Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

The last month has seen two processes try and complement each other these being the Financing for Development and the Post 2015 Development Agenda's Means of Implementation and Global Partnership for Development. Means of Implementation  I have made a number of suggestions on HOW there could be more synergy in previous blogs. The process is stuck at the moment until this is resolved. Three additional meetings for Finance for Development have now been added to the agenda in the next 6 weeks. The additional dates are the 11-15 May, 26-29th of May and the 1-5th of June. A total of 14 additional days of negotiations. There is much more to be discussed in the FfD process but by the end of the first new session an agreed approach does need to become solid for the rest of the negotiations to move forward. Financing for Development It is unclear what the follow up process will be. Will it be through the HLPF? Will it be through the similar mechanism that was set up after Monetary ...

·   I thought I would share with my readers some excellent analysis of the Financing for Development text  by AVIVA for those who do not know AVIVA is provides 29 million customers with insurance, savings and investment products. It is  one of the UK’s leading insurers and one of Europe’s leading providers of life and general insurance. It has operations  in 16 countries and provide life, general and health insurance and asset management and  Aviva Investors has over £250 billion in assets under management. They looked at the zero draft and came up with 6 tests for the  financial  sector  This is taken from their submission: If the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are to succeed, they must promote inclusive capitalism. In other words, capital markets that address Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) issues at every stage of intermediation. This involves ensuring that capital markets are comprised of intermediaries...

I know I keep going on about the South African Non-Paper from 2002 but that is because it was VERY VERY good . We now find ourselves with an FfD text that has rewritten in some cases the MOI from the SDG document as opposed to just keeping say text. I don’t know why but it seems a little unnecessary to me. The next stage should then be the HOW you deliver the MOI from the SDG text. This brings me to the South African non paper structure. The proposed targets and time-frames are the MOI from the SDGs and then the HOW are points 2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Now I’m not saying it has to be all of them but a coherent and agreed structure under each SDG MOI in the FfD text would go a LONG way to delivering a coherent and complementary set of outcomes from the FfD process and the SDG process. 1.      proposed targets and time-frames (SDG MOIs) 2.      proposed actions 3.      resources 4.      institutio...

The  first Earth Day was on April 22, 1970,  it   activated 20 million Americans from all walks of life and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. The passage of the landmark  Clean Air Act ,  Clean Water Act ,  Endangered Species Act  and many other groundbreaking environmental laws soon followed. Growing out of the first Earth Day, Earth Day Network (EDN) works with over 50,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement. More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world. If you are interested  in getting involved then: The Climate Petition Sign up!  Join the largest climate petition to save the world. Tell local, national and international leaders to phase out carbon. Support Environmental Education Sign up! . Did you know that Congress is currently in the process of sett...

Territorial Approach of the Means of Implementation Event to be held at the following time, date, and location: Thursday, April 23, 2015 from 1:15 PM to 3:00 PM (EDT) Conference Room 6, United Nations Headquarters New York, NY 10017 View Map Attend Event Share this event: This is a reminder. Please, diregard this message if you have already registered for the event. Featured speakers: Marta Subirà, Government of Catalonia Arantza Acha, Unesco Etxea Felix Dodds, University of North Carolina Eugenie L. Birch, University of Pennsylvania Mission of Brazil (TBC) Mission of Mexico (TBC) Moderator: Maruxa Cardama, Communitas Coalition  Share this event on Facebook and Twitter We hope you can make it! Cheers, nrg4SD Please note that the event will be hosted a...

Monday 20 th April Conference Room B, UN New York, 1:15-2:45 Organized by UNCTAD, AVIVA, Tellus Institute and Stakeholder Forum Speakers UNCTAD, SDSN, AVIVA, Tellus Institute, and the UN Global Compact (TBC) This session aims to review the role of the private sector in helping to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals and Financing for Development. The 8 and 9 April interactive dialogues on the Zero draft of the FfD 3 rd Conference with the private sector and Civil Society showed huge differences in perceived role of the private sector . On the 8 th the private sector felt there was not enough on the enabling environment for the private sector, while on the 9 th with CSOs, there was a strong push back against the privatization of financing for development. We know public sources will not be sufficient and both the public and private sector will have to contribute to achieve the SDGs. The private sector will play a role in the partnership to achieve t...

By Felix Dodds and Mark Jones  (First published on  Liberal Democrat Voice web site ) Most political commentators believe that the chances are that after the next election no party will have a majority. As we approach the election some people are suggesting that perhaps a new coalition government isn’t the best answer to promote progressive policies. The experiences of the Con-Lib Coalition, and to a lesser extent the Lab/Plaid coalition that ran Wales from 2007-2011 have shown that a left leaning party has to make too many compromises when in a coalition. Some people are actively discussing that perhaps a new coalition government isn’t the best answer to promote progressive policies . The experience of the Con-Lib Coalition has shown that a left leaning party has to make too many compromises when in a coalition with a right of center party. This has resulted in an increasing discussion on the left that perhaps a minority government, as in Scotland from...

In 1996 I had the pleasure of attending and participating in the Habitat II called the City Summit. It was held in Istanbul and to some extent developed further the human settlement chapter of Agenda 21. What was particular important for stakeholders was the approach taken by the conference towards engaging them. It was the first and ONLY UN conference where stakeholders were given both in the preparatory process and the conference itself a seat at the table and were allowed to enter text into the negotiations. If. Member state picked up the suggestion it became part of the negotiations. In addition in Istanbul the UN again for the first time brought out the stakeholder amendments to the text as an official information document for member states and distributed it. The other major innovation was that the conference had two committees one for negotiations and one for stakeholder implementation where each stakeholder had half a day to present their thOughts in an interaction with membe...

I thought I would share some suggestions on how to ensure that the Sustainable Development Goals Means of Implementation (SDG MOIs) and Financing for Development (FfD) processes could support each other. As we all know April will be critical as the second prepcom for Financing for Development and the April Post 2015 negotiations will deal with MOI and Global partnership for Development and there will be an attempt to create more complementary text. In previous blogs I have been very critical of the sustainable development elements – or lack of them - in the FfD process and the now zero text. I’m not going to say more in this blog posting than this has been a HUGE missed opportunity. Other than some great input from AVIVA and SDSN little of what should be reflected in the text is there. This is because the sustainable development finance world has NOT engaged with FfD and some would say was not welcome. What I wanted to address today was what could be done to ensure a bet...