Obituaries of Klaus Töpfer have understandably focused on his remarkable and pioneering career as an environmentalist – first in his native Germany, and then internationally through the Rio Earth Summit and his stewardship of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which he led for eight years. And so very much more – Professor Klaus Töpfer tended to have a significant and lasting impact on all the challenges he confronted.
His successful years at UNEP can obscure the very real change he brought to the (then) United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS). UNCHS was always in the shadow of its larger and more famous neighbour: if you wanted to go the UN HQ in Nairobi, you only had to ask any taxi-driver to take you to UNEP. That was the address.
Following the 1996 Habitat II Conference in Istanbul, UNCHS itself was in poor shape. A combination of weak leadership, poor financial management and organisational drift made its future uncertain. In 1998 Secretary General Kofi Annan asked Klaus Töpfer if, in addition to leading UNEP, he would be prepared to be the Acting Executive Director of UNCHS and advise the SG on the future of the organisation.
Within a short space of time, Töpfer had assembled a small international team to advise him on possible options for UNCHS. Under his overall political direction and leadership, a New Strategic Vision for UNCHS was soon approved by the member states. With this platform, Töpfer took decisive steps to re-orient and re-position UNCHS
Two examples: Töpfer personally signed the Memorandum of Understanding, through which the UN’s Global Campaign for Secure Tenure was launched in Mumbai, in partnership with three thousand members of the National Slum Dwellers’ Federation (NSDF) of India, under Jockin Arputham.
Concerned at the lack of attention to the growing impact of urbanisation and urban poverty, Töpfer entered a set of exchanges with James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, to create a new partnership to improve coherence of effort amongst development agencies, and to focus on the growth of urban poverty in general, and the plight of slumdwellers in particular. This agreement resulted in the 1999 Berlin launch of the Cities Alliance, under the patronage of President Nelson Mandela. The first and most telling impact of this partnership was the adoption of the Cities without Slums Action Plan, which resulted in slums – and slumdwellers - making their first appearance on the global agenda at the Millennium Assembly.
Within a couple of years of Töpfer successfully steering UNCHS through difficult times and handing over to a new Executive Director, in 2002 the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 56/206, which converted UNCHS into the Secretariat of the new United Nations Settlement Programme, or the UN-Habitat that we know today. It is also noteworthy that in May 2024 the Cities Alliance celebrated its 25th Anniversary, and that one of its previous staff members - Anaclaudia Rossbach – was last week elected the new Executive Director of UN-Habitat.
Klaus Töpfer was amongst the most impressive, astute and empathetic people I have ever met. We all benefitted from his extraordinary political acumen and experience, clear sense of purpose and emphatic decision-making, all of which were rounded off with a great sense of humour and a truly memorable turn of phrase.
William (Billy) Cobbett
