Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

ILO Press release:  GENEVA (ILO News) – The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) next Director-General will be Gilbert F. Houngbo from Togo. Houngbo is currently President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). He was elected by the ILO’s Governing Body, comprising representatives of governments, workers and employers, during their meeting in Geneva. He will be the 11th Director-General of the ILO, and the first African to hold the post. Speaking after his election, Houngbo said, “Although my origins are African my perspective is global. In an age, unfortunately of dividedness, my commitment to be a unifying Director-General stands firm… I will be the Director-General of nobody and the Director-General of everybody. Governments, Employers and Workers alike, from all regions across the world, can rely and should rely on my total readiness to represent and advocate the views of all tripartite constituents of the organization.” “I commit to represent the v...

 Guest blog b y Nigel Topping, UN High-Level ClimateAction Champion for COP26  A world driven by hydrocarbons is a more conflict driven world. The adoption of the  Versailles Declaration  – where EU Member States asked the Commission to prepare a detailed plan by the end of May to cut gas dependency – is a signal that this crisis can and must accelerate, rather than derail, the march towards cheaper, more secure, clean energy. The reasons for this are well known but have become blurred recently amid some calls to ramp up oil and gas exploration and production to fill the gap left by Russia. Such calls mistake a short-term political reflex with the structural changes driving the long-term direction of travel. As the  International Energy Agency  has made clear, responses to the emerging energy crisis do not need to – and indeed should not – compromise our international climate goals, which means no new oil and gas exploration and development this ce...

UNEP press release:  Heads of State, Ministers of environment and other representatives from 175 nations endorsed a historic resolution at the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) today in Nairobi to   End Plastic Pollution   and forge an international legally binding agreement by 2024. The resolution addresses the full lifecycle of plastic, including its production, design and disposal. “Against the backdrop of geopolitical turmoil, the UN Environment Assembly shows multilateral cooperation at its best,” said the President of UNEA-5 and Norway’s Minister for Climate and the Environment, Espen Barth Eide. “Plastic pollution has grown into an epidemic. With today’s resolution we are officially on track for a cure.”  The resolution, based on three initial draft resolutions from various nations, establishes an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), which will begin its work in 2022, with the ambition of completing a draft global legally binding agreement by the...

Stockholm+50 will be held 2-3 June 2022 in Stockholm, Sweden, to commemorate the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Environment and celebrate 50 years of global environmental action. By recognizing the importance of multilateralism in tackling the Earth’s triple planetary crisis – climate, nature, and pollution – the event aims to act as a springboard to accelerate the implementation of the  UN Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals , including the 2030 Agenda, Paris Agreement on climate change, the post-2020 global Biodiversity Framework, and encourage the adoption of green post-COVID-19 recovery plans. The  Towards Stockholm+50 project  is a joint initiative by Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future and Forum for utvikling og miljø (the Norwegian Forum for Development and Environment) ForUM. A stakeholder-led initiative funded by the United Nations Environment Program’s Civil Society Unit with support from the Government of Sweden, Toward...

Photo by IISD/ENB Kiara Worth. This has been a great session on the last 50 years, and I particularly found Achim’s insight something we should all reflect on. My brief comments will focus on three things. First, I would like to pay tribute to Maurice Strong not only as has been said the first director of UNEP but so much of what we do builds on his vision. Without his personal push in 1992 for the Rio Earth Summit there would not be the nine chapters of agenda 21 that gave rights AND responsibilities for the stakeholders we have engaged at UNEA Second, I would like to mention the enormous work of Mostafa Tolba Executive Director for nearly 20 years and whose commitment to building up UNEPs science base and starting to facilitate much of what we now see as the Multilateral Environmental Agreements landscape. Particularly his work around Montreal Protocol. But also, the work on climate change.   It was first mentioned in the Stockholm Conference outcome. Under Mostafa’...

Guest blog by Chris Atkins:  Celebrating 25 years of helping over 2000 companies be seen as change-makers for the G7, G20, B20, W20, and APEC Summits. President and Founder t he CAT Co- Groupofnations.com Connecting Business, Government and Civil Society for 25 years. Originally published here.   The G20 is a strategic multilateral platform connecting the world’s major developed and emerging economies. The G20 holds a strategic role in securing future global economic growth and prosperity. Together, the G20 members represent more than 80 percent of world GDP, 75 percent of international trade, and 60 percent of the world population.  Starting in 1999 as a meeting for the finance minister and central bank governors, the G20 has evolved into a yearly summit involving the Head of State and Government. In addition to that, the Sherpa meetings (in charge of carrying out negotiations and building consensus among Leaders), working groups, and special events are also organiz...

Guest blog by: Jessie Henshaw is a Research Scientist at HDS Natural Systems Design Science. My expertise is in Recognizing Natural Patterns of organization and changing design in environmental, cultural and business systems, used for designing or guiding their transformations, sustainability and organizational learning.   For background, I’m a natural systems scientist who spent years working at the UN with NGOs during the drafting of the SDGs. The economy’s growing harm to the Earth and inequities for humanity were the focus. In the confusion, we seemed to neglect the former to achieve the latter it seemed. That is when I noticed that what pressures people felt most intensely were what they advocated for. The social activists had little feeling for finance and finance leaders little for its growing impacts on the Earth and humanity. Finance essentially defined them away, calling them “externalities” of the profits system central to finance. To me, those two biases stood out as ...