Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

I find myself in London on my way to Geneva for the launch of the Katerva Sustainability Awards and of course sitting in a café to get away from the London weather. Which by the way reminds me so well why I left London to escape the dark, dreary and rainy days. As I opened my morning’s emails I find two very important emails. The first is the publishing of the much-awaited Canadian Government’s Policy Horizon’s team MetaScan 2: Building Resilience in the Transition to a Digital Economy and a Networked Society Report. The second, also much awaited, is the result of the outcome from Rio+20, to negotiate the setting up of a UN High Level Political Forum, this is to replace the dysfunctional UN Commission on Sustainable Development, and as of yesterday has now been completed. Turning first to the MetaScan 2 Report. I am huge fan of the work of the Policy Horizon foresight team  within the Government of Canada. They have a mandate: “to help anticipate emerging pol...

Y OU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO ATTEND THE PRESENTATION OF THE Second Annual Katerva Awards T UESDAY , J ULY 2; 1:15-2:15 P . M . - United Nations Room XVII in the E Building on the 1st floor - Awards presentation by President of ECOSOC : H.E. Ambassador Néstor Osorio (Colombia) Facilitated by Felix Dodds, Katerva K ATERVA G RAND P RIZE A WARD W INNER : Bioneedle: Gijsbert van de Wijdeven, DVM, MSc., Co-founder, Chief Scientific Officer K ATERVA P EOPLES ’ C HOICE W INNER : Safe World for Women: Chris Crowstaff, Trustee and Founder The Katerva Awards, considered the pinnacle of global sustainability recognition, are given to individuals, enterprises and organizations whose innovations create not just 1 or 2% change, but have the potential to immeasurably shift the way business, consumption, lifestyle, and efficiency work to eradicate some of society’s most pressing issues. With 10 award categories that correspond to the pri...

Could I be the new Dr. Who? ...i wish it were so So it’s the 50th anniversary of Dr. Who and we are to have a new Doctor. It’s definitely been an interesting ride with Matt as the Doctor. I feel he was just getting into his stride and then he’ll be gone. Dr. Who has been part of my life since a child. Like many British citizens I scrambled behind the sofa as the first Doctor William Hartnell took up against the Daleks or the Cybermen as they took over London or corned the Doctor on a far off world. What couldn’t be cool? To be a time lord, able to travel in TIME and SPACE! As a child growing up in the 1960s …when we had just started our baby steps to explore space for the first time, this all seemed so possible, AND in a blue Police Box, which was MUCH bigger on the inside than the outside. At the time my father was working on the British (European) rocket project Blue Streak originally conceived as a British medium range ballistic missile (M...

I have been involved in international stakeholder politics for over two decades and sustainable development policy development for nearly three. Over the years, I have helped set up four different global coalitions of NGOs at the UN – around the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (1993), UN Habitat (1996),WHO (1999) and the Water and Climate Coalition (2007). I served as co-chair of the CSD NGO Steering Committee from 1997-2001 (note 1). I also served as chair of the 64 th UN DPI NGO Conference (2011). During the 1996 UN GA Special Session on Agenda 21, I played a leading role in introducing stakeholder dialogues to the United Nations. (Governments went into informal session to enable me to put the suggestion before them.) I then helped organize the CSD multi- stakeholder Dialogues from 1997-2001, the Bonn Water Dialogues (2001) and Bonn Energy Dialogues (2004). I share all this to explain that most of my time around the UN has been dedicated to expanding the...