Italians to carry the torch for Greek ‘green diplomacy’ plan

Date: 10/07/03

By Karen Carstens

GREEN activists and policymakers have expressed fears about how the Italian EU presidency will handle environmental issues over the next six months.

But the Italians' Greek predecessors are convinced their successors are committed to at least one crucial crusade the Hellenes gave birth to - green diplomacy.

It involves linking security and environmental concerns in formulating foreign policy.

In practical terms, this means that a network of 25 experts - from the foreign ministries of the current 15 member states and the ten accession countries - are expected to convene at least once during each EU presidency to take on some of the hottest environmental topics on the EU's agenda and come up with ways to integrate them into the broader policy picture.

The first such meeting, held in Athens on 25 June, resulted in an action plan focusing on four key areas: climate change, renewable energy, biosafety and the marine environment.

"This should fill our calendar until at least May 2004," said an advisor to Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, who launched the green diplomacy initiative.

The Greeks are in the process of helping their Italian counterparts plan two further meetings to be held by the end of this year in Italy.

"The Italians have been very receptive and are keen to continue with this initiative," the advisor added.

"The basic idea is that the work of the network would be in the hands of each presidency and that the network will feed directly into the General Affairs Council," she said.

At their mid-June meeting in Luxembourg, foreign ministers drafted a paper on green diplomacy that laid the groundwork for a mandate for each EU presidency.

This was further solidified by a specific reference to green diplomacy that was included in a section on external affairs in the 19-20 June Thessaloniki summit conclusions.

Meanwhile, officials at the European Commission's external relations directorate are busy preparing a working background document that aims to cover possible links between environment and security to aid experts in their ongoing efforts.

Commission officials are also slated to take part in the network's meetings.

Papandreou has described his diplomatic offspring as follows: "Security issues, both regionally and globally, are tied to sustainable development, as environmental problems do not respect national borders and cannot be solved without international cooperation.

"We are prompting an interdisciplinary approach to dealing with these challenges."

The network of experts, he said, would provide a "common framework for action" to meet the challenges posed by the increasingly evident inter-linkage of poverty with natural resources and security.

The experts working in the individual foreign ministries, he said, "would be responsible for ensuring that environmental factors are fully addressed in conflict scenarios".

They would also be responsible for "coherence in the EU's internal and external policies on such issues; [ensuring that] the necessary stakeholders have been consulted and that the accession countries are integrated into this process".

Now it only remains to be seen just how much the EU will bring "green diplomacy" into play to promote both peace and sustainable development at international policy pow-wows like the Doha Development Round.

As Papandreou put it: "Green diplomacy has the potential to become the backbone of a preventive policy, and of a policy of rapprochement between the world's peoples."