Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Addressing Resilience through the Nexus of Water-Food-Energy; Cities as SDG Laboratories was organized by the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future and the International Science Council and the UNC Water Institute. The power point that supports this can be found here.
The Rural-Urban Nexus:  
Cities are to be seen not in isolation, but intrinsically connected with broader ecosystem as part of a metabolism of flows and interconnected social and ecological processes. A substantial proportion of the water, energy and food that supports urban living is supplied from rural areas outside the cities. The largely one-way flow of these resources together with the pollution and waste generated in urban spaces have a determining effect on patterns of rural development and the integrity of the ecosystems services. The Nexus approach has already shown itself to have a crucial part to play in ensuring that the supply of water, energy and food services to cities is managed in ways that optimize …

Addressing Resilience through the Nexus of Water-Food-Energy;Cities as SDG Laboratories
Tuesday, July 17th, 1:15-2:30 pm Conference Room F, next to the UN bookshop

organized by Stakeholder Forum and the International Science Council  
The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can only be achieved if they are pursued in an integrated manner. The way cities and human settlements are designed, planned, built, financed and governed has far-reaching implications for a life of dignity for all people and for the sustainable future of our planet.

Globally, cities are increasingly recognised as transformative development actors, and their relevance for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda is acknowledged as not only crucial, but imperative. There are many opportunities to shape the consideration of urban sustainability issu…

Steven Stone: Chief, Resources and Markets BranchUnited Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) this is reprinted from the Green Growth Knowledge Platform.
Somewhere back in the 12th century, a young man by the name of Francesco Bernadone heard a voice, telling him to “go and repair this house.”   He set about repairing the chapel, and kicked off a movement that would revitalize the catholic church and inspire all who love nature. Fast forward to March 2013, when Jorge Bergoglio was elected Pope – and chose the name of Francis. It was just three years ago, on June 18, my birthday, that Pope Francis launched Laudato Si, an invitation to all for dialogue on the radical changes needed to repair our common home, the earth. Last week, in Rome, his team from the Dicastery for Integral Human Development - led by Cardinal Turkson - convened voices from around the globe to celebrate and put into action the radical call for ecological conversion.  People from all faiths coming together t…

By Jessie Henshaw*
I’ve been observing the SDGs as a natural systems scientist since 2013 when I saw with some surprise that the one topic both Country delegates and Civil Society groups could agree on was the wording of the ideals for global development.Even when the Co-Chairs, Ambassadors Korosi, and Kamu, began persistently asking for the discussion to turn to means and methods it never did.Ideals are wonderful, but the SDGs are responding to a still growing global disruption of human and natural cultures, a problem not studied or discussed. I find somewhat the same problem with this year’s otherwise wonderful “Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2018” (see www.2030spotlight.org).Its critiques seem excellent and hard not to agree with, but also seemed to assume ideal purposes lead to ideal results, as the drafting of the SDG’s did.The real problem is that the growing harm to human cultures and nature caused by accelerating growth is a rapidly moving and expanding target. As growth …

Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal set of seventeen goals and 169 targets, with accompanying indicators, which were agreed by UN member states to frame their policy agendas for the fifteen-year period from 2015 to 2030. Written by three authors who have been engaged in the development of the SDGs from the beginning, this book offers an insider view of the process and a unique entry into what will be seen as one of the most significant negotiations and global policy agendas of the twenty-first century.  The book reviews how the SDGs were developed, what happened in key meetings and how this transformational agenda, which took more than three years to negotiate, came together in September 2015. It dissects and analyzes the meetings, organizations and individuals that played key roles in their development. It provides fascinating insights into the subtleties and challenges of high-level negotiation processes of governme…

Guest blog: Ed Mayo is secretary general of Co-operatives UK, the national apex association for co-operative and mutual enterprise in the United Kingdom, and vice president of Cooperatives Europe, the European region of the International Co-operative Alliance. “What You Can Do, or Dream You Can, Begin It”
John Anster, after Goethe There is a vision for the world, set down by the United Nations (UN) in the form of a series of targets for the period running up to 2030. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by UN member states in September 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development offer a powerful shared vision of development. They recognise the complexity of the challenge they represent. They are universal and they are integrated. Above all, taken together, they represent a fundamental shift from a model of development oriented around economic growth to one that aims to be both an environmentally sustainable and a socially equitable model. It can be argued …