Geneva, Switzerland - The United Nations, chocolate, watches, neutrality, yodeling, and much more!

            The JSBPer’s just arrived back in Budapest not too long ago from a three-day adventure in Geneva, Switzerland. The reason for our excursion to this country was based upon a conference with UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program) representatives, as well as a similar experience at UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). These two encounters aligned well with our Law and Environment class taught by Professors Kurk Dorsey and Molly Girard Dorsey, who also accompanied us on the adventures to Geneva along with Luke and Nick, their wonderfully cute children!

            The JSBP crew set out early Tuesday morning for the UNEP conference and I was pleasantly surprised that the “conference” I was expecting was more like a group discussion, including our JSBP group, Professor Kurk Dorsey, and four UNEP representatives. I was also excited to find women, rather than men, when we stepped into the room because many of the past guest speakers and conferences we have attended as a group have been predominately men. I thought it would be interesting to hear a woman’s perspective, especially when discussing UNEP.

            After reading an article for our Law and Environment class the other day titled, “UNEP in Global Environmental Governance: Design, Leadership, Location” by Maria Ivanova, my impression of UNEP was that it was failing as an organization to accomplish the goals it once hoped for. The reason for this failure was quite complicated, but based upon UNEP’s location in Kenya, voluntary finances which were not continuing to be paid, overall functioning problems, and also a prevailing lack of leadership. I was excited to hear what the women sitting in front of us had to say about the future of UNEP. Angela Cropper and Barbara Ruis were the first women to discuss UNEP with us, and they were extremely helpful and informative throughout the presentation. Angela discussed that the current goals of UNEP are focusing on the upcoming Rio+20 convention happening next year. The Rio+20 Conference is a convention occurring 20 years after the 1992 Earth Summit. The goal is to discuss what has changed, succeeded, and failed, as well as the future directions for the program. She discussed that since 1972 when UNEP was first created at the Stockholm Conference, the objective was to bring together as many countries under a common global interest (the environment) as possible. Today, there are 193 member states and UNEP serves the agenda, but Angela made it clear that the nations themselves do the negotiating and policy making of the different environmental concerns, not UNEP. This was a great part of the conference for me because from reading the article in class the other day, the fact that UNEP was more of a umpire rather than a player, was not clear in my mind. Some statements Angela made, which I really enjoyed were “the government would rather keep people out than in”. She stated this after discussing how social objectives within societies have been ignored. I believe that this is a major problem within the ideas of UNEP, but bringing individuals and governments together is seemingly impossible, especially with 193 member states!

            Green Economy will be the main theme of the Rio+20 conference next year that includes sustainable development, as well as many other options to promote “green”. Again though, society must be involved. Sustainable development right now is much more a governmental issue rather than an individual issue. If more people understood what sustainable development is, what it would entail, and what the benefits might be, than many more people might be on board to try it.

            Barbara also made some wonderful points, but the main one I enjoyed was her discussion of how the UNEP environmental policies are voluntary because there is very little enforcement. She continued to call it “soft law” which I thought was a great term and really allowed me to picture what she was discussing. For example, if a certain country says that they will stop cutting down forests to help reduce carbon emissions, who is going to enforce this or regulate it? Certainly this law and idea is “soft”. It was also discussed that gross domestic product is the lens in which UNEP is looking through to see progress within each country, but this is not an accurate measure. Human development progress would be more efficient – maybe this will be changed at the Rio+20 conference? One of the last things Barbara discussed was how even the “UN has their own greening program”. I thought this was great! She told us an example of how she was supposed to be in Washington DC but that rather than taking a flight which creates an enormous amount of pollution, she forwarded her colleague a presentation and asked her to discuss it instead. Also she described how many conferences are becoming paperless and teleconferencing is used as well. It made me excited that the UN is taking these strides.

            Mijke Hertoghs and Eva Duer were the last two women to discuss their role within UNEP and their future goals. Mika’s presentation was also extremely interesting to me because she was discussing hazardous chemicals and wastes. This related perfectly to our Law and Environment class because of the Red Sludge incident, as well as many articles we have read concerning different hazardous waste issues, for example Britain dumping radioactive wastes into the Sea. Mijke also put her work into perspective by asking how many cell phones we all have had – (mom I know if you’re reading this you might laugh) because I HAVE HAD WAY TOO MANY! I have either broken them, lost them, or something in between, but it is never a good excuse to get a new phone. Chemicals are everywhere and scientists must step in to help lawyers create legal procedures to ban some of the chemicals being produced within our world. Eva’s presentation was also interesting, mainly because she showed us a useful website for research. Eva works with knowledge management within the UNEP and she described it as a struggle. From what we had heard from the other women, I can only imagine!

This is a pile of thousands of cell phones which are filled with chemicals like Mijke discusses. I'm sure one of my many cell phones is sadly in there! Hopefully this problem can somehow be stopped.

This is a link to the website Eva showed us

            Overall, the UNEP conference was very impressive and I really enjoyed it. I think it was by far my favorite guest speaker/convention we have been to so far.

I've been attempting to find a wonderful video I once saw on the 7 billion mark from my Environment and Society class I took last J-term but I unfortunately cannot find it! This video is really interesting though so I chose this instead - the reason why is that Angela discussed overpopulation as a large factor in our environmental problems and I think that most people cannot disagree.

            Next, we traveled to UNHCR where the UN works to help refugees all around the world. The presenter for this conference was not as interesting as the individuals in the UNEP office, but I still absorbed some useful information. I learned that a refugee is a person, who is outside of their country because of a well-founded fear of persecution due to their political opinion, religion, ethnic origin, race, or social class. We watched a couple videos that really showed me what these poor individuals go through everyday. I learned that there are about 43 million people on earth who are in trouble in 200 areas of the world. That is astonishing! UNHCR is a wonderful program that provides the necessary shelter, food, clothing, and other basic human needs to many of these refugees. Overall, I learned that this would be a great organization to be a part of. I think it would be a good experience for me to challenge myself and volunteer at a lower level organization and help others who are in need and maybe one day work up to this level. I would feel very vulnerable, selfish, and privileged around refugees, especially because I have never experienced anything like that, but I think it might be something I will look into, specifically to challenge myself.

This was outside of the building.

This was a cardboard cutout of a small girl who is carrying wood on her head to bring back to her family for light, heat, and to cook. It said that an average family needs about 28 kg of wood and that girls on average carry about 5 to 8 kg! That is crazy! Below is a picture of the 8kg wood pile.

            Besides the excursions within the United Nations I saw other beautiful parts of Geneva, and the JSBPer’s even went to a small town in France for about an hour! It was so close we figured why not go breathe in some French air? Below are some pictures from the other things I saw!

We're off to France!

Jet d'eau! aka...A HUGE WATER THING!

Flower clock with the largest second hand in the world.

The alps in the distance!

            Overall, this was a wonderful trip, and besides the rain and everyone being sick I think we all had a fairly good time and learned many things, especially from the UNEP representatives. Another great field studies!