United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) 1992

Sustainable

Policy Update
Devshi Satish Mishra

Background

The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was founded in December 1992 to follow up on the progress of Agenda 21 (an action plan for Sustainable Development) and other associated accords, including the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, as well as the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI) at the local, national, regional, and international levels. 

CSD was replaced by High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) to provide a more comprehensive and effective framework for assessing and implementing the SDGs. CSD was considered the high-level forum for sustainable development within the United Nations system.

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Source: https://sigmaearth.com/the-role-of-uns-commission-on-sustainable-development/

Functioning

The functioning of the CSD was characterised by a clear hierarchical structure and an innovative, cyclical method of work that integrated governments with various sectors of civil society. 

Hierarchical Structure and Reporting Lines

The CSD was strategically positioned within the United Nations framework to ensure its recommendations influenced global policy. The hierarchy, from top to bottom, was as follows:

  • The UN General Assembly (UNGA). This was the top-level authority, sitting at the top as the body that created the CSD and provided its mandate. It held ultimate authority and reviewed the CSD’s outcomes.
  • UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The CSD reported directly to the ECOSOC, and its role was to supervise the CSD’s work and formally approve its policy recommendations, acting as the critical link between the CSD and the broader UN system.
  • Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). The CSD itself was the main forum, the Central Body. Its internal structure consisted of:
    • The Bureau. The Bureau managed the operational aspects of the sessions and comprised a chair and four Vice-chairs.
    • The Member States. The nations that comprised the commission held the power to debate and negotiate the official outcomes.

Operational Functioning and Working Method

The CSD’s working method was designed to be action-oriented and inclusive. After the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, it adopted a unique two-year “implementation cycle” to address specific thematic clusters and carried out a succession of multi-year work programmes, each focusing on a single thematic concern, such as water, energy, agriculture, and sustainable consumption and production.. These programmes were created to address the interrelated nature of sustainable development, recognising that progress in one area frequently depended on advances in another. The Two-Year Cycle followed by CSD is as follows:

  • Year 1. The first year of the cycle was dedicated to a comprehensive review of progress in implementing sustainable development goals related to the specific theme (e.g., water, energy, agriculture). This session was not for negotiating policy but for analysis and information sharing. Activities included reviewing national reports, hearing from experts, and organizing panel discussions to identify best practices, constraints, and obstacles to implementation.
  • Year 2. The second year was the phase of decision-making. Based on the findings of the Review Session, Member States would negotiate and agree upon concrete policy recommendations and actions to ensure efficient implementation and overcome the identified barriers.

One of the CSD’s primary functions was to provide a venue for member nations to share best practices and experiences. This was done through frequent sessions in which representatives from governments, civic society, the commercial sector, and international organisations exchanged ideas and collaborated on common concerns. These meetings also allowed stakeholders to influence the global sustainable development agenda by sharing their ideas and knowledge. The Commission also collected statistics and information from member nations via its reporting procedures, which it then utilised to assess global trends and identify gaps in implementation. This monitoring function contributed to increased accountability and transparency in the goal of sustainable development.

Performance

The overall performance of the CSD, particularly regarding its core data-based mandate, was seen as having a mixed response. The Commission’s primary task was to evaluate the progress of Agenda 21, for which it began developing a set of sustainable development indicators. Analysis of the CSD’s data-based products shows a “far from excellent” performance, especially regarding the institutional indicators.

  • Poor Pilot Testing. During a field test by pilot countries, the institutional indicators performed badly. A third (33%) of these indicators were rarely chosen by countries, which cited non-relevance, lack of clarity, or difficulties in data availability. This failure rate was significantly higher than the 11% average for all other types of indicators.
  • Drastic Revisions. These weaknesses were reflected in the CSD’s 2001 revised version of the indicators. In that final version, 60% of the original institutional indicators were dropped.
  • Resulting Imbalance. This left the ‘institutions’ dimension with only a third as many indicators as each of the other three dimensions. The UN Division for Sustainable Development (UNDSD) explicitly acknowledged this gap and called for additional work to substantiate this aspect.

There were more general issues, which has been explored in the ‘Emerging Issues’ section.

Despite these weaknesses, the CSD’s process made several significant contributions to the global sustainable development agenda, particularly in shaping the conceptual framework.

  • Shift in Global Discourse (The Four Dimensions). A major achievement was the CSD’s effort to broaden the established “pressure-state-response” indicator concept, which had been exclusively focused on the environment. The CSD framework was expanded to include the economic and social dimensions.
  • Integrating Institutions. Critically, the CSD recognized that institutions turned out to be a necessary extension to cover crucial elements of Agenda 21. The CSD’s indicator set was therefore divided into four distinct issue areas: economic, environmental, social, and institutional.
  • Promoting Awareness of Governance. By including institutional indicators, the CSD was one of the first bodies to attempt to formally measure governance and participation. The CSD indicator framework included metrics such as:
    • Representation of major groups in national councils for sustainable development.
    • Representation of ethnic minorities and indigenous people in national councils.
    • Ratification and implementation of global agreements.
    • National sustainable development strategies.

Impact

The CSD helped bring about many on-ground changes through its agenda-setting function. For instance, its recommendations led directly to the creation of the UN Forum on Forests, which established a new framework for sustainable forest management worldwide. Similarly, CSD discussions on oceans resulted in the establishment of the UN’s Informal Consultative Process on Oceans, fundamentally shaping global ocean governance. It also increased the pace of the processes that led to the Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, which regulate hazardous chemicals and pollutants, creating tangible changes in industrial and agricultural practices globally.

Ultimately, the CSD’s most profound impact was its innovative inclusion of civil society (“Major Groups”), which institutionalized a multi-stakeholder approach to sustainable development. While this did not always translate to immediate on-ground changes, it fundamentally altered the landscape of global environmental governance by embedding the principle of participatory decision-making, a practice that continues to influence sustainable development efforts today.

Issues

Despite its accomplishments, the Commission on Sustainable Development has experienced numerous obstacles and criticisms throughout the years. According to the last summary report on the Asian and Pacific Regional Implementation Meeting on Rio+20 Outcomes published by IISD, the CSD’s first 10 years were well supported with high-level representation, but that enthusiasm began to diminish in the later years. It was due to:

  • Insufficient focus on implementation
  • Focusing mainly on the environmental perspective, leading to a failure to attract ministers from the economic and social sectors
  • Lack of an outcome at some meetings due to different takes of the member nations
  • Lack of stakeholder participation in implementation
  • Outcomes were not legally binding, which limited the accountability of Member States to implement their recommendations.
  • Failed to mobilize the necessary financial resources and technology transfer for developing countries
  • Multi-year work programme was too inflexible to address new and emerging challenges effectively

Way Forward

Replacing the CSD in 2013, the United Nations General Assembly formed the HLPF (High-level Political Forum) to provide a more comprehensive and effective framework for assessing and implementing the SDGs, which were approved in 2015. It was done as part of a larger restructuring of the UN’s institutional structure for sustainable development, and as a means to overcome the shortcomings faced by the CSD. 

References

About the Contributor

Devshi Satish Mishra is a Research Intern at IMPRI and a student at the University of Delhi pursuing Economics Honours. 

Acknowledgment: The author sincerely thanks the IMPRI team for their valuable support.

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organization.

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