Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Guest Blog by Paul Clements-Hunt Over seven years, The Blended Capital Group (TBCG) has helped companies raise capital, secure finance, driven complex projects to delivery and helped sell break-through sustainability concepts to investors and policy-makers. Each week during April through June we will highlight how TBCG has empowered sustainability impact at scale in break-through businesses, game-changing civil society organisations and working with change agents in international institutions. For our kick-off week see the compelling MWEZI story below of last mile business success for one of our portfolio companies in the Lake Victoria region of Kenya serving the clean energy needs of agricultural out-growers. TBCG assists clients through three defined channels:   D ynamic Investor Relations (DIR) for entrepreneurs, investors, businesses and private projects Dynamic Donor Relations (DDR) for civil society, social purpose and international organisations Scali...

Guest blog by  Emily Dunne  original can be viewed here. This journey starts in October, when I joined the On Purpose Associate Programme, started at my first placement at King’s College London and took the WWF  carbon footprint test  for the first time. Horrified, I learnt that annually I was using  200%  of my share of the world’s resources. That same month we were flooded with news of an upcoming climate catastrophe following the IPCC special report and changing jobs had left me with a new work-life balance, with both time and mental space to think about what it might be possible to change. So I set myself a challenge:  Every month for the next year I am going to change one lifestyle factor to be more sustainable, and I’m going to try and maintain (or grow) the change for the rest of the year , in what will hopefully be an exponential curve towards a more sustainable lifestyle. Since then, I have made changes to how I get around, h...

Guest blog by Kristel Van der Elst first published on the Canadian Governments Policy Horizon web site here.  Kristel is the Executive Head at Policy Horizons. She has nearly 20 years of experience working on forward-looking strategies and policy. She is the former Head of Strategic Foresight at the World Economic Forum and CEO of The Global Foresight Group. the presentation was made at the  ESPAS Annual Conference 2018 A current crisis of credibility is fuelled by a series of events and revelations which brought into light fake news, opaque think tank practices, non-reproducible research, issues around institutions’ conflicts of interest, lack of transparency and intellectual independence as well as the serving of funders’ interests – corporate and foreign government donors, to name a few. If this trend persists credibility will be an intense challenge for experts, think tanks and anyone seeking to persuade with evidence. At the same  time  we hear the ...

Thank you, Geoffrey I'm, happy to contribute to this panel on People-first PPPs (f ull video of side event available here ). In 2015 and 2016 the multi-stakeholder Communitas Coalition which had worked on securing SDG 11 on Sustainable Cities and Communities followed up that work in a number of areas to input to Habitat III, One of those under my colleague J ames Goldstein, who worked with stakeholders to produce a set of draft Principles of Public-Private Partnerships. This was recognizing that PPPs would play a role in implementing the SDGs and New Urban Agenda and that in the past they had a very bad record, particularly at the sub-national level. AS we know there is both tremendous enthusiasm for and skepticism about the role and impact of PPPs for sustainable development. The challenges of our urban areas are where we may win or fail in delivering the SDGs.  There are huge urban infrastructure investment requirements in developing countries over the coming years. ...

Guest blog from UNCTAD originally published here. Two leading economists have put forward a solution to the challenges they see facing the multilateral system of trade, investment and finance ahead of the annual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG) in the United States capital of Washington DC, running from 12 to 14 April. The ‘Geneva Principles for a Global Green New Deal’ are outlined in a new report by UNCTAD’s Richard Kozul-Wright and the University of Boston’s Kevin Gallagher. In ‘A New Multilateralism for Shared Prosperity: Geneva Principles for a Green New Deal’, they spell out five key steps that need to be taken to solve the system of “predatory rent-seeking” or “crocodile capitalism” they believe has broken the social contract established in the wake of World War II, allowing global corporations to benefit while the general public loses. In this context transnational corporations’ net income has climbed while glo...

The 2019 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship, one week before we head into the 16th Annual Skoll World Forum: Crisis Text Line, Harambee  Youth Employment Accelerator, mPedigree, mPharma, and Thorn.  The Skoll Awards distinguish transformative leaders whose organizations disrupt the status quo, drive sustainable large-scale change, and are poised to create even greater impact. “These brave entrepreneurs are on the frontlines of solving the world’s most pressing problems,” said Jeff Skoll, Founder and Chairman of the Skoll Foundation.  “Each social entrepreneur may have a distinct approach, but they all share a relentless pursuit of impact and the desire to create a more just world.” “These leaders have demonstrated how to spark transformative change to improve health, protect vulnerable individuals, and provide new opportunities for young people,” said Richard Fahey, Interim President of the Skoll Foundation. “We are thrilled to welcome these passionate p...

This gives some very interesting analysis on social media that should make s all think about our social media activities.

An expert meeting for addressing the SDGs’ reviews in 2019 and the targets that will fall in 2020 and 2025 Friends of Governance for Sustainable Development in cooperation with UN-DESA Office of Intergovernmental Support and Coordination for Sustainable Development Meeting sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Nigeria to the United Nations Programme for the Workshop:  Programme for Friends of Government meeting – march final Session 1: Importance of SDG 16 and all other SDGs for achieving the 2030 Agenda; the case of climate justice Promoting rule of law, ending all types of violence and all sorts of illicit flows, reducing corruption and bribery, striving for effective, accountable and transparent institutions and responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels including global governance, providing legal identity, ensuring public access to information and protecting fundamental freedoms, strengthening national institutions and prom...