations of the INC and other important climate-change-oriented deliberations. An experienced civil servant with a long and successful career in the Foreign Service, he headed his country's delegation to both the INC and the management meetings of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), a new financial mechanism jointly administered by the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the UN Environment Programme. At the December 1991 meeting of the GEF Management Group, Hyder was asked to present the joint statement of the G-77, the common position of the developing countries. He has thus become one of the world's leading spokesmen for the position of the nations of the South.

None the less, Hyder is known for his ability to understand and meet all sides of these complex negotiations.