Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Glenn Beck does not understand Agenda 21 or sustainable development By Felix Dodds (One of the authors with Michael Strauss and Maurice Strong of the recent book ‘Only OneEarth – The Long Road via Rio to Sustainable Development’   This blog was inspired by a review by Executive Editor William D’Alessandro of Victor House News Co. of the book Only One Earth that I co-authored along with Glenn Beck’s book Agenda 21   Glenn Beck’s book Agenda 21 is of course taking the name of the great negotiated agreement of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The original Agenda 21 was hoped to be a blueprint for the 21 st century moving towards a more sustainable future.   It is a very sad indictment of the politicians of the last twenty years that more of it was not enacted upon.   That brings me to Glenn Beck’s Agenda 21, which it turns out actually isn’t written by him but by a registered nurse, Harriet Parke. The book is a very depressing science fiction book claiming...

Human Rights and Sustainable Development Thank you for inviting me to address the fifth World Forum on Human Rights here in Nantes in France. I would like to cover three things in my speech. The impacts of Rio and its commitment to human rights The landscape of the new development goals for 2015 What human rights activists should focus on Some of the NGOs and media presented Rio+20 as a failure. That is not how I see it and I believe they contribute to weakening multilateralism. In 1992 I once equated a UK NGO as ‘Thatcher’s Children’ more interested in column inches than in the issue they claimed to be campaigning on. Clearly the challenges ahead are huge. This is because so many of the commitments made by governments over the last forty years since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on Human Environment have not been delivered. I do not know how many of you are aware of the excellent work by Johan Rockstrom of the Stockholm Resilience Center o...

Dear Ambassador, what a rich and interesting contribution to this afternoon’s session. The role of Science and technology will be increasingly critical to the challenges of today and tomorrow. I was interested in how the Minister discussed the issue of financing --- The new Expert Committee on Sustainable development financing needs to be collecting all the ideas on funding SD. Perhaps it should be looking to provide menus of funding options perhaps around the Human Development Index levels of development – clearly ODA will play a continued significant factor for  some countries but as Adnan said this morning even this is changing in sub Saharan Africa. Matching the new development goals and targets with effective and realistic funding to enable a real opportunity for integration of economic, social and environmental dimensions hasn’t been done since 1992 when of course that was not then delivered. I wanted to ask us to take a step back for a moment....