2015 was a landmark year for the articulation of global sustainable development commitments. The year saw a succession of agenda-setting United Nations summits on disaster risk reduction (Sendai, March); finance for development (Addis Ababa, July); the post-2015 sustainable development goals (New York, September) and climate change (Paris, December). The implications of these summits is of particular relevance for legislators and GLOBE International adopted a unique approach calling for ‘Coherence and Convergence’ between these summits to ensure that outcomes are mutually-reinforcing.
... is the title of a joint paper by GLOBE International and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) which provides an overview of the cascade of significant developments including in the adoption of several multilateral environmental agreements adopted in 2015 and explains their relevance for legislators, and why parliamentary engagement is crucial to their success.
Covering disaster risk reduction, financing for development, gender, sustainable development and climate change, these global summits and processes of 2015 have charted a transformational course for human societies for the coming decades. Their significance cannot be over-estimated and the importance of parliaments to their implementation cannot be under-estimated.
As not all of these agreements are household names, awareness raising amongst legislators is the first task this paper sets itself. Explaining the background and key features of each major 2015 summit and process, it makes the case for a stronger role for legislators in ensuring that the outcomes of all these summits are implemented at a national level in an integrated and synergistic manner to ensure coherence and the desired impact.
The paper offers guidance on the Top 10 Things Legislators Can Do to bring the 2015 Summits home, and illustrates action taken by legislators across the world to implement GLOBE’s Coherence & Convergence approach to the 2015 summits. These efforts show that parliaments have a critical role in translating the multilateral frameworks agreed into meaningful national legislation that is locally owned, enjoys public trust and can be implemented.
The paper holds that while implementation must be a collective effort engaging all stakeholders, it is the duty of parliaments to assure democratic accountability and oversight.
Members of parliament should be at the heart of the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) function demanded by this epic new generation of international agreements. The paper concludes that the active and informed engagement of legislators will be a crucial factor in the success of the 2015 agreements, and parliaments everywhere must rise to this historic challenge and ‘Bring the 2015 Summits Home’.