Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Guest blog by Jon Cohn:  Jon is the Managing Editor of the Great Transition Initiative. He is responsible for coordinating the on-going editorial, production, moderation, and dissemination process.  The world is a failed state. The people of Earth share risks and a common destiny without a governance system able to mute dangers and pursue ambitions. As global crises mount, the need for a supranational basis for policy and action becomes ever clearer. The question of world government and how to get there—the focus of the Great Transition Initiative’s new GTI Forum, “ An Earth Constitution: Has Its Time Come? ” —deserves a frank, thoughtful, and deep exploration.   Scholars, activists, and dreamers long have espoused the idea of a constitutional world federation. As strands of global connectivity stretch and thicken, the vision of a more unified world exerts a strengthening pull. How else, one must ask, can we address the interlocking crises gestating in our interdependen...

The Poseidon Principles for Marine Insurance create a common global baseline that is consistent with and supportive of society’s goals to better enable insurers to assess and disclose their portfolio alignment. Seven of the 10 founding members of the Poseidon Principles for Marine Insurance are members of  UN Environment Programme’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative (PSI)  — i.e. Gard, Hellenic Hull Management/American Hellenic Hull Insurance Company, SCOR, Swiss Re, Willis Towers Watson, the Nordic Association of Marine Insurers (Cefor), and the International Union of Marine Insurance (IUMI). Of these seven PSI members, three are also members of the PSI’s  Net-Zero Insurance Alliance  — i.e. Hellenic Hull Management/American Hellenic Insurance Company, SCOR, and Swiss Re. Butch Bacani of the UN Environment Programme was one of the experts consulted in the development of the Poseidon Principles for Marine Insurance. The Poseidon Principles for Marine I...

Guest blog by Carole Excell and Eva Hershaw republished from WRI here It’s been nearly 10 years since Chut Wutty, an environmental investigator and activist from Cambodia, was murdered while trying to halt an illegal logging operation. His death prompted widespread indignation and inspired the civil society organization Global Witness to begin documenting the killing of land and environmental defenders worldwide. This led to the publication of “Deadly Environment,” in 2014, a landmark report that would become an annual account of killings against such activists worldwide. In its first report, Global Witness noted that killings were “notoriously under-reported” by governments. A year later, in 2015, the question was taken up by the United Nations, which adopted Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 to achieve peace, justice and transparent institutions. The framework included a specific benchmark — indicator 16.10.1 — calling on countries to monitor killings of all human rights defe...

By Marc Buckley on originally published in Innovators Magazine on the2nd December 2021 I am delighted to welcome back Professor Felix Dodds as my guest on the Inside Ideas podcast. An Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina and an Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute, he was listed one of the world’s top 25 environmentalists ahead of his time in 2011. The same year, he chaired the United Nations DPI 64th NGO conference ‘Sustainable Societies Responsive Citizens’, which put forward the first set of indicative Sustainable Development Goals. Professor Dodds has also authored or edited over 20 books, including co-writing ‘Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals’ with Ambassador David Donoghue and Jimena Leiva Roesch, and ‘Only One Earth’, with the father of sustainable development, Maurice Strong.  His latest book ‘Tomorrow’s People and New Technology′ (20% Discount Available - enter the code FLR40 at checkout) explores the impact the Fourth Industrial Revoluti...

Originally published in THE HILL  on the 10th of November (during COP26) - now a guest blog here by  Jason West, Ph.D., is a professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research connects air pollution, climate change, energy and health, through computer modeling of the global atmosphere. His lab’s studies have demonstrated the global health benefits of methane emission reductions to control ozone air pollution, as well as the global air quality and health co-benefits of aggressive GHG reductions. The UN COP26 meeting in Glasgow has so far brought successes in emission reduction pledges, but those successes are very likely insufficient to keep global warming from exceeding 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. But at stake is not only climate change.   In Glasgow, world leaders also have a historic opportunity to end another global crisis — the plague of fossil-fueled air pollution. Globally,...

Books for Christmas This year I had the pleasure of finishing and publishing the new book Tomorrow's People and New Technology with two wonderful coauthors    Carolina Duque Chopitea  and  Ranger Ruffins . The book is a great read for friends or family who wonder what you do on sustainable development and how it impacts on their lives. We look at home life, travel, entertainment, work, education, health, social life and also how it might be different in other parts of the world. The book is placed in 2030 when the Sustainable Development Goals should have been delivered and each chapter mentioned the relevant SDG when first introduced.  To support the book launch we did a set of podcasts on each of the chapters which can be listened to at Sustainable Society Cafe   ConnectAID did the launch of the SDG Book Launch "Tomorrow's People and New Technology"  with Felix Dodds and Carolina Duque A recent interview on my views on the outcome from the Glas...