Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

The single made number 1 within 48 hours and can be bought on iTunes or Amazon. People who died in an inferno because of the policies of austerity and long-term government failure. "Until 1986 all buildings in London fell under the London Building Acts which ensured that external walls must have at least one hour of fire resistance to prevent flames from spreading between flats or entering inside. But under Margaret Thatcher’s government, those rules were replaced by the National Buildings Regulations and the crucial time stipulation was scrapped." Daily Telegraph MPs from All-Party Parliamentary Group Fire Safety & Rescue Group also said that MPs had been calling for sprinklers to be fitted on the outside of tall buildings for years, but said their calls been ignored. "Currently, sprinklers only need to be fitted up to 30 metres, but in tall buildings like Grenfell it is impossible for fire hoses to reach the upper heights, leaving the top floors witho...

Taken from UN Secretary General announcement. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Vladimir Ivanovich Voronkov of the Russian Federation as Under-Secretary-General of the newly created United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office, as established by General Assembly resolution 71/291 of 15 June 2017. The Secretary-General appreciates the hard work of Member States and the many partners who share his commitment to this agenda.  The Under-Secretary-General will provide strategic leadership to United Nations counter-terrorism efforts, participate in the decision-making process of the United Nations and ensure that the cross-cutting origins and impact of terrorism are reflected in the work of the United Nations. Mr. Voronkov brings more than 30 years of foreign service experience to the position, working primarily on the United Nations, as well as responsibilities ranging from public diplomacy and social and economic development issues, to intergovernmental af...

Geoffrey Lipman: SUNx Co-founder /President of ICTP It feels good to be back in Manilla for more fun in the Philippines. Not the usual description of a UN Statistics Conference. Even worse, I want to make two what I suspect are contrarian points about the proposed declaration. And then offer a suggestion to strengthen it. First. The past is prologue. As a sector, we are not going far enough fast enough. This declaration needs to be half as wordy: twice as much implementation: four times as fast. And some real multi-stakeholder checks on delivery Why? Because the scale and speed of change and connectivity is accelerating and if we don’t move at the same pace the decisions will be made outside our sector. By environmental and finance institutions; by business coalitions: by local authorities: by States and regions and by very smart cities. This is not business as usual. Climate change is existential. Repeat existential. Second, we need to expand our vision of measurement of sust...

((Rogue CNN exists in a parallel universe to ours where a property developer and reality TV star gets elected President)) Wolf: Another day another set of stories from the Trump White House. Let’s take you to the White House Press Secretary’s briefing today and then we will come back to the panel for comment. Rogue Washington Post: Last year in the USA there were 437 deaths from mass killing attempts compared with only 54 in the whole of Europe over the same time. Is it true that the President is considering gun control legislation after the recent shooting of Republican law makers? Strauss: It’s true that the President is worried about what happened to Representative Scalise's and others shot on Wednesday the 14 th of June. Our prayers are with their families. It is, true there have been 154-mass shooting this year but most of you don’t cover this. Infact would you believe it that gun sales are down since the election of President Trump gun stocks have also droppe...

Originally published on the Climate Bonds Initiative web site HERE. Market Financial Times,   US investors drawn to environmentally friendly green bonds (link is external) , Murray Coleman An article that touches on a number of interesting aspects of the green bond market in the US: among them the new administration in Washington and the appetite for socially responsible investments of the youngest investors. More than 90 per cent of Merrill’s millennial clients — those in their 20s and early 30s — are telling advisers they want to consider such investments as a permanent part of their portfolios. “In the US, we’re seeing a much bigger grassroots movement to include green bonds into investment portfolios than in Europe or Asia”. The Wall Street Journal,  Investors Warm to ‘Green Bonds’ (link is external) , Gerrard Cowan Also the Wall Street Journal analyses the US face of the GB market. Still, the green-bond market looks set to continue growing, and the new m...

On the middle weekend of the High Level Political Forum there will be a one and a half days of focused presentations and lively interaction bringing together multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) that contribute to the SDGs under review at this year’s UN High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (1, 2, 3, 5, 9 and 14), and others interested in partnerships. MSPs are expected to be one of the significant delivery mechanisms for the SDGs. If you are involved in a partnership or plan to be then THIS is the workshop for you. The workshop will: 1.      Provide space for partnerships working on particular goals and targets to share their experiences and lessons learnt, helping to build a well-informed community of practice that can have a significant role in implementing the SDGs 2.      Begin to collate a set of principles that multi-stakeholder partnerships themselves articulate as guidance for how they work 3.   ...

Guest Blog:  Allen White is vice president and senior fellow at Tellus Institute and directs the institute’s Program on Corporate Redesign. Is the post-war ascendance of multinational corporations irreversible? The world’s roughly 80,000 multinational corporations (MNCs), long dominated by U.S., European and Japanese firms, have been joined by a growing number based in China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies. MNCs are the engine of a quarter of total world production and their global supply chains represent about half of world trade. MNCs have played a major role in driving a tenfold increase since 1979, now totaling $16 trillion, roughly the size of entire U.S. GDP. Amidst this rapid expansion is a concurrent concentration in market power. The world's 1,000 largest companies in 1980 represented about 30 percent of the GDP of the OECD countries. By 2010, that figure rose to 72 percent. Pressures to consolidate among technology, pharmaceuticals, airlines an...