Has an office away-day ever gone as badly wrong as the recent policy retreat for Ban Ki-moon and top UN officials in Alpbach, Austria (above)? Everyone is cringing at the story about China’s senior man in the UN Secretariat getting tired and emotional. On top of that, someone slipped the background papers for the retreat to Fox News. As Colum Lynch notes over at Foreign Policy, the theme that runs through these papers is the UN’s diminished influence, especially on the financial crisis and climate change.
Admittedly, the papers do tend towards hyperbole. Lynch quotes one purple passage:
“Are we ready to empower the Secretary General with our collective ideas on a vision of sustainable development, one that will enable growth and prosperity, while respecting planetary boundaries?” according to Ban’s climate team’s paper. “The planet and the world are both waiting for it.”
Seriously? Climate policy people may want to know what Ban’s next move will be. But is the planet really waiting for this news as one living, breathing, sentient whole? It’s hard to say… I can hear the sea faintly from where I type. As far as I can ascertain, the tremulous cadence of the tide is not murmuring “Empower the Secretary-General with collective ideas on a vision of sustainable development, yee foolish sons of Man” or anything like that. I also met a cat on the way home, and he didn’t raise the issue.
Where do the UN’s drafters get their ideas? Flicking through the papers, I was struck by the opening sentences of the contribution on mediation and conflict prevention:
A respected think-tank recently published a report, which claimed that conflict prevention is getting harder. We certainly do not see it getting any easier.
Well, if the respected think-tank isn’t the Center on International Cooperation, and the report my recent paper with Bruce Jones on taking UN preventive diplomacy “back to basics”… I see now that these papers are intellectual masterworks, informed by only the finest thought. I just hope they aren’t what drove the senior UN official to drink…
Now, if you’ll excuse me, the planet and world are waiting.
