Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

The second book Governance for Sustainable Development Volume 2: Implementing the 2030 Agenda by the Friends of Governance for Sustainable Development which is coordinated by the governments of Germany, Nigeria, Romania and the Republic of Korea. This volume is edited by Akinremi Bolaji, Jens-Michael Bopp, Yeongmoo Cho, Cristina Popescu, David Banisar, Felix Dodds and Quinn McKew Achieving sustainable development requires an enabling environment. Governance plays a crucial role in creating those conditions, notably, for our purposes in the implementation of the 2030 sustainable development agenda process. From creating new platforms to reforming old ones, the process must live up to this standard and its mechanisms should be geared towards fostering this type of new international environment and cooperation for sustainable development. This is the second volume produced by the Friends Group. The first volume presented the period from late 2014 to the end of 2015. The Group also ha...

Dear Friends, We are inviting you to make comments on a Charter for Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (MSPs). The agreement of the S ustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the broader 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015 has moved the focus away from negotiations to implementation. One of the aspects of implementing the SDGs has already been the development of MSPs. There are over 5000 MSPs on different UN platforms committed to implementing this agenda. Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships have the potential to create positive impacts by creating synergies, building capacity, filling gaps and scaling-up development efforts. They also are a concrete way to work across the Goals and addressing the interconnected character sustainable development. In engaging with MSPs it is important to learn from the past. The experience of the partnerships created for implementing the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) agreements in 2002 was not entirely good. Many were created...

The Full Report from the Conference can be found here. Message from the 2018 Nexus Conference The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals can only be achieved if they are pursued in an integrated manner. For this reason, the Nexus community of researchers, academics, NGOs, policy makers, the private sector and other key stakeholders came together at the 2018 Nexus Conference at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We have concluded that the Nexus approach remains essential in recognizing the indivisible nature of the SDGs and that such an approach is fundamental in delivering these goals. The Nexus approach brings into focus the positive synergies and potential negative tradeoffs that arise when working to achieve the ambitious 2030 Agenda, and it is helping to develop more practical solutions to address key issues. Understanding the interlinkages between water, energy, food and climate plays a crucial role in delivering sustainable outcome and helping gl...

NEW YORK, 13 April 2018 – The prospects of around 800 million of the world’s poorest people remain dire. The global economy is experiencing a moderate upturn, and momentum around sustainable investing is growing, the UN said today. But the vast majority of investment is still short-term oriented and commitments by the international community to create sustainable economies are not being met. There is an increasing interest in socially responsible investing, but that is no substitute for a broader transformation in the financial system. The  report  states that the current system rewards investors, financiers and project managers that prioritize short-term profits. Similarly, policy makers are excessively focused on short-term considerations. But there is a price to pay. Infrastructure projects are shelved in favour of short term priorities. Small businesses and women remain excluded from the financial system. “The good economic news in some regions masks the very real...

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The World Happiness Report 2018, ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants. The main focus of this year’s report, in addition to its usual ranking of the levels and changes in happiness around the world, is on migration within and between countries. The overall rankings of country happiness are based on the pooled results from Gallup World Poll surveys from 2015-2017, and show both change and stability. There is a new top ranking country, Finland, but the top ten positions are held by the same countries as in the last two years, although with some swapping of places. Four different countries have held top spot in the four most recent reports- Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and now Finland. All the top countries tend to have high values for all six of the key variables that have been found to support well-being: income, healthy life expectan...

This article will appear on Urbanet in April . On April 16-18, the second Nexus Conference will convene governments, intergovernmental organizations, and stakeholders at the University of North Carolina. The conference will focus on the links and trade-offs between water, energy, and food—often called the nexus—as viewed through an urban lens. Cities are at the forefront of the climate challenge and the heart of the global economy, so they are critical to implementing an integrated approach to meeting the SDGs and building resilience to climate change. Cities Are Key to Meeting the SDGs The SDGs recognize that the world is a single complex system in which all the parts and subsystems constantly interact. Solutions to global problems like poverty should consider the leverages, synergies, and trade-offs within the system. These solutions are often best implemented at the local or sub-national level, including within cities and other urban areas. Cities are critical to ...

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an shameful condition. In a se...