If you are living in a residential complex, yet one of your neighbors decided that ventilators are not needed and decided to rip them all up. Despite the objections of the Home Owner's Associations (HOA), you found out that the same neighbor is running for the president of HOA.
Do you think that as a president, your neighbor will support the decision to update the ventilators? Indeed the appointment of such a president signals that the HOA does not care about ventilators and the quality of air in the complex. Surely, during that type of destructive leadership, other residents will rip-up their ventilators too. After all, people follow.
The General Assembly:Town Hall or Polluter Hall?
Let’s explore the above analogy on a bigger scale. The U.N General Assembly is the town hall of the world where the 193 members of the world organization meet to deliberate and determine global strategies. Yet, countries that do not have environmental agencies, their delegations are allowed to run for the President’s position. Furthermore, countries without environmental administrations can occupy one of the 21 positions for Vice President. Not to mention, countries that took deliberate steps to downsize their environmental agency can vote, head of the main committees, approve or disapprove the budget items. How can the General Assembly achieve its millennium goals of sustainable development and reverse the environmental loss when its deliberation form includes polluters, wasters, and set backers? These individuals can run for president and take on the power to further endanger the environment that is already suffering.
The Role of President of the General Assembly
The president is entrusted to set the agenda, enforce rules of procedure, such as opening debate, limiting speaking times for representatives, and suspending or adjourning debate. Presidents in recent years assumed a more involved-leadership style given the global challenges. Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser invited the high commissioner for human rights to brief member states on the Syrian civil war despite opposition from Syria’s backers. Therefore, would a president who is coming from an environmental cancel culture put an environmental item on the agenda, or invite an environmental expert to brief the members?
After more than four decades of war, documented use of chemical weapons, looting of military hazardous waste, desertification rate of 24,710.538 acres yearly, massive management waste issues, a spike in waterborne diseases, toxic air pollution, Iraq decided to downsize its environmental agency to a small department under the Ministry of Health. Reform was the reason for downsizing the agency. The Iraqi government views protecting the environment as an unnecessary luxury that Iraqi people do not need and reform simply means bring back pollution to an already environmentally devastated country. Furthermore, the reform downsized environmental agency into a division and attached it to the Ministry of Health. Ironically, the Ministry of Health is one of the biggest polluters due to their illegal disposal of hazardous waste.
Action Needed: Strip Polluting Countries from Their Privileges
I call on the U.N General Assembly to strip Iraq from their voting privileges for purposefully attacking the environmental resources of Iraq. I call on the U.N. agencies and forums to prevent delegates who do not establish environmental agencies from taking a leading position of any sort with the global organization. Countries that fail to protect their own environmental resources should not lead. After all, environmental resources matter. Click here to read about my call to strip Lebanon from their privileges at the General Assembly.
