UN’s Credibility Called Into Question

We have learnt over the weekend that the UN Commission on sustainable development: a body responsible for promoting economic progress and environmental protection is now to be chaired by Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe: once the most affluent country in Africa will this year produce only 50% of its food needs – less than half of last year’s harvest, which left 1.5 million dependant on food aid. Once a model-economy, now a state whose inflation is a massive 2200 per cent; no country has seen its economy shrink so much in peacetime according to the World Bank. Economic development has been turned back by decades. US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment Daniel Reif-Snyder said: "We really think it calls into question the credibility of this organisation to have a representative from a country that has decimated its agriculture, that used to be the breadbasket of Africa and can't now feed itself." Much of Zimbabwe’s economic trouble can be attributed to Mugabe’s controversial land reforms in 2000, where the government was able to seize land, often violently from white farmers and redistribute it among landless blacks, who seldom had experience or skill in crop management. As a result, output plummeted and food became scarce. Photo:

Zimbabwe’s environment and tourism minister, Francis Nhema, 48 (above), who is due to chair the UN body, did rather well out of Mr Mugabe’s wholesale seizure of land. He was handed Nyamanda farm near Karoi, a once-thriving enterprise producing tobacco and maize. Most of its 1012 hectares are now lying idle.

Nhema’s role also includes heading Zimbabwe’s national parks, where wildlife has been decimated by poaching.

Zimbabwe’s election has been met with fierce criticism by western nations. Ian Pearson, Britain's Minister for Climate Change and the Environment said, “Zimbabwe's election will be seen as an outrage by millions of people who look to the United Nations for help to escape from poverty

"They will be asking how the body charged with promoting sustainable development will be able to maintain credibility whilst being chaired by a representative of a government whose failed policies have destroyed its own economy.

"How can a once food-rich country where 1.8 million people now depend on food aid be expected to give its authority to the UN's work on critical issues such as agriculture, rural development and land use?"

However, Nhema replied ‘I think its not time to point fingers.’

"Different opinions were expressed and it is their right to express those opinions. At the end of the day majority rules as democracy should," he said.

EU countries also objected to the Commission on Sustainable Development's entire two-week session, which they said had degenerated into scripted speeches without setting targets for renewable energy and other environmental policies.

As a result, the commission ended the conference among ministers from around the world on Friday without coming up with a consensus document after the 25-member EU refused to approve a paper because it did not include concrete measures.

After attempts at agreement failed, the commission voted for Zimbabwe's environment and tourism minister, Francis Nhema. The post rotates among regions and Nhema was Africa's choice to lead the commission for the next year.

The vote by secret ballot was 26-21 with three abstentions. Fifty of the 53 commission members voted.

Germany's environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, noted that the EU and the United States had imposed travel sanctions, among other penalties, against officials in President Robert Mugabe's government for human rights abuses.

"It would not be possible for us to invite the next chair, if it is from the government of Zimbabwe, or to have contacts with the chair," said Gabriel, whose country holds EU's current presidency.