Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Sitting at the airport after the Commission on Sustainable Development IPM seemed a good time to reflect on Earth Summit 2012 reflections. The week saw Stakeholder Forum host a dinner on Tuesday the 24th of February 2009. It certainly gave food for thought for those attending. Around 17 governments had people attending all in their personal capacity The dinner looked at if the Summit was a good idea or not and report of it will appear on the Stakeholder Forum Earth Summit 2012 web site in about a week’s time. What I found interesting is the realisation by many that we are going to be facing multi crisis in the coming years and the present set up isn’t working. A summit is one way of addressing it but it may not be the only one. This week also saw the BBC start to initiate a debate on the Summit through Richard Black's blog under the title 'Slow road to green reform'. In the final speech by the Swiss Government to the CSD IPM they said: "Lastly, Mada...

In an opening statement to the CSD17 Intersessional Preparatory Meeting, on the 23rd of February 2009, G77 Chair Sudanese Ambassador Abdalmahood Abdalhaleem Mohamed told the CSD: “In 2012, the International community will reach the twenty-year mark of the Earth Summit held in 1992 and the ten-year anniversary of WSSD held in Johannesburg in 2002. It will be 40 years after the Stockholm Conference of 1972. The time will be opportune for the international community to thoroughly review and assess the progress achieved since these two momentous summits. Guided by the “Rio Spirit”, a Rio-plus-20 Summit should provide the necessary political impetus for the range and level of action required to bridge the implementation gap. In this context the G77 and China welcomes the offer of the Government of Brazil to host such a Summit in 2012." Informally the discussion around the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development is if there is to be a Summit perhaps it needs to ...

The twenty fifth session of UNEP Governing Council finished on the 20th of February . One of the really interesting discussions around the 2012 agenda was initiated by the South African Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk in a speech at the plennary session on International Environmental Governance (IEG). He outlined a roadmap on IEG: "The first milestone will be when we meet in a year from now, in February 2010. At that meeting we should ideally adopt a Ministerial Declaration on the principles and objectives (on IEG) that will guide our further work in the run-up to Rio plus 20." Other Ministers in the plennary and the working groups supported the use of Rio+20 for bringing a final decision on International Environmental Governance. Stakeholder Forum in the Ministeral Round Tables outlined three outcomes they hoped for on IEG - these included support for the South African inititiative but expanded to include sustainable development governance. The second outcome Stakehold...