Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

As I write this, I am heading into my third week as Secretary-General of CIVICUS – and each day has been an opportunity to understand a new dimension of this global alliance. Day one, for instance, was marked by a strong sense of celebration! Many of you – members, partners and allies of the CIVICUS Alliance – have shared messages of support and encouragement to do more to secure and strengthen the work of civil society worldwide. I very much look forward to collaborating with all of you in the coming year! 2019 opened up very quickly with stark reminders of the context we face as civil society organisations. An armed attack on civilians in Nairobi generated shock and outrage in Kenya and across the world, while in  Zimbabwe  civil society groups and citizens met  violent force , including another example of the worrying trend of silencing voices by shutting down the internet. In the United States, the continued government shut down is taking a toll on families and e...

A pioneering insurance industry guide to protect our planet’s most special places through its risk management, insurance and investment activities will be created in 2019 with leading insurers. This follows the 2018 launch of the world’s first insurance industry statement of commitment to protect World Heritage Sites developed by UN Environment’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative (PSI) , WWF and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Centre . The main aim is to provide practical guidance to insurers on how to prevent or reduce the risk of insuring and investing in companies or projects whose activities could damage World Heritage Sites. There are nearly 1,100 natural, cultural, and mixed World Heritage Sites, places with unparalleled natural and cultural beauty, significance and/or biological diversity such as the Galápagos Islands, the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, Mount Kilimanjaro, and the Pyramids of Egyp...

I, as I am sure many others in the environment and sustainable development world, were shocked to hear about the death of Bradnee Chambers. He was until his death the  E xecutive Secretary of the Convention on migratory Species (CMS) and I am reproducing their notice below. As it says he played a significant role in helping to move the biodiversity conventions closer together. This follows up the work I knew him doing at UNEP  on clustering conventions. For those who were not involved with the environmental governance process in the lead up to Rio+20 I wanted to share my experience of working with Bradnee. He had at that time been the Senior Legal Officer and Chief of the Law and Governance Branch of UNEP and as head of the Environmental Governance Strategic Team working for Achim Steiner Executive Director of UNEP.  He contributed a lot of the thinking on  international environmental governance reform and processes. Not afraid to put forward new id...

The quotes below do not indicate an endorsement for me for the position of UNEP Executive Director they were comments made on my work over the past thirty years. Campaign video here   https://youtu.be/5No4lOsQfvs “Felix Dodds has been a close partner of mine with whom we liaised on many issues around the UN environmental governance reform as well as during the entire period of the OWG. His passion for all matter’s environment and his great network particularly with NGOs and all the various experts that work on the Multilateral process around the environmental agenda is extremely impressive. He is one of the most committed professionals that I have had the pleasure to work with.” Macharia Kamau co-facilitator of the 2015 SDG negotiations (2019) "Felix Dodds is a passionate and articulate campaigner for environmental sustainability.     He has in-depth familiarity with the major international negotiations on sustainable deve...

My dear blog readers, I have decided to apply for the position of Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) .  My campaign video is here  https://youtu.be/5No4lOsQfvs I wanted to go over i n two blogs  first who I am and then second what my vision would be. In these blogs I will share what people have said over the years about my work. These q uotes do not indicate they are supporting me for UNEP Executive Director. “Felix Dodds deserves high respect and admiration for his unswerving and dedicated efforts as one of the key leaders of the global NGO movement for sustainable development for several decades." Lars Goran Engfeldt, Former Environment Ambassador of Sweden (2012) I believe that we are living in an almost-unprecedented period of complex and rapidly-shifting challenges to multilateralism , layered on top of the multiple threats to ours and all other species on this planet.  UNEP needs to fulfil it...