The unique creativity of the UN bureaucracy

If there is anything that United Nations bureacrats are skilled in, it is establishing large new, overpaid and wasteful bureaucratic structures in order to "solve" mostly non-existing global problems. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, is uniquely talented in this. His latest outburst of bureaucratic creativity includes the founding of a new "scientific board", of course with a large staff of advisers and other international officials.

Later on this month a meeting in Panama City will agree the budget and location of the secretariat for the new Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)

The next step, which is now discussed at the UN, is to establish a "global science panel" to oversee already existing panels and "carry out an assesment of assesments" (!). In addition, a new "overseeing Intergovernmental Panel on Sustainable Development would provide the evidence base for the proposed UN sustainable-development council":


Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the UN, said that he is taking forward a recommendation to appoint a chief scientific adviser or scientific board, as suggested to him by a panel of experts on global sustainability.
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Another proposal to boost science’s standing in policy-making is to establish a new global science panel to oversee the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Details of the IPBES, including budget and location of the secretariat, will be agreed at a meeting in Panama City from 16–21 April 
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Scientists would sit on the overseeing Intergovernmental Panel on Sustainable Development, but the panel would not conduct new research. Rather, it will carry out an assessment of assessments and ensure that the science from the separate panels is connected.
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One suggestion is that the panel could also conduct a review of global sustainable development as called for by Ban Ki-moon’s sustainable-development advisers in January.

The overseeing Intergovernmental Panel on Sustainable Development would provide the evidence base for the proposed UN sustainable-development council, where heads of state will negotiate issues concerned with the green economy. There is growing international support for establishing a sustainable-development council and global sustainable-development goals that would set voluntary targets for green growth.


Read the entire article here


PS

The only new "panel" that is really needed is the Panel for Abolishing All Existing Useless UN Panels. Somebody else than Ban Ki-moon has to start working on that one.