This year, we award a special joint Rubber Duckie to two giants of junk, Achim Steiner and Rajendra Pachauri. Together they are collectively responsible for uncountable thousands of reports, initiatives, policies, statements, comments, studies and panels that are based on science that is politically motivated, either in content or objective.
Mr. Steiner is head of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), a font of untenable science, including his enthusiastic support for the idea that 50 million refugees would plague the world to escape climate change by 2010.
A long-term shill for junk environmental science and the green energy industry, Mr. Steiner is also an expert at sophistry. Following the 50 million refugee debacle, he took to the editorial pages of The Guardian to cover the issue with rhetoric. “Imagine if the world acted only when 100% scientific proof was in place,” he declared. “We would still be insulating buildings with cancer-causing asbestos and fuelling cars with lead additives, damaging babies’ brains.”
See the logic? Those who question “official” junk science are baby killers.
Mr. Steiner’s rhetorical arsenal also includes the reductio ad absurdum. When he was head of the IUCN, the World Conservation Union, Mr. Steiner was part of the pack attack on Bjorn Lomborg’s book The Skeptical Environmentalist. “Mr. Lomborg,” he wrote, “is wrong to suggest that species extinction, climate change and pollution are imaginary environmental problems.”
Mr. Lomborg had suggested none of these things.
Since UNEP is one of the parents of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Mr. Steiner has stoutly defended the IPCC, even as that institution’s credibility sinks to zero. He has suggested that questions about the stewardship of his colleague at IPCC — Rajendra Pachauri — amounted to a “witch hunt.” The IPCC’s claim that all the glaciers of the Himalayas might disappear by 2035 was, he said, a “typographical error.”
Mr. Steiner, who accuses skeptics of being “ideologically driven,” is another global bureaucrat whose priority is reformulating humanity. “We have a misdirected economic compass,” he has said. “We have arranged our economies in a way that they destroy their environmental foundations.”
Over at the IPCC, meanwhile. Mr. Pauchauri has dug himself another hole. On top of Climategate, through which he clung to power, we now have Mr. Pachauri positioning Greenpeace as lead author on a global energy report that, amazingly, endorsed Greenpeace’s global energy plan — a plan for which Mr. Pachauri had written a glowing introduction.
All in all, Mr. Pachauri and Mr. Steiner have turned in very fine performances worthy of a rarely awarded joint Rubber Duck.
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Published June 10, 2011
| FoxNews.com
EXCLUSIVE: The United Nations Environment Program, the flagship for environmental consciousness and creation of a new era of “global environmental governance,” doesn’t know how its money is spent or even who it may be dealing with when it comes to hundreds of corporate, public and non-governmental partners that are “key” to fulfilling its mission, according to a confidential internal study obtained by Fox News.
UNEP, a $450 million U.N. organization, is also an administrative mess, which ignores its own financial rules, and sometimes doesn’t even reveal who is authorized to sign its checks, the study says.
UNEP apparently agrees. It has accepted all 17 recommendations contained in the internal study, and is currently attempting to enact them.
According to the study, that process is supposed to be completed by the end of this month.
In response to questions from Fox News, a UNEP spokesman declared that “The recommendations of the auditors are now being implemented by UNEP under a practical and agreed time-scale and via a Task Force and, as is standard practice, we report back to the [U.N. auditors] every six months”.
There are quite a few important things to fix. Among other failings, the study says that UNEP:
-- doesn’t adequately check out the credentials of its partners, especially in the private sector;
-- doesn’t even keep adequate records of who it is partnering with, or how well they do at the projects they promise to accomplish;
--has failed to keep track of millions of dollars raised by some partners, and passed on by UNEP to others outside the normal U.N. financial accounting system;
--frequently fails to include “essential” information on financial documents;
--lets officials who don’t have the proper authorization sign off on payouts;
--and has sometimes used high-minded partnership arrangements to cover purely commercial ventures.
Moreover, the global organization has sometimes failed to enforce its own rules for staff disclosure, leading to cases of apparent conflict of interest and potential self-dealing. And sometimes, UNEP departed from its normal legal paperwork entirely, as in the case of a licensing deal with the Thomson Reuters Foundation to use UNEP-generated news stories on a humanitarian website, AlertNet, apparently without going through proper channels.
The 25-page report by the U.N.’s internal watchdog Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) was published on Dec. 30 last year under the dry title “UNEP Project Delivery by Partnerships.”
Click here to read the full report.
The study, which was forwarded to UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner after incorporating his own management team’s responses, covers a 25-month period from January 2008 to April 2010.
During roughly that time, the report notes, UNEP “entered into partnerships with over 750 partners” ranging from private corporations to governments to civilian non-governmental organizations in deals involving at least $65 million.
Those dry figures, however, understate the importance of partnership arrangements to UNEP, and increasingly to the entire U.N., in an era of shrinking budgets and increased skepticism about the global organization’s ability to deliver on its expanding mountain of political, economic and social mandates.
With less than a half-billion dollars in its 2010-2011 budget, UNEP is one of the smaller members of the U.N. constellation of funds, agencies and programs (the U.S. contributes about $6 million a year directly to the total). But it has some of the most grandiose ambitions: to remake the world economic and environmental order, reshape human patterns of production and consumption, and help shift trillions of dollars in wealth from rich to poorer nations.
Its mission, as described on the UNEP website, is to “provide global leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and people to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.”
In other words, partnership is fundamental to its globe-changing strategy, which will reach a new crescendo next year at the U.N.-sponsored World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held inRio de Janeiro in May 2012, where the U.N. hopes a new framework of “global environmental governance” will get at least ceremonial endorsement.
What the OIOS study reveals, however, is that when it comes to its own partnership arrangements, UNEP very often operated in a governance fog.
Among some of the higher-profile cases cited in the report:
--in the case of a long-standing partnership with the pharmaceutical giant Bayer, largely focused on youth and the environment, UNEP was only able to account formally for 297,000 euros (more than $430,000 at current rates) of Bayer donations to the program, even though Bayer had donated more than $12.2 million at that point. Most of the money was channeled directly to various other partners and vendors by UNEP “to avoid the cumbersome U.N. process,” the report says. The Bayer partnership is slated to continue through 2013.
According to a Bayer spokesman, in response to questions from Fox News, the pharmaceuticals company and UNEP “report to each other on the partnership projects implemented by each of them on a regular basis in a steering committee. The steering committee also decides on the annual allocation of the funding provided by Bayer for the implementation of the various projects.”
Nonetheless, the OIOS auditors urged UNEP to “immediately” quit bypassing the U.N. accounting system, and UNEP agreed, while saying it is cooperating with an “ongoing” OIOS investigation to determine who is accountable for any unauthorized use of the money.
--in the case of another longstanding partnership, with the Thomson Reuters Foundation (charitable arm of the global news and information group), OIOS auditors noted that a longstanding deal to put UNEP-generated news stories on a foundation website called AlertNet was dubbed a “license,” a term not included in standard UNEP partnership agreements. “It was not clear why a standard legal instrument was not used instead,” the auditors declared.
Nor was there evidence that the arrangement had been reviewed and approved, as required, by a central quality control agency, the report says. It added: “Unauthorized deviations from standard legal templates may result in legal issues for UNEP and may lead to significant financial losses.”
The auditors recommended that UNEP’s administration should henceforth “ensure full compliance with the use of legal templates,” quit bypassing the approval department. UNEP agreed.
Contacted by Fox News, a Thomson Reuters Foundation spokesperson noted that the “License Agreement” was signed on July 10, 2009, and has no specific time limit. “No exclusivity or priority in the use of UNEP material is granted to the Foundation,” the spokesperson said, and noted that the foundation had signed similar deals with the World Health Organization, the UN High Commission on Refugees, UNICEF and the World Food Program.
When it comes to lesser-known partners, UNEP was equally improvisational—and very trusting.
As the auditors noted, when it came to making cash advances to working partners in the field, “the initial advance was almost always 75 per cent of the agreed budget, regardless of whether the partnership was new or not.” There was usually no documentation “justifying the need for significant initial advances.”
In the case of one unspecified project with the environment ministry of Mali, where bureaucratic corruption is rife, the full budget of $200,000 was advanced up-front. Not only was this beyond the authorized limit for the type of funding agreement used, but “it was not clear how the [UNEP] division would ascertain whether the project achieved its objectives.” Reason: the money was just a payment toward a bigger Mali fund-raising project.
In the case of a similar payment to the environment ministry of Gabon, the auditors noted, “the activities never took place and no outputs were delivered.”
Among other recommendations, the auditors proposed, and UNEP agreed, that projects should be examined by an external auditor.
The list of transgressions rolled on and on, and in many cases the OIOS auditors cited a similar cause: UNEP’s seven major operating divisions apparently did not talk to each other very much, or to the central Administration under Steiner, who took over UNEP in 2006. Instead, senior staffers at the division level seemed to do whatever they thought was appropriate.
In one example of the resulting chaos, the auditors noted that a divisional director had signed an $858,000 deal with a completely separate U.N. agency, even though his signing authority was limited to $200,000.
In the same vein, the auditors noted that “an organization-wide corporate strategic approach for the identification of partners did not exist,” and UNEP officers often used word of mouth or Internet searches to find them.
Once found, there was no established due diligence process to vet them and document the results. In many cases, auditors inferred, UNEP was simply trying to get around its normal commercial procurement process.
In general, when it came to managing its partnerships, the one thing UNEP apparently didn’t do was act as UNEP.
Or, as the OIOS auditors put it, the organization “does not have a centralized database for management of partnerships. Currently, the divisions manage their partnerships without any guidance and consultation with other divisions. In most cases, individual project ... officers had their own filing and archiving system, making it difficult and time consuming to obtain consolidated data on partnership.”
The OIOS recommendation for the promise was relatively simple: UNEP needs to centralize, starting with the partnership data base, along with “procedures clearly identifying the overall responsibility and custody for information management.”
In response, UNEP promised to do so, and have it done by the end of June, 2011.
Whether that will happen on time, of course, is another question. Near the time when the auditors’ analysis of UNEP’s partnership arrangements was completed, OIOS issued a list of previous audit recommendations across the U.N., including UNEP, that were still not implemented.
Some of the previous OIOS recommendations to UNEP, which were still not accomplished, dated back from three to 12 years.
George Russell is executive editor of Fox News and can be found on Twitter @GeorgeRussell.
UNITED NATIONS, February 12 -- At UN's annual signing of "compacts" on Friday morning, the buzz from one Under Secretary General to another was that top UN Humanitarian John Holmes "is leaving to go back to the UK." Later another senior UN official, not present at the Compact signing ceremony, told Inner City Press this same thing.
Holmes was not present to sign his Compact, being in Haiti. Anna Tibaijuka, removed by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon inexplicably from running the UN's Nairobi office, was equally inexplicably not present, even by video conference. Her Nairobi chief successor Achim Steiner, handpicked by Mr. Ban, was present, with the image of a tree behind him.
Steiner signed two Compacts, as did Cheick Sidi Diarra, still moonlighting between Least Developed Countries, Landlocked and Small Island Developing States and the Special Adviser on Africa position, which some in the General Assembly say has become moribund under Mr. Ban. The Assembly has voted that the post must be filled, but it has yet to happen.
As in February 2009, Inner City Press was the only media organization there. Even for the photo op, only UN Television and UN Photo were there. Nevertheless, Mr. Ban in his prepared remarked said the UN was making these signings "as public as possible."
The documents, and reports on performance, will go only on the UN's intranet, not available to the public, to "we the peoples."
Many of the Under Secretaries General at the ceremony rarely if ever speak to the press. Chief UN lawyer Patricia O'Brien, in her few appearances, has stuck narrowing to issues of the Hariri Tribunal, refusing questions even on the UN's involvement in Cambodia's tribunal.
Inga-Britt Ahlenius, recently in the media for OIOS' alleged policy of not pursuing former UN employees or third party contractors, has not held a press conference in the Compact annual cycle.
New Safety and Security chief Gregory Starr has not spoken with the press, other than a single interview with the correspondent of the Washington Times (which recently closed its UN bureau by means of massive layoffs).
Starr is the only new UN senior office since last year. Now, a needed shakeup may be near.
Last year's group photo by UN, only DSS' Starr is new since then
Mr. Shabaab Shabaan, while affable, has yet to hold a press conference, despite being in the news for a damning UN Dispute Tribunal decision about his management. Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky, who sat in the corner during the signing ceremony, announced only that Ban will appeal the UNDT decision, but refused Inner City Press' question for a statement of the basis of the appeal.
Some absences were more than understandable. Lynn Pascoe, along with Ban's closest advisor Kim Won-soo, was still on his North Korea trip. Mr. Ban told the Press that he spoke with Pascoe, who had not met with Kim Jong-Il to whom Ban sent a leather bound copy of the UN Charter in six languages.
Neither top peacekeepers, Alain Le Roy nor Susana Malcorra, was present. Inner City Press saw both of them less than an hour later going into the Security Council.
In the Council, another USG spoke: Alan Doss, whose six line e-mail urging UNDP to show him "leeway" and give his daughter a job is still being investigated by the UN some eight months later. Why does USGs like Doss sign Compacts, and abide by them? As with everything in this UN, it is a work in process, not necessarily in progress. Watch this site.
