With appreciation to meassociation.org.uk
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. Charles Dickens
To grow up is to fight for it, to grow old is to lose it after having possessed it. Eudora Welty
The eye by tears speak, while the tongue is mute. Robert Herrick
Your anchors are holding firm and they permit you both comfort in the present, and hope in the future. Boethius
People are not always very tolerant of the tears which they themselves have provoked. Marcel Proust
The truth of the story lies in the details. Paul Auster
Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. Stephen Levine
The outcome of every worry is a worry itself. Mahendar Singh Jakhar
Of all the week’s images that literally flood our social media and email inboxes on a regular basis, the most moving for me was to be found during an interview at the COP 26 event in Glasgow with Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and current head of the Group of Elders (https://theelders.org/), a group of former senior officials and global leaders who, together, seek to remind current policymakers of the accumulated wisdom and insight which can be elusive in the midst of policy tensions but which becomes clearer and more actionable with time and distance.
Ms. Robinson has long been one of my few heroes/heroines at the UN. Even while taking on difficult tasks and promoting controversial opinions she has been able to maintain her clarity and humanity. Thus it was no real surprise that, while discussing the multiple frustrations associated with this COP including the omnipresent fossil fuel lobbyists and obstructionist governments (she mentioned Saudi Arabia by name, but there were others) seemingly content to kick urgent response to the emissions crisis to yet another COP, another parking lot for private jets and bad faith negotiations, another reminder to our youth that their future is being compromised yet again by older folks addicted to their privilege and deaf to the cries of those who that privilege continues to threaten, that in the midst of all of that, signs of her deep worry and compassion surfaced.
In fact, while speaking, it became clear that the venerable Ms. Robinson was fighting back tears. She was hardly alone. We might all be tempted to allow tears to flow at another opportunity for healing wasted at least in part, wasted by yet another UN-sponsored event that generated more carbon than hope, another lost opportunity for governments to overcome the prevailing sense that while the language of solidarity may remain hot, hopeful actions of solidarity remain lukewarm at best.
In our 20 years or so of fussing over policy norms and those institutions such as the UN that create them, we have been steadfast in both highlighting and linking global threats – famine and impunity, destructive weapons and biodiversity loss, climate change and terrorism. And while all these threats have complex and specific responsibilities associated with them, from delivering humanitarian assistance in conflict zones and restoring bio-rich habitat to ending cross-border weapons trafficking and creating dependable structures to ensure justice for victims of grave abuses, the need to address threats in tandem remains. We now understand more of the linkages between the spread of pandemics and biodiversity loss, between biodiversity loss and famine, between famine and armed conflict, between armed conflict and rights abuses. The chain that binds these threats seems to be getting longer not shorter, and we know (or should know) that inter-connected crisis are unlikely to be resolved merely by focusing on a single link of the chain.
Indeed, one of the benefits of the UN as an institution is the extent to which it tries to keep the full chain in view, even if bureaucracy (or the wishes or some powerful states) sometimes dictate that issues remain quarantined in places of specialized competence. But many at the UN also recognize both that the quarantine must be only temporary and that we must generate the will and resources to meet this current moment, to reassure constituents that we genuinely have their back, to demonstrate that the challenges on our watch can be successfully implemented while there is still time for us to keep.
And this leads to the issue of governance and the officials which in some key areas have seemingly lost their way or, perhaps more precisely, lost our way. We understand that UN diplomats more often represent positions than formulate them. We understand that we live in a world of considerable tensions which multilateral spaces retain some ability to “soften.” We understand that people have wildly different expectations of those who govern in national and multilateral spaces, specifically of their levels of attentiveness and promise keeping, regarding threats up and down the global chain. We understand that the UN maintains some genuine capacity, as former Slovenia president Danilo Turk noted this week, “to turn tensions into rules.”
But we also understand that trust in governance is at a precipitous juncture; trust in the ability of states to lead us away from the abyss, but also trust that officials can and will demonstrate the willingness to compromise their own position and status, to take the hard decisions that may cost them votes in the short term but that will guarantee a safer, greener, fairer world in which to exercise our franchise in the longer term. While it is unfair to throw a wet blanket over all government actions and agents, the disappointing results of COP 26 are merely the latest example of officials offering half a loaf when a full loaf is required, offering “solutions” destined mostly to keep tensions and frustrations – especially those festering among the young – at a needlessly high pitch, allowing those with money and influence (as a friend from El Salvador recently noted) to “control all spaces of meaning and care for peace on earth.”
And as places like the UN seem disposed to hold many relevant stakeholders without money and status in their own policy exile, and as some states persist in shrugging their collective shoulders while planning for the next, best, global climate extravaganza, one opportunity after another to point us in a healing direction goes by the boards.
Indeed, the frustration with officials and distrust of their intentions may well constitute as serious a threat as that of any other point in the chain. This was the subtext of a Wednesday event featuring the aforementioned Danilo Turk and the former PM of Belgium Yves Leterme, both of whom shared concerns and recommendations at the UN this week on behalf of Club de Madrid. They were clear that a large problem in the world now is not just the policies of states and their makers but levels of trust in institutions of governance themselves and, more specifically, the erosion of confidence in democracy, both its principles and its authority.
Gratefully, Turk and Letterme came to the UN offering more than high levels of frustration and urgency regarding the state of democratic governance in our time. Among their recommendations to the UN was for a “peer review mechanism” to assess the health and competence of democracies and an “anti-corruption court” to adjudicate the most egregious instances of state officials using public funds to bankroll private interests, including and especially their own.
These were welcome suggestions, though neither entity would likely be established quickly or absent tensions and controversies, including over sources and quantities of funding. But such suggestions do highlight major truths of our time, including the increasingly widespread perception that we are not investing enough energy in the promotion of democracy — not simply the promotion of elections, but of inclusive participation in policy decisions and regular access to those in power. Alongside this is a related perception, that people with gobs of money and political status have become far too comfortable using up far more than their share of resources they did not earn for purposes not expressly authorized. Both perceptions, and the realities that lies behind them, are toxic to problem solving and trust building, two items that are clearly experiencing major supply-chain issues at this tumultuous moment in our collective history.
Given this, it is appropriate for all of us to join in wistful solidarity with Mary Robinson, to shed a tear or two over climate- related threats which have seemingly exposed every official inadequacy, every official compromise, every official misrepresentation of our current state of affairs. She knows better than the rest of us that we cannot – must not – separate the resolution of the issues we care about from the quality and status of those given institutional power and authority to effect what we must hope are “good faith” attempts to resolve them. At the same time, the rest of us must expand our own advocacy to include more regular attention to the instiutions and officials who can and must do more to become those “anchors” of hope, healing and comfort we need now; to better enable the contributions of youth and others to more sustainable ends rather than seducing or discouraging them with insincere invitations to participation; and to help the world in general sleep more soundly and live each day with fewer worries.
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