My 2019 in review and what to expect in 2020
It is always challenging looking back on a year and forward
to the next.
I guess the highlights of 2019 were after three years of
work the UN General Assembly passed the resolution on Promoting Investments for Sustainable
Development. Passed on November 27th 2019 by the UNGA.
The original idea for such a resolution was a result of work
started under the Danish Presidency of the UNGA of Mogens Lykketoft. He
commissioned a report the Chain of Sustainable Finance: Accelerating Private Investments for the
SDGs, including Climate Action from that report there was an ongoing discussion
in member states and stakeholders including the private sector led by AVIVA. In
2018 Nigeria championed the idea and the resolution passed under the Nigerian
Presidency of the UNGA of Tijjani Muhammad-Bande.
For me the sad part of it was I was out of the country in
the UK when it happened.
At the start of the year, it was a pleasure to serve on the
UN Global Compact Internal Review Taskforce looking at what the UNGC should do
moving forward at the local/country level, within the UN and Business
ecosystem.
Another highlight was standing for the Executive Director of UNEP
which was very rewarding experience and although late in the day nice to have
the support of Number 10.
At UNEA 4 I had the pleasure of moderating one of the three Ministerial
Leadership dialogues on Innovative sustainable business development at a time
of rapid technological changes. I was then asked to present the outcome from
all the three leadership dialogues. A report back to the plenary text can be read
here.
In September the Strong Universal Network which I am part of
with the wonderful Geoffrey Lipman signed an agreement with the government of
Malta for three years to run a sustainable tourism thinktank based there. The first outcome was the launch of the first ‘Climate Friendly Travel Report’ launched
with the World Travel and Tourism Council at the Heads of State week in New
York.
UK politics has been a bit crazy this year…well over the
last few years. With the announcement of the UK hosting the 2020 Climate Summit
I sought to get approved to stand in the UK election and hopefully get elected
and offer my support and advice to the UK team. Well the election happened on December
12th and although I was
approved and did stand in the wonderful
constituency of Mid-Derbyshire (definitely worth visiting if you like walks
and history and some great cafes) the campaign was dominated by Brexit and so a
strong climate message though having more resonance than previously in the UK wasn’t
going to be the deciding issue for enough people…even after the floods. One of
the hustings
was videoed so if you have an interest then this might give you an insight
into UK politics.
The Friends of
Governance for Sustainable Development had another successful year organizing
workshops for member states and often with the collaboration of UNDESA. More on
the outcomes of that below.
In 2019 I was fortunate to have three books out:
Acting as Secretariat for the Friends of Governance for
Sustainable Development we hold three workshops a year and the papers from the
workshops a become a book. Governance
for Sustainable Development Volume 3: Preparing for the Heads of State Review
of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development came out in
March 2019 and which I edited with a number of colleagues Akinremi Bolaji (Nigeria),
Yeongmoo Cho (Republic of Korea), Verena Klinger-Dering (Germany), Cristina
Popescu (Romania), David Banisar (Article 19), Quinn McKew (Article 19)and
supported by Tanner Glenn.
The second book Stakeholder
Democracy: Represented Democracy in a Time of Fear I wrote with contributions
from Jan Gustav Strandernaus , Carolina Duque Chopitea, Susanne Salz, Bernd
Lakemeier, Laura Schmitz, and Jana Borkenhagen and Minu Hemmati this came out in July and was launched at the UN
Bookshop to a packed audience. Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit the idea of
stakeholder
The third book The
Way Forward – Beyond Agenda 21 is part of the Routledge Classics
Series and which I edited for Rio+5 in 1997. 1997 marked the fifth anniversary
of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development - the
celebrated ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro which represented the high-water
mark of intergovernmental action for sustainable development. Whilst some were
tempted to dismiss the Conference as a gesture of concern by the participating
governments, the list of resolutions which arose from the Summit is formidable,
and the key text to emerge from the conference process, Agenda 21, had proven
to be crucial to efforts to disseminate and implement the principles of
globally sustainable development.
The Way Forward outlines the successes and failures of those
first five years. Calling on a list of eminent experts, it provides an
unparalleled analysis of the agreements that were reached, and the stakeholders
who were charged with implementing them. It reviews the progress that was made
at the intergovernmental, national and grassroots levels, and offers a cogent
summary of the major issues that needed to be addressed for the future. Lucid,
compact and authoritative, this is the essential guide to ‘Rio plus five’.
There were a number of papers I did in 2019 with Jamie
Bartram and Gastón Ocampo Juniper Publishing International Journal of Science
and Natural Resources the paper was Misaligned
SDG Targets: How to Handle Target Dates Before 2030
I also had the pleasure to write one of the first opinion
pieces for the new Taylor Francis/Routledge SDG Hub. Preparing
for the 2019 Heads of State Review of Progress on SDG Implementation
For Inter Press Service I wrote the article Is
Civil Society Arguing Itself out of Political Space?
For 2020
At the moment I am still recovering from an exhausting 2019
so sleep is playing a key role for me at the moment. My present publications
planned for include one finished edited book – Volume 4 of the
Friends of Governance for Sustainable Development. It should be out by late
February.
The second book working with my co-author Carolina Duque Chopitea will take over and I will start
work on New Technologies and Tomorrows People (Routledge) out we
hope in July 2021. It is set in 2030 and will look at the impacts of new
technology in our lives whether at home, travel, work etc. Any recommendations
for reading appreciated.
There should also be a chapter the Water-Energy-Food-Climate
Nexus through an Urban Lens: Building Integrated Approaches into Implementing
the Sustainable Development Goals with Carolina Duque Chopitea in Cities
for All: Issues in Sustainable Urban Development by Eugénie L. Birch, William
Burke-White, Mark Alan Hughes with Penn Press
Clearly, the most important events of 2020 will be the Climate
Summit in Glasgow and the Biodiversity COP in China. I hope this blog and my
work will in some way contribute to those events and their success.
I wish everyone a wonderful 2020.
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