Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

G-STIC 2018 Co-host Statement In 2015, the international community adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (thereby setting clear aspirations and goals to shift the world onto a sustainable development path) and launched the Technological Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) with its motto “Harnessing the Contribution of Science, Technology, and Innovation for Achieving the 2030 Agenda and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals”. To reach these global objectives, a deep transition is needed to more resilient, sustainable and equitable socio-economic development models. Such a transition is possible despite the magnitude of the challenges ahead, but the limited time that remains necessitates the near-term deployment of market-ready transformative technological solutions at scale. To help shape the transformative technological transitions that are urgently needed, five independent and not-for-profit technological research institutes – the co-hosts of G-STIC – have teamed ...

Another busy year on publications. I had two books out: Power to the People: This book explores the role that the Young Liberal Green Guard had on UK politics in the 1980s. It aims to inspire future young politicians of whatever political views the truth of Margaret Meads statement that: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Reviews included: By Lord Chris Rennard “The 1980s is a fascinating period in British politics and Felix Dodds played a fascinating role in that period and which he writes extremely well about. The group of people who were close to him then have stuck together and have mostly used their political and campaigning skills to great effect ever since. It took courage for Young Liberals to support a Labour candidate because he was openly gay and the SDP's sitting MP appeared to be homophobic, but I think that they were right even though it caused ruction...

Buy here The Friends of Governance for Sustainable Development in cooperation with UN-DESA Office of Intergovernmental Support and Coordination for Sustainable Development organized the third workshop in preparation for next years High Level Political Forums. Workshop 3 Advancing the 2030 Agenda: Lessons learnt from the first cycle of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) – how far can we go?    Programme for Friends of Government meeting These are power points – papers will go up end of January How could the 2019 HLPF summit deliver actions, implementation and acceleration? The 2019 HLPF summit should be an important occasion to strengthen political will for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and should identify accelerators and drivers of change to speed up implementation Session 2 David O’Connor How could the 2019 HLPF summit deliver actions What should be the outcome from the 2019 HLPF Summit?  I n 2019, the H...

Comic book from Comics Uniting Nations and founding partner UNICEF  takes the action to the North Pole, and brings the message home to kids As COP 24 finishes a new hero emerged today to help lead the global battle against the potentially catastrophic climate menace. Actually, a rather old hero. Santa Claus – also known as Father Christmas, Père Noël and St. Nicholas – 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. The comic, titled Santa's Green Christmas - Father Christmas Battles Climate Change, the newest release from Comics Uniting Nations, reveals how Mr. Claus first became aware of shifting temperatures when Dancer, the lead member of his reindeer team, nearly crashed through the previously solid Arctic ice-cap during a practice landing. “Fortunately, she was soon on the...

By Felix Dodds , Adjunct Professor in Environmental Sciences and Engineering and Senior Fellow, Global Research Institute, University of North Carolina and Eela Dubey Finance consultant  In October there was a very interesting briefing by UNCTAD of its report on Debt Vulnerabilities in Developing Countries: “A New Debt Trap? and its Trade and Development report.” It was the first of these reports that interested me most due to its coverage on the alarming trends in debt and extent of the debt crisis. As the report points out, the global economy has been fueled by debt. The world's total gross  debt to GDP ratio is at 223 percent , with advanced economies holding the largest share of debt stocks.  A debt stock simply refers to the total value of the debt that a nation owes to all lenders. According to the Report, at the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, global debt stocks surpassed their historical record level at $142 trillion. Now, with global ...

Edited by former UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor, Negoslave Ostojic and Roberto Savio, Belgrade, and published by the European Center for Peace and Development it is available as a free download here.  Contributors include; - Gro Harlem Brundtland - Nitin Desai - Elizabeth Dowdeswell - Las-Goran Engfeldt - Peter Hass - Nay Htun - Enrique Iglesias - Ashok Khosla - Tommy Koh - Geoffrey Lipman - Thomas Lovejoy -Julia Marton-Lefevre - Rajendra Pachauri  -Shridath Ramphal - Klaus Schwab - Mirian Vilela - James Wolfensohn My contribution to the book -  The Father of Sustainable Development  The Maurice Strong story is an amazing one. As I was very focused in the 1980s on UK domestic politics my first awareness of Maurice was not until the preparations for the Rio Earth Summit. By then I was at the United Nations Association – UK organizing town hall conferences in preparation for the Summit and an Earth Summit Rally. To supplement ...