Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

There is no question that 2016 has been a year of surprises whether it was Brexit, Leicester City winning the Premier League or the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. But perhaps the biggest surprise of all was a tv reality show host and property developer with no political experience winning the US Presidency. Looking over the political landscape, there is a global trend towards nationalism and Xenophobia. - some would draw parallels with the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s.  A year after the success of countries agreeing to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement we now have an incoming President who seems to be a climate denier. His nomination of the CEO of Exxon Mobile as his Secretary of State doesnt just worry those who think his close ties to Russia are problematic but the company that he runs knew that burning fossil fuels would contribute to climate change as early as the 1970s. With the recent release of company papers, it is ...

Interview  Felix Dodds on Five Years of Nexus Felix Dodds is a Senior Fellow at the Global Research Institute and a Senior Affiliate at the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina and an Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute. He was the co-director of the 2014 Nexus Conference on Water, Food, Energy and Climate and has become a leading voice for the Nexus. Felix makes the start for a new series of Nexus interviews. First published on the NEXUS PLATFORM  NEXUS Platform: The Nexus approach was very much created at the Bonn 2011 Nexus Conference and sharpened in Chapel Hill 2014. After now five years of Nexus: did the initial idea ­­– increase the understanding of the interdependencies across water, energy, food and other policies such as climate and biodiversity – start to work out and why? Felix Dodds:  There is no question in my mind that the Nexus approach was one of the important differences between the Millennium Development Goals and the...

By Felix Dodds and Thomas Jenkins Democratic elections have been a long-cherished practice in much of the western hemisphere. Aided partly by informed citizenry, the tradition is firmly entrenched in the electoral processes because of active participation of the middle class in campaigns and policy making. Elections and their outcomes are taken very seriously in that part of the world to the extent that if a sitting President or Prime Minister loses even a referendum, he has to exit office to protect his own integrity, and the wishes of the citizens. Are we beginning to see that trend shaping other parts of the world? Or are recent political events across the globe merely a product of political dissatisfaction? Well, since 2010, Africa and the Arab World have been seeing some revolution.  Strong political currents are sweeping there, and a new dawn of leadership is being ushered. Côte d’Ivoire went to polls in 2010 and elected then opposition leader, Dr. Alassane Ouattar...

The new United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has had his first key appointments. He has hired Amina Mohammed of Nigeria as the U.N. Deputy Secretary-General. We all know and admire her for her work serving as the Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Post-2015 development planning. She played a critical role with the Ambassador Kamal and Ambassador Donoghue in facilitating the process that culminated in the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015. Since then she has been a  Minister of Environment of Nigeria, from 11 November 2015. As his Chef de Cabinet he has chosen Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti of Brazil. Many of us working in New York will remember her as Ambassador for Brazil from July 2007 to November 2013. She played the critical role in following up President Lula's call for a new Summit on sustainable development made in September 2007. First persuading G77 to support the call in October 2008 and ...

So as we approach Christmas I thought it would be interesting to review some of my activities this year. December has been a crazy month with the Book and Comic Tour of California. It enabled me to do my first Facebook Live talk which can be accessed here I also had the pleasure to attend the plastics pollution campaign and participate in the mannequin challenge which you can view here. This month Routledge, my publisher, have featured me as one of their authors. They have a nice quote of mine at the top of the page. "The 1990s were a lost decade. At times, it was as if we were at a party and now the next morning we have the hangover – and what a hangover!" You can read the profile here. In 2016 my publications have been: Books Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals: A transformational agenda for an insecure world   by Felix Dodds, Ambassador David Donoghue and Jimena Leiva Roesch  The Water, Food, Energy and Climate Nexus: ...

SDGs Implementation: Realities, Expectations and Tradeoffs- Where are the Balance?  Felix Dodds and Thomas Jenkins T he set of 17 SDGs and 169 targets adopted in September 2015 is one of the potentially transformative innovations by the global community in recent past. Crafted in a manner that integrates economic prosperity and social development while moving towards restoring and preserving environmental viability, the SDGs offers, for the first time, a bold collective move to address the root causes of poverty, social injustices and environmental degradation. The starting point for the Goals is the acknowledgement that poverty eradication is an indispensable requirement for sustainable development. The other is that efforts at combating poverty have always promoted degradation of the environmental although as an unintended outcome. Whichever way one looks at it, economic prosperity and increased social wellbeing have a tendency to leave serious environmental footprin...

Marina Mansilla Hermann is a young social entrepreneur specialising in the fields of youth leadership, environment and education. She is the founder of TierraVida , a youth-empowerment non-profit based in Argentina with the mission to activate young people as environmental leaders in their communities. She currently manages Ashoka’s Changemaker Education and Changemaker Schools network across Europe. Marina is an Abram Wilson Foundation Trailblazer. How did you first hear about the Abram Wilson Foundation (AWF)? A friend in the social entrepreneurship world introduced me to Jennie [AWF’s founder and CEO] back in April 2015 so I could help her connect with education networks in London. I was so inspired that I’ve been a supporter ever since. What made you want to get involved? I got involved for a number of different reasons. I found something truly inspiring and powerful in the story that gave birth to AWF, something that could have been the end of a story actually transmute...

Can Santa Claus Help the World Conquer Climate Change? media kit available here. New comic book from Comics Uniting Nations and founding partner UNICEF takes the action to the North Pole, and brings the message home to kids [New York, NY]   In the midst of soaring pre-winter Arctic temperatures - and increasing political uncertainty - a new hero emerged today to help lead the global battle against potential climate catastrophe. Actually, a rather old hero.  Santa Claus [also known as Father Christmas, Père Noël and St. Nicholas] today released a deeply personal account of his struggle to recognize, understand and take action against the impacts of rising temperatures and extreme weather events that are threatening the very foundations of his fabled workshop and village. His account, in comic book format, titled " Santa's Green Christmas - Father Christmas Battles Climate Change ," reveals how Mr. Claus...