On October 2019 in Seoul, Republic of Korea, The Stimson Center, Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), Global Challenges Foundation (GCF) and the Governments of Japan and South Korea convened the Global Policy Dialogue on Climate Governance: Innovating the Paris Agreement & Beyond. This dialogue contributed ideas and capabilities to a transnational network for governance renewal and innovation. It was convened in the margins of the Global Green Growth Week.
Among other luminaries, the gathering featured H.E. Ban Ki-moon, President of the Assembly and Chair of the Council of the Global Green Growth Institute, and Eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations; H.E. Erna Witoelar, Founder of the Indonesian Environmental Forum, and former Indonesian Minister of Human Settlements and Regional Development; and H.E. Javier Manzanares, Deputy Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund.
The dialogue’s forty participants – representing diverse global and regional policy-making, scholarly, activist, and practitioner perspectives – gathered to respond collectively to major global policy challenges associated with climate change, environmental degradation, its consequences on global security and global justice, as well as on the decision-making processes of the private sector, multilateral organizations, and global economic and development institutions. In that regard, it considered the necessary approaches to the UNFCCC, local authorities, the business community, and global civil society; considered the mainstreaming of climate action across global economic and development institutions; and finally looked at the nexus of climate governance, global security, and global justice.
Attention was given to several global institutions, such as the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change, the U.N. Green Climate Fund, the G-20, World Trade Organization, U.N. Development Program, U.N. Environment Program, U.N. Security Council, and other multilateral organizations affiliated to the U.N. system such as the International Civil Authority, the International Maritime Organization, and the Montreal Protocol Secretariat.
The recommendations put forward in this action plan will be championed at COP 26 in Glasgow and considered in future discussions of a proposed Climate Risk Governance Commission (CRGC), for which a strategy meeting was convened, on 24 October (UN Day) 2019, in connection with both the Climate Governance Global Policy Dialogue and the Global Green Growth Week in Seoul. The CRGC will aim to engage a range of important actors (e.g., from government, business, academia, policy think tanks, civil society, the media, “influencers,” etc.) to examine the climate crisis and pioneer and communicate new solutions—with an emphasis on global governance and policy innovations—to decision-makers and the general public worldwide.
The two global civil society-led coalitions, the UN2020 initiative and Together First campaign, will also provide the platform to advance these ideas in the political process connected to the UN 75th anniversary by influencing the Political Declaration to be adopted, on 21 September 2020, at the UN 75 Leaders Summit in New York. By serving as an effective UN process for stocktaking, strengthening, and review of the world body, the 75th anniversary of the UN could contribute, alongside the preparation for COP26, to innovation of the climate governance system in 2020 and beyond.
