Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Guest blog by  Ira Feldman and Matt Polsky  (Ira Feldman is former Special Counsel at US EPA headquarters who has led sustainability and climate initiatives in law, policy, standards, politics and academia over the last 20 years. Matt Polsky is a New Jersey-based sustainability change agent and a Ph.D. student in Sustainability at Erasmus University in The Netherlands.) The U.S. has just dodged a democracy-kill shot with the election of a new President, but we still have immensely difficult problems to solve. Two of the major ones are climate change and the mutual despise often present between those who intensely disagree about politics and values. Our sense is that we can’t solve one without addressing the other – and we may not get another chance at this. COVID-19 has changed the world, unexpectedly giving us a rare opportunity to do things very differently. We need to gear ourselves to think differently, and sustainability can provide us with an overarching, guiding ...

  Guest blog from Katerva  The Rise of Sustainability Investors   The very definition of sustainability hints towards the long-term, as it involves ensuring that what we do today will not jeopardise being able to continue doing it many years hence.  It seems plausible to assume that investors who are interested in sustainability will have not only a longer-term outlook for themselves but also for the companies that they invest in. With around $30 trillion invested sustainably, which is typically defined as investments in businesses that espouse environmental, social, and governance (ESG) in how they operate, it’s clearly a growing, and hugely influential, field. It seems that more and more business leaders agree with the statement of Salesforce founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff that, “Yes, profits are important, but so is society. And if our quest for greater profits leaves our world worse off than before, all we...

MARCH 29th-31st March:   Arab Regional Forum for Sustainable Development  input to the 2021 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) - focusing on SDG 1 (no poverty); SDG 2 (zero hunger); SDG 3 (good health and well-being); SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth); SDG 10 (reduced inequalities); SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production); SDG 13 (climate action); SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions): and SDG 17 (partnerships) APRIL 5-11th April:   Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund 7-8th April: G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting  - the G20 in 2021 will be held under the themes of  People, Planet, Prosperity  ( Please not that the G20  (hosted by Italy) is the European Union and the countries of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Ko...

 

A new book is out Earth Charter, Education and the Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 : Research, Experiences and Reflections edited by Mirian Vilela and Alice Jimenez, The Earth Charter (EC) is a document with sixteen principles powering a global movement. When you apply it to your business, school or community, you begin turning conscience into action to make all life on Earth thrive. In 1987, the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development issued a call for creation of a new charter that would set forth fundamental principles for sustainable development. The drafting of an Earth Charter was part of the unfinished business of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. In 1994, Maurice Strong, the secretary general of the Earth Summit and chairman of the Earth Council, and Mikhail Gorbachev, president of Green Cross International, launched a new Earth Charter Initiative with support from the Dutch government. An Earth Charter Commission was formed in 1997 to oversee the project....

Guest blog by:  By Chantal Line Carpentier, Drew D'Alelio, Bruno Cardoso Zuccolo, Olivier Combe and Raymond Landveld . (endnote 1) Facing another global crisis, governments are spending trillions to revive their economies amid growing calls from different corners to channel these funds to the underfinanced Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Recently UNCTAD took a deep dive (hyperlink) into responses to two separate but comparable crises: the 2008/09 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic . The response to each were compared using a sample of 20 countries (endnote 2) and the European Union to assess whether governments stimulus packages increased support toward structural economic reform to achieve: SDG7 (affordable and clean energy), SDG2 (zero hunger, improved food security and sustainable agriculture), and SDG5 (gender equality and women’s empowerment). T he study found that stimulus packages in 2020 are much larger but less channeled towards these key SDGs, w...

Over the coming months I will share some interesting stakeholder   initiatives  in support of the Sustainable Development Goals – Issue 1 will look at an initiative  from the following stakeholders: Foundations Local Government Industry NGO  initiative Education  Initiative FOUNDATIONS (taken from the SDGFunders web site) SDGFunders.org is a great platform to see what foundation is funding which goal or target and where they are funding them. This has resulted in the development in some contries of foundation platform.  SD Gfunders.org aims to make data on philanthropic investments more accessible while enabling data to track progress and tell stories about effective collaboration. The website offers the most comprehensive representation available of foundations’ giving aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).   The site includes: · A dashboard of indicators displaying funding from philanthropy by goal, region, countr...