Maria Ivanova - The Untold Story of the Worlds Leading Environmental Institution: UNEP at Fifty

Ambassador John W. McDonald

The only way to solve a conflict at any level of society is to sit down face to face and talk about it.

Ambassador John W. McDonald (19222019)

I am delighted that Dr. Maria Ivanova took the initiative to share with younger generations the actions taken by the members of the United Nations at the UN Conference on the Environment in 1972 in Stockholm and which led, in the fall of 1972, at the UN General Assembly in New York, to the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), located in Kenya.

This is a timely and much-needed book in which Dr. Ivanova rediscovers and captures the beginnings of UNEP trying to grow as fast as possible to fulfill the expectations of the global community, but soon also experiencing the effects of a fast-changing world. Confidence and mistrust, successful implementation and misinterpretations of UNEPs mission have alternated over the years. As governments change and national interests are redefined, facts are forgotten or transformed, alternative narratives set in, and conventional wisdom takes the place of historical accounts. The creation of the United Nations Environment Programme is just that kind of historical occurrence that has lost its vivid color and has been replaced by a deficiency by design narrative that is simply incorrect.

Dr. Ivanova has an exceptional understanding of the ideals, hopes and urgent needs regarding the protection of the global environment ever since they rose into the conscience of world leaders in the late 1960s. She guides us through a complex reality over half a century to gain a better understanding of UNEPs creation as well as its efforts, activities, and changes, as well as governments responsiveness, or lack and manipulation thereof, to UNEPs needs.

When I look back in time, only a few people around the world in the mid-1960s had begun to realize that something was going on in our global climate that required attention. I am appreciative of the United Nations and the members of its General Assembly for their understanding and taking the first steps toward action to protect the environment. I am grateful to the Swedish government for inviting governments to come to Stockholm in 1972. It was an astonishing gathering of developed and developing countries which agreed at the end of the Stockholm Conference on the creation of a new international environmental institution.

This new institution was based on a plan that I had been able to get through the United States bureaucracy over two years of preparation with all interested US Agencies and which was even supported by a forward-thinking Nixon White House. As Secretary of the US delegation at the Conference in Stockholm, I shared with half a dozen delegates from other countries my four draft resolutions for the creation of a new international environmental institution. The participants of the conference recognized the need for long-term global action and brought the same kind of strong desire and superb ideas to the negotiation table. In a spirit of positive cooperation, a plan of action to establish an environmental institution emerged and was accepted by the whole conferencewith enthusiasm and by acclamation.