Development of Protocol & Negotiations

UNCLOS III negotiations was the intervention of the Maltese Ambassador to the United Nations before the First Committee of the General Assembly. As mentioned earlier, negotiations at the multilateral level may also open as the result of decisions taken by an international conference or by the governing body of an international organization. The negotiations on the FCCC were launched as the result of the adoption of a General Assembly resolution; the Kyoto Protocol negotiations were launched as a result of the adoption of the Berlin Mandate at the First Session of the COP; and the negotiations on the CBD and those on the Basel Convention were launched as the result of the Governing Council of UNEP deciding to set up ad hoc working groups of scientific and technical experts. The opening phase of negotiations also requires planning the process, setting the agenda and designing the structure of the negotiation machinery. In bilateral and multilateral negotiations alike, this phase can get into very elaborate details and require considerable negotiation itself, such as determining the number, definition and sequence of agenda items, selecting the venue and agreeing on the seating arrangements of a conference. In multilateral conferences, there is always an added layer of complexity as a number of administrative and strategic matters must also be addressed, such as drafting and adopting rules of procedure, approving credentials, establishing committees and subcommittees, delegating work, and electing presiding and other conference officers. The time required to complete such tasks varies immensely and, like so many

Global Convention on Forests

Box 2: From the Idea of a Global Convention on Forests to the Adoption of the Forest Principles One of the five outcomes of UNCED was the adoption of the Non-Legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of all Types of Forests, also known as the Forests Principles. Although the issue of forests was on the international policymaking agenda for nearly two decades prior to Rio, only one legally-binding agreement, the 1983 International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA), existed on forests prior to UNCED. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many countries, including those of the G-7, began calling for a global convention on forests. Significant divisions between developed and developing countries polarized the negotiations in the UNCED preparatory committee sessions, and ultimately prevented a legally-binding global agreement from materializing at Rio. The full title given to the Forest Principles is testimony to the widespread divergences between those states calling for a legally-binding instrument (i.e. “Authoritative Statement”) and those seeking to limit the agreement to a non-legally binding “Statement of Principles