Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Love the new preamble YES YES YES People need to read the SDGs and their targets and not a summary in a preamble. Well done Co-Chairs and secretariat !!!! I thought we all agreed cherish should go out of the text?  Like most of the people here we are all David Cassidy Fans but its a bit much putting it into an intergovernmental text. If you want to be more supportive of David then join his fan club Wonderful to see hygiene; added to sanitation and water . Perhaps governments might like to consider this as a replacement . "A world which invests in its children,   in which the rights and aspirations of all children are realized, and in which every child grows up free from violence and exploitation." There still seems to be a non recognition by some that sustainable development includes poverty eradication . The present wording seems to indicate that they are still two different things. "We recognize the intrinsic interlinkages between pover...

We are here to help with delegate therapy Bracketing Therapists  As the negotiations are coming to an end on the Post 2015 Agenda you must be worrying what you will do with all that time you now will have. Delegate’s therapy is a service offered to help delegates to readjust to their lives after intensive negotiations. Gone are the long nights writing back to capitals for instructions. Gone are the stakeholders who want to meet you for coffee all the time. Gone are the group meetings where you can debate with colleagues how to change a word here or there to save the planet. Gone are the waiting with excitement for the next draft of the text. Gone are Vienna café coffees,  crepes  and salads. Gone are those moments waking up in the middle of night thinking I know what that text should be. Gone are the informal workshops to frame the ideas for the next meeting Gone are the Friends meetings – at least for the moment....

Tuesday also saw a very good article in the Guardian which raises some very serious issues relating to Save the Children’s relationship with the corporate sector. It was a good warning for all NGOs to look at who they are having funding from in the corporate world.  Be true to your vision and principles. “A world in which every child attains the right to survival, protection, development and participation.” Save the Children vision. What was interesting, and did bring a smile to my face, was the article wasn’t the same by the end of the day as it was at the beginning. The earlier version was called: ‘ Has Save the Children become too large and lost sight of what it is for?’ the later one was called: ‘Justin Forsyth: 'If NGOs stay politically correct, we won't have an impact'. Clearly the Guardian had experienced the full weight of Save the Children’s communication department. The article now told a much less critical story and was full of quotes by Justi...

Tuesday I went to an excellent side event by the Global Policy Forum who pre-launched what I think is an excellent report called Fit for Purpose: Private funding and corporate influence in the United Nations.  I wanted to share some of the findings with you and suggest that you do download the report for a fuller read. The UN Agencies and Programmes have had a mixed relationship with the corporate sector. This relationship has to some extent been forced  on them by a true lack of funding for the UN over a long period of time.  As the report points out this has had some very worrying impacts most recently the incident ove r UN Women and Uber shows that some Agencies and programmes do not have in place robust systems to decide who they should partner with. This does require a clearly policy across the UN. Giving x to the UN should not come without some strong control as the company will benefit from the association with UN name. A worry is without that robust ...

Wow we are, we hope, into the last five days of the Post 2015 process!!!!  By Friday there should be an agreement and lots of hugs, I understand, all round. Between now and then though there is some tough negotiations to be undertaken.  have to admit I didn't stay up to wait for ‘final draft’ of the Declaration to come out. I had spent part of Sunday evening at a 'Make A Wish' concert at the Bitter End rock venue in West Village.   So we are now down to the real negotiations. After my morning in the Vienna Cafe this is some of the areas I believe will cause some discussion and negotiations this week. The preamble has grown somewhat and has become more of a laundry list under the 5 Ps (Planet, People, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership) by doing so I think misses the point of the preamble and I don’t think what we have now under the 5 Ps adds anything.  The most import...

This is a reproduction of the Guardian article written by myself and Michael Strauss 'The year of negotiating precariously' in the Guardian on the 23rd of July 2015 which can be read on the Guardian web site here. Or you can read it here . The year 2015 may be recorded as one of the most extraordinarily successful – or disastrous – years in the history of international diplomatic negotiations. Most have been well reported – the recent agreement with Iran –the Pacific trade agreement. The Eurozone’s probably tragic imposition of controls over Greece. Each of these takes on critical geopolitical, macroeconomic, or environmental crises. But almost none of them addresses the pervasive social, cultural and micro economic crises that afflict up to 2 billion people on a daily basis. Those are the invisible personal crises of poverty, hunger, sickness, and non-education which cumulatively play an integral role in building and triggering the more ominous, more obvious, and ...

The Post-2015 Agenda is an unprecedented effort that embodies universal aspirations for achieving a better, more just, equitable, peaceful and sustainable future. Representatives from 193 governments and multiple stakeholders, from all sectors, have actively participated in its creation. This ambitious and unique exercise represents a paradigm shift in development policy. It materializes years of dialogue and candid ambitions of addressing the most pressing global challenges. In this context, the rule of law, as well as, effective, robust, participatory and accountable institutions is of utmost importance to achieve the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and their 169 targets. The inextricable link between good governance and sustainable development was acknowledged in the Rio+20 Declaration “The Future We Want”. Moreover, the Report of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda further elaborated on this issue and made a call for all c...

Below is the CSO response to the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. As very little changes have happened in the txt relating to sustainable development and sustainable development goals. My criticism of that text stands. A huge opportunity was lost to identify the costings needed for the SDGs and the financial packages that could help in their implementation. There was no date for the time all Stock Exchanges should have as a listing requirement the production of their ESG. The whole conference is happening of course against the backdrop of the Greece financial crisis. We are sleep walking towards another financial crisis and this time it will be worse than the last time as governments do not have the bail out money. Though the past few weeks i have become a huge fan of the analysis of   Paul Mason the Economics Editor of Channel 4 in the UK. I hope those of you reading this will follow him in the future. What now follows in the blog is the: Civil Society Response to the Addis Ababa...

How   Can   Countries   Implement   and   Monitor   Sustainable   Development   Goals   (SDGS)?   Organised   by   the   Permanent   Missions   of   Hungary   and  Vietnam   to   the   United   Nations   and   Asia-   Europe Foundation   (ASEF) Monday,   July   20 th ,   from   1   PM   till   2:45   PM. Conference Room 6 in Conference Room Building  In September 2015, the global community will agree upon a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This process is one of the main outcomes of the Rio+20 Conference where UN member states agreed to launch a process to develop a set of SDGs, which will build on the Millennium Development Goals and frame the post-2015 development agenda. Implementation of the SDGs at the nationa...