The Role of NGOs and Civil Society in Global ... - Yale University

GEMMILL AND BAMIDELE-IZU5occurred for over two centuries (Charnovitz, 1997). The recent rate ofproliferation of non-governmental organizations, however, is notable.In 1948, for example, the United Nations listed forty-one consultativegroups that were formally accredited to participate in consultativeprocesses; in 1998, there were more than 1,500 organizations with varyingdegrees of participation and access (Simmons, 1998). Numerousfactors, from the development of information technology to thegreater awareness of global interdependence to the spread of democracy,explain the rise of NGOs. 3The United Nations is the intergovernmental organization that hasmost openly recognized and endorsed the need to collaborate with thenon-governmental sector (Weiss, 1999). 4 Historically, the UN cooperatedwith NGOs primarily as partners in the implementation of certainprograms, particularly in the areas of emergency response,human rights, and election monitoring.Due to their critical role in service delivery and implementation,civil society organizations have long been recognized as“partners” of the UN system, especially in environmentalnegotiations.Over the past decade, environmental NGO activity within UNprocesses has intensified. Prior to the 1990s, while various socialmovements may have utilized the UN as a global forum to call attentionto particular agendas, the focus was not on influencing the officialUN deliberations. Through the process leading up to the 1992United Nations Conference on Environment and Development(UNCED), environmental organizations began intense internal capacitybuilding efforts to gain more sophisticated understanding of theinternational policymaking process (Conca, 1996). Some of the innovationsat the time – most notably, parallel NGO fora held alongsideUN conferences – are now a routine element of intergovernmentaldeliberations (Fomerand, 1996).3 Interestingly, the first intergovernmental environmental summit, the 1972 UN Conference onthe Human Environment, is cited as one factor behind the rise in NGOs (Conca, 1996).4 Other intergovernmental bodies, such as the World Trade Organization, the InternationalMonetary Fund, and the G-7 have no provisions for formal involvement of non-governmentalorganizations, see Esty (1998) and Charnovitz (1996).