Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

By Fernando Prieto and Carlos Alfonso are members of The Sustainability Observatory (Observatorio de la Sostenibilidad).
There are indicators that not only is the country in bad shape, but getting worse.An example of which is the rising number of an increasingly impoverished workforce, or temporary contracts going against labor norms.

It could be due to the cool and perky logo, but the Objetivos de Desarrollo  Sostenible (Sustainable Growth Objectives) is creating interest in public administrations, companies, NGOs and even political parties. Presented here are ways of trying to measure sustainability, taking into account dynamic aspects found within four areas of analytical studies considered essential: persons (social aspect), the ecology (environment), the economy, and solidarity (governance). While it is a fact that a large part of these objectives are completely interrelated and some even obtaining high scores, the objective is to get good scores in each and every aspect, not lea…

High-Level Political Forum 2019 The High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) will have two sessions in 2019. Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces the UN President of the General Assembly has selected the co-facilitators for the Political Declaration for these meetings  These are Ambassador Sheila Gweneth Carey, Permanent Representative of Bahamas, and Ambassador Olof Skoog, Permanent Representative of Sweden,
The HLPF in July will be (9-18) July from Tuesday, 9 July, to Monday, 15 July 2019, it will then be followed by a three-day ministerial meeting convening from Tuesday, 16 July, to Thursday, 18 July 2019.
The theme for that HLPF in July will be ''Empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality'. 
It will review of:

SDG 4 (quality education), SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth), SDG 10 (reduced inequalities), SDG 13 (climate action) and SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions), in addition to SDG 17 (partnerships for the Goals) which is reviewed each year.
The HL…

It is sad to report that Dr Caleb Otto the former Ambassador for the Republic of Palau is no longer with us. 

The Permanent Mission of the Republic of Palau to the United Nations has asked people to send their condolences and remembrances in the form of written notes and/or photos via email inmemoryofotto@gmail.com by November 7th. They will then by included in a condolence bookA Memorial for Dr. Caleb Otto.

Otto was a charter member of the Rotary Club of Palau and Board member of the Palau National Olympic Committee as well as the Palau Conservation Society. He is also a Founder of the Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Palau. In the international policy arena, he was the negotiator representing Palau on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control for which he received the WHO Director-General Award in 2003. 
He championed the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Palau and was the lead author of the first report of its implementation, which he presented before the Comm…

By Felix Dodds and Gaston Ocampo
Introduction This blog is to focus on the issue of the private sector, the UN Global Compact (UNGC), and the particular companies that are members of the UNGC. It will look at their Voluntary Reports and then compare them to their profiles by the independent Corporate Human Rights Benchmarking.. This does raise some serious questions which are very relevant to the present discussion of the UN Global Partnership resolution that is being negotiated in the coming weeks at the UN General Assembly Committee 2.
It has been estimated that the cost of delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is somewhere between $US 3-5 trillion each year.
In 2017, Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) was roughly $US 171 billion. As many have said, much of the shortfall of funding will have to be addressed by the private sector. Some of this shortfall of funding will also be addressed by Private Public Partnerships (PPPs), Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs) or gov…