“Remember the words of Taine: “for a young person the world always seems a scandalous place”. Later in life, the world seems only to be an imperfect place which can be worked on here and there. I’m told that finally, in old age, the world becomes either infinitely amusing or infinitely annoying — according to one’s temperament.”
Frank Moorhouse, Grand Days
“if it didn’t exist, we would have to invent it”
It must be tough working in public relations in the United Nations. For an organisation created by some giants of the 20th century in Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, it sometimes comes under an extraordinary level of attack from some of their successors. It simultaneously has its hands tied on critical issues whilst being regarded with suspicion by those who are worried about global conspiracies. And of course, it has its many imperfections. Former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was fond of joking that the United Nations ‘is a little bit like an organization run by a board of directors of 193 countries, or people, who want to get their son-in-law a job.’
Yet, as the saying goes (also quoted by Albright), ‘if it didn’t exist, we would have to invent it’. Anybody who has watched with alarm the rise of new nationalist movements around the world, become concerned about the state of the environment, or participated in the global struggle against the current pandemic, would agree the need for a way to sort out our various issues, lest we fall into the cynicism described by Moorhouse in his book on the League of Nations above.
If we believe that there should be something like the United Nations in the world, and we want that body to work well in the interests of peace and prosperity, we need to be literate enough to sensibly discuss it. At the very least, when in a ‘what have the Romans ever done for us?’ discussion about the United Nations, we should have something to hand. But where to start? The United Nations is neither simple nor united. Nor, if we consider the complexity of the world and the problems that we would like to solve, is it ever going to be. Reaching a meaningful, practical, and enduring global consensus on any one issue takes a lot more work than yelling at everybody in English until they acquiesce.
Some essential United Nations agencies
Everything on the United Nations org chart is worthwhile and deserves attention. But since this blog is focused on natural hazards, let’s just look at five of the many bits of the United Nations that are relevant for us to be able to deal sensibly with natural hazards, and let those parts speak for the whole.
Firstly, why do we need to deal with natural hazards internationally, rather than let every country look after itself? With the overwhelming nature of natural disasters and the inequities in capabilities between countries, it’s undesirable and inefficient to approach disasters piecemeal – it’s far better to work together to face these hazards together. And it’s much cheaper in both money and lives to anticipate and mitigate the effects of hazards rather than pick up the pieces of a disaster afterwards. Somebody must do the hard work of organising that. Enter the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (created in 1999), which currently oversees the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. The Sendai Framework captures four priorities for action and seven targets – it’s suitably ambitious in scope and challenging in implementation.
An even stronger argument for international cooperation is provided by the agencies that coordinate safe international travel. The International Maritime Organization (founded 1948) and International Civil Aviation Organization (founded 1944) are two specialized United Nations agencies that deal with transport through international oceans and international skies respectively. The International Maritime Organization inherited the critically important International Convention for the Safety of Life At Sea, which was first passed following the sinking of the Titanic in 1914, and the International Civil Aviation Organization looks after the (Chicago) Convention on International Civil Aviation. Both modes of transport are highly vulnerable to natural hazards, and in both areas, having national differences in handling these hazards would be frustrating and inefficient at either end of a journey and would be nonsensical in international waters or airspace. Consequently, the patient work of these agencies has served to directly strengthen safe travel by air and sea and has had flow on impacts to the way that everybody operates within their own countries. When aircraft fly overnight across the world and avoid dangerous weather systems on the way, they are using standardised, coordinated information about those weather hazards from around the world.
Organising global weather forecasts
Which leads us to the piece de resistance of international cooperation – the extraordinary teamwork between nations organised by the World Meteorological Organization (established in 1950 as a successor to the International Meteorological Organization, itself founded in 1873). In meteorology, it is physically impossible to make a meaningful weather forecast beyond a couple of days without the real time sharing of observations across borders. The World Meteorological Organization coordinates the free exchange of observations, forecasts, standards, and underlying science around the world, and has done so since well before the advent of modern supercomputing and communications. It’s due to this work, the relentless advance of science, and the dedication of the broader meteorological community around the world that we now have generally accurate forecasts for many natural hazards a week or more out, and now even skilful seasonal forecasts. In the world of preventing natural disasters, this gives us an enormous edge, and it would be impossible without United Nations processes.
For a fifth agency, we should mention the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. With such a broad remit, you would expect that many aspects of natural hazard management are supported in some way by the scientific and other activities undertaken, and that’s the case. But in one area in particular, the organization has really stepped up specifically – the coordination of international tsunami warning arrangements undertaken by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission in collaboration with other partners.
Natural disasters cost us approximately $3 trillion United States dollars over the past twenty years, dwarfing the budget of the above agencies (the World Meteorological Organization, for example, has a budget of around $70 million annually). The work of United Nations agencies is only a part of addressing this, but it’s a critical part, because without the coordinating role played by these agencies, it would be hard to get much done at all. Our weather, climate and ocean forecasts would be far less accurate or effective, our travel by air or by sea much more dangerous, and our communities far more exposed.
That said, for the overwhelming majority of us who do not work with international agencies, the world of the United Nations can feel highly inaccessible and unrelatable, as is the case outside any enormous bureaucracy. This is probably the only article that you will ever read about the United Nations that does not contain any acronyms, and learning the acronyms is just the start. But ultimately, the workforce of United Nations agencies is composed of ordinary people from all over the world who generally want to make a real difference, and they are supported by many passionate volunteers and by taxpayers from all over the world. It’s complex, it’s imperfect, and it can be frustrating, but it’s our United Nations.
And this brings us to the point of this article. Because of the gaps and imperfections in the system and our own lack of understanding, it’s completely possible for us to fail to properly connect United Nations processes to what we do in our own countries. If that’s the case, we’re missing an opportunity and wasting some of the money that our community puts into the system. The more that we can make the United Nations system work for us, the better value our investment will be and the better the societal outcomes. We don’t have the option of sitting back and criticising. In whatever field we work in in preventing natural disasters, we should know how United Nations processes interact with that field and, as much as possible, how to navigate them and improve them. That’s not easy work, but it’s the necessary work to get the job done properly, and it will make a difference in making our world better.