Make no mistake, when Erik Solheim resigned as head of UN Environment on 20th November 2018, less than two and a half years into what most likely would have been an eight-year tenure, the timing was not of his choosing.
The
proximate reason for his defenestration was a damning report by the UN’s
internal auditors, known as the Office for Internal Oversight Services. The
report excoriated his travel expenses, which amounted to nearly $500,000 spent on
business-class flights and hotels over the course of 22 months. It also
detailed a variety of other eye-catching issues, such as spending nearly 80% of
his time out of the organisation’s Kenyan headquarters and relaxing HR rules
for favoured staff members.
It
is vanishingly rare for Under-Secretary-Generals (USG) in the UN system to be
forced out of office. Getting one of those jobs involves extensive lobbying
from high-level officials from the person’s home country who are eager to see
one of their compatriots land a prestigious world position. Once USGs are in
post, regardless of their performance, the UN tends to let them see out at least
their first four-year term, to avoid washing dirty linen in public and angering
a member state.
When
Erik joined UN Environment in mid-2016, staff were buoyant, exuberant even. Here
was a political heavyweight: a former Environment and Development Minister in
Norway, one of the most generous aid-providing nations, and chair of the
Development Assistance Committee of the OECD, one of the most influential
positions in the aid world.
Yet,
within two years, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark had frozen their core
funding, staff morale had plummeted, The Guardian newspaper was firing regular
broadsides and the Secretary-General was asking him to step down.
Where
did it all go wrong?
I worked in the UN Environment Programme’s Nairobi headquarters from 2014 until last summer. Two of those years were under the previous head, Achim Steiner (now head of UNDP) and two were during Erik’s tenure. I got to see both of their management styles in action. It was quite the education in the impact of leadership.
The
next Executive Director is due to be announced this week. I’m out of the UN
system now, so I’m able to speak freely. I thought it would be useful to share my
subjective, insider’s view of what Erik got right, what he got wrong and what
the next Executive Director should do differently.
* * * * *
It
started on a very positive note. Many staff were delighted when Erik Solheim
was chosen to succeed Achim Steiner in 2016.
He
was a well-known figure on the environment circuit. He had spearheaded several
bold moves by the Norwegian government, such as raising Norway’s aid budget to
more than one per cent of gross domestic product and kicking off the Reduced
Emissions for Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) initiative, which held
the promise of finally changing the economic calculations around massive
deforestation.
Staff
were also impressed by his many positive qualities. He is energetic, passionate
and approachable. He insisted that the normally deferential UN staff call him
by his first name. He encouraged people to dispense with their customary
linguistic cloaks of acronyms and scientific jargon. He implored them to
communicate their work in a way that was comprehensible to the average person
on the street (his acid test was to ask whether a report would be understood by
his 90-year-old mother). He pushed people to think outside the box.
In
short, he was a welcome breath of fresh air in what often felt like a staid and
unhurried bureaucracy.
His
energy was impressive and his enthusiasm infectious. He criss-crossed the world
(hence the airmiles) meeting ministers, CEOs and heads of state. Undoubtedly, he
increased the profile of the organization. He propelled and energised important
campaigns around air
pollution and plastic waste.
But even so, it fell apart. On reflection, I think he made three big mistakes:
1/. More General, Less Secretary
There’s
an old adage in the UN that every Secretary-General has to master two competing
jobs: to be the world’s top diplomat corralling recalcitrant member states to a
higher cause (the General), while at the same time managing an impossibly
complex organisation of more than 100,000 staff working on every issue you can
imagine, in every place possible (the Secretary). The same is true, to a
degree, for the heads of organisations such as UN Environment.
The
trouble was that Erik focused on the ‘General’ part of his job to the almost
total exclusion of the ‘Secretary’ part of his job. He saw himself as a roving global
Minister for the Environment, with the entire world as his stage. His gaze was
outwards, but his blind spot was a fragile, complex and somewhat needy
organisation of 900 or so staff.
This
might not have been such a problem if he had empowered the right people to keep
the trains running on time in his absence. However, he seemed to view any of
the senior staff who had stayed on since Achim – i.e., those who knew about
both the trains and the timetables – with almost total disdain. He appeared to actively
side-line them or try to push them out.
In their place, he brought in or elevated his own people, who wielded tremendous power over budgets, jobs and opportunities in what soon turned into a ‘game of thrones’ saga of individual power games, patronage and fiefdoms. This sent staff a deeply dysfunctional message: you were rewarded on the basis of your perceived loyalty to the new boss rather than your ability to do your job. The ‘old guard’ senior staff, some of whom are among the most professional, dedicated and effective people I have ever worked with, could do no right in his eyes, while those he had brought in could do no wrong. Staff used to joke ruefully that this kind of a toxic atmosphere must be similar to that in Trump’s White House.
2/. Snubbed the member states
I
think Erik’s second major mistake was that he forgot, or didn’t care, that he
was running an organisation with 190+ bosses – the member states of the UN.
He
defined a set of priorities for the organisation that appeared to deviate from
those that had been agreed to by member states (known as the Programme of
Work). He frequently skipped the regular meetings of the Committee of Permanent
Representatives (CPR), where national-level diplomats provide the main monthly
oversight mechanism for the organisation. He often looked visibly bored when he
did attend the meetings, and gave the impression that he felt the (typically middle-ranking)
foreign service officers in attendance were somehow beneath him.
While
the member state representatives at the CPR are not ambassadors to the Security
Council, all the ones I knew were hard-working, dedicated professionals with
impressive stamina for meetings and capacity for organisational detail. They are
also the ones who write the reports that go back to capitals, so an Executive
Director ignores them at his or her peril.
Early on in his time, Erik needlessly lost political capital with member states by unilaterally rebranding UNEP as UN Environment. He effectively rammed this through by presenting member states with a fait accompli, complete with new logos and signage. No delegate I ever spoke to disagreed with the idea of making the organisation easier to relate to, and no one had a problem with the new name, but the way it was forced through lost him more member state support than he probably ever realised.
3/. Got the politics wrong, again and again…
Erik’s
third mistake was, in my view, the most surprising. He is a career politician
with decades of experience in the Norwegian Parliament and a background as a
peace negotiator… yet he seemed to have terrible political instincts, not least
for his own self-preservation.
His
distance from the day-to-day running of the organisation helped to create a
toxic work environment, and his disregard for normal UN rules sent a message
that he saw himself as above the laws that applied to others. His snubbing of
the Committee of Permanent Representatives slowly sapped political support for
his leadership.
He also implemented an institutional pivot to Asia, focusing much of his time and trips on India and China, and fulsomely praising their environmental progress. This made a lot of sense: the world our grandchildren inherit will largely be shaped by choices made in Beijing and New Delhi. However, his support of China’s Belt and Road initiative, possibly the largest infrastructure project of the twenty-first century, seemed so uncritical that it set alarm bells ringing in other capitals around the world.
Meanwhile, Erik jetted around the world, often taking multiple business-class flights in a week and travelling with a retinue of staff, at great expense in terms of both taxpayer money and carbon emissions. While Executive Director of UN Environment, he even gave an interview to a Norwegian aviation website in which he said that Norwegians should not feel guilty for flying and boasted that he had platinum membership to the main frequent flyer programmes, a staggering admission for someone who was supposed to be a figurehead for the environmental movement.
A cannier operator would have avoided these obvious own-goals. As a damning op-ed in Deutsche Welle concluded: “his actions paint a questionable picture of a corrupt politician using a position of privilege to his own advantage”. But Erik has an unshakable belief in his own righteousness that is both an asset and major weakness. When the audit storm clouds were gathering, he doubled down, angrily rejecting much of the OIOS criticism of his travel schedule, lack of documentation and disregard of the HR rules.
After
he left UN Environment, he gave an interview
to a Norwegian newspaper in which he insinuated that he was fired because the
UN simply wasn’t ready for his style of radical reform. The fact that he was
willing to tarnish the organisation as part of a ‘burn the houses’ attempt to
rehabilitate his reputation must have chipped away at any residual goodwill
that staff may have felt.
* * * * *
This
week, a new Executive Director will be appointed in time to attend the United
Nations Environment Assembly, which takes place next month. This is an
opportunity to turn a new leaf, and to get UN Environment’s vital mission back
on track.
UN
Environment is a small organisation, created in 1972 almost as an afterthought
in the international system and headquartered well away from the UN centres of gravity
in New York and Geneva. Nevertheless, it plays an outsized role. As Achim
Steiner liked to say, UN Environment is the only bit of the UN whose work is
focused on the generations yet to come. The new ED has a daunting job ahead. I
have three pieces of advice to offer as he or she embarks on that path:
- Embody and
live the principles of the organisation
This
really shouldn’t have to be said, but evidently it bears repeating: The incoming
Executive Director has to walk the talk.
This
means the little things, like not turning up to a public meeting on plastic waste
carrying a disposable coffee cup (ahem, Erik). But it also means the big things,
like following the same rules you demand of your staff.
Personally,
I would also like to see a dramatic reduction in business-class flights, which,
short of chartering your own plane, is about the most carbon-intensive form of
travel possible, producing on average about three
and a half times more greenhouse gas emissions than economy-class travel.
Bill Swing, the
octogenarian former head of the International
Organization for Migration, is a wonderful role model. Mr Swing made a
point of never travelling business class, pointing out that he couldn’t
countenance flying in a luxurious business class seat above migrants travelling
in leaking boats or by ramshackle caravans. And you can be sure that very few
of his staff would take up their nominal ‘right’ to a business-class flight in
the event of a journey over a certain number of hours. If he can do it, then so
can everyone at UN Environment.
- Balance
the internal and the external
The
new Executive Director will have to try to find his or her own line between
being the ‘Secretary’ and being the ‘General’. Both roles require time, planning
and attention to detail.
Ignore
the world outside, and the organisation turns inward and becomes ineffective. Overlook
the health of the organization itself, and, as Erik found out, it becomes an
unhappy place. The new Executive Director urgently needs to rebuild trust and
collegiality within UN Environment, while helping it move on from the negative
headlines of the past few months.
- Focus on
results
One
way to help the organisation turn a new page is to focus relentlessly on
delivering the organization’s core work. UN Environment’s mandate is critical.
Its mission is to inspire, inform and enable people around the world to live
more sustainably. It is supposed to set the global environmental agenda.
But
it is easy to get lost in the thickets of worthy conferences, meetings with like-minded
people, and long reports that no one reads. The new ED has to make sure that the
maelstrom of daily challenges doesn’t swamp the larger picture.
The
new ED needs to set realistic targets and then hold people to account for them;
do what he or she can to reduce bureaucratic friction in the system; and listen
to member states, while also pushing them to improve their own environmental
performance.
It’s
a big job, and not an easy one. But a successful Executive Director would be
good for us all.
