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114. Nevertheless, there is also a need to increase the financial resources for new multilateral efforts and programmes of action for environmental protection and sustainable development. These new funds will not be easy to come by if the international organizations through which they flow have to continue to rely solely on traditional sources of financing: assessed contributions from governments, voluntary contributions by governments, and funds borrowed in capital markets by the World Bank and other international financial institutions.
115. Assessed contributions from governments nave traditional been used largely for the administrative and operating costs international organizations; they are not intended for multilateral assistance. The total assessed contributions governments are much smaller than the amount provided through voluntary contributions and the prospects of arising significant additional funds through assessed contributions are limited. 116. Voluntary contributions by governments give the overall revenue system some flexibility, but they cannot be adjusted readily to meet new or increased requirements. Being voluntary, the flow of these funds is entirely discretionary and unpredictable. The commitments are also extremely short-term, as pledges are normally made only one or two years in advance. Consequently, they provide little security or basis for effective planning and management of international actions requiring sustained, longer-term efforts. Most of the limited funds provided so far for international environmental action have come through voluntary contributions, channelled principally through UNEP and NGOs.
117. Given the current constraints on major sources and modes of funding, it is necessary to consider new approaches as well as new sources of revenue for financing international action in support of sustainable development. The Commission recognizes that such proposals may not appear politically realistic at this point in time. It believes, however, that – given the trends discussed in this report the need to support sustainable development will become so imperative that political realism will come to require it.
118. The search for other, and especially more automatic, sources and means for financing international action goes almost as far back as the UN itself. It was not until 1977, however, when the Plan of Action to Combat Desertification was approved by the UN General Assembly that governments officially accepted, but never implemented, the principle of automatic transfers. That Plan called for the establishment of a special account that could draw resources not only from traditional sources but also from additional measures of financing, 'including fiscal measures entailing autuomaticity'[1]
119. Since then, a series of studies and reports[2] have identified and examined a growing list of new sources of potential revenue, including:
- ↑ Report of the United Nations Conference on Desertification, Document A/CONF,74/36 (New York: UN, 1977).
- ↑ See for example, E.B. Steinberg , and J.A. Yager, 'New Means of Financing International Needs'. The Brookings Institution. Washington, PC, 1978; 'Additional measures and Means of Financing for the Implementation of the Plan of Action to Combat Desertification', document UNEP/GC.6/9/Add. 1.. 1978; UN. 'Study on Financing the United Nations Plan of Action to Combat Desertification: Report of the Secretary-General', General Assembly document A/35/396, 1980: Dag Hammarskjold Foundation 'The Automatic Mobilization of Resources for Development', Development Dialogue, No. 1, 1981; UN, 'Study on Financing the Plan of Action to Combat Desertification: Report of the Secretary-General'. General Assembly document A/36/141, 1981.
