For only the fourth time in its almost 150-year history, the Universal Postal Union convened its supreme decision-making body for an urgent session – this time to decide how to navigate an increasingly non-snail mail world.
The U.N. agency that oversees the international postal network said it ended its 4th "Extraordinary Congress" in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh on Thursday with agreements on better cooperation with non-government postal businesses, setting climate action targets and modernizing plans for postal financial services.
The voluntary climate action targets for the postal sector are aimed at reducing carbon emissions and spreading more mitigation, adaptation and climate finance.
Delegates also agreed to change UPU’s legal frameworks for postal payment services and establish an advisory knowledge centre, subject to extrabudgetary funding, to ensure future-ready services.
“As we leave Riyadh, let us carry with us the spirit of collaboration, the determination to innovate, and the unwavering commitment to serve our communities," said
The session opened on Sunday, saying member nations would decide "several key proposals aimed at ensuring a sustainable future for international postal services."
UPU's 192-nation Congress usually meets once every four years, but an Extraordinary Congress can be held when there are urgent issues to be dealt with that can't wait until the next quadrennial meeting.
The first such urgent session was held in 1900 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the international organization based in Bern, Switzerland. The next two urgent sessions came more than a century later.
Both the second session in 2018 and the third session in 2019 dealt with political pressure from former U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to overhaul international delivery rates.
Trump was responding to a widespread complaint among U.S. businesses that inbound packages from China and other countries enjoyed lower remuneration rates than what domestic shippers paid. The U.S. Postal Service had been spending up to half a billion dollars a year to subsidize deliveries imported from China.
The Trump administration had threatened to withdraw the United States from the Treaty of Bern, signed on October 9, 1874, that is the basis for the international organization.
It reversed course after delegates at UPU's third urgent session agreed to a compromise plan to change international delivery rates that add consumer costs. Soon after his election in 2020, U.S. President Joe Biden move to restore ties with international organizations and treaties that his predecessor shunned.
A quest for consensus on climate and technology
Ironically, the impetus for creating UPU first came from an International Postal Conference at Paris in 1863 that was convened at the request of a U.S. politician and lawyer, Maryland's Montgomery Blair.
While serving as U.S. Postmaster General in the Lincoln administration during America's Civil War, Blair urged greater international postal cooperation because, as he reported to the U.S. Congress in 1862, “the whole system, as now established, is too complex to be readily understood by postmasters."
This week's talks centered on climate change, financial services and how to increase cooperation between government postal agencies, private companies and other partners such as e-retailers, couriers, logistics and financial providers, airlines, railways, and customs organizations.
UPU said delegates at the five-day talks also would weigh how to develop postal financial services that can offer "financial inclusion for more 1 billion people who remain unbanked," UPU Director General Masahiko Metoki said.
Delegates also considered proposals for nations to fulfill a 2021 UPU Congress resolution that called for greater climate action by the postal sector. Most are voluntary emissions-cutting targets, climate pledges, capacity-building and collaborations with private companies and partners.
As host to the talks, Saudi Transport Minister Saleh bin Nasser Al Jasser said his nation wanted to help promote e-commerce, stimulate the digital economy and modernize postal and logistical operations.
Metoki noted that the groundwork for the Extraordinary Congress came from the 2021 meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where delegates agreed more time would be needed to build consensus views.
At that meeting, delegates reviewed more than 200 proposals for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of international postal services and UPU's operations. They also emphasized themes of sustainability and gender equality.
"We have all worked hard over the last two years to try to build consensus on these matters," Metoki told the opening session. "It is my sincere hope that, in the spirit of the UPU’s traditional value of compromise, we can all find common ground to approve these proposals here in Riyadh."
This story has been updated with additional details.
