Available on pre-order new book Environmental Lobbying at the United Nations: A Guide to Protecting Our Planet
This book provides a step-by-step, insiders’ guide on how to lobby and engage successfully at the United Nations. It reveals how the United Nations, which plays such a key role on issues from climate change to pollution of our air, land and sea, really works.
In a world of rapid climate change, a flood of forever chemicals and plastic pollution, and the extinction of so much wildlife around the world, we need the convening power of the United Nations now more than ever. What’s more, we need individuals and organisations dedicated to making sure the United Nations has the most positive impact it can. And yet, global diplomacy can be dauntingly challenging and complex. Drawing on the authors' combined sixty years’ professional experience of the United Nations system, this book contains essential information for individuals and organisation seeking to engage in this complex and confusing world. From the very basic question of how to ensure you can even attend the event, this book offers hard-to-find information to help readers through this labyrinth, including insider acronyms and language, how and when are the best times to put your issue forward to achieve maximum impact, how the negotiations really work, who are the key players and how to engage with those players. The authors reveal how stakeholders can be effective from the very first day of their first UN meeting. Drawing on interviews with other experts, as well as training materials that have been produced by the authors, this book demystifies what to many outsiders can seem like an opaque and confusing world.
This book is an essential resource for individuals and organisations entering the world of the United Nations for the first time, as well as those looking to gain a deeper understanding of how the world of international diplomacy really works.
"Much of everyday life, in both personal and professional spaces, is about negotiation. Lobbying is closely connected to negotiating, and is an art. For those who work in an around the multilateral space, negotiation and lobbying skills are critical for the development and success of policy agendas which are central to human wellbeing. Despite this, many who work in these spaces start without formal training, guidance or information in negotiations and lobbying. I am grateful that the prolific writer on development as articulated in the United Nations and nongovernmental forums, is sharing his vast experience on lobbying and how it should best and most effectively, be done. Many will thank him for these invaluable insights. Yet another worthwhile contribution to the body of literature around U.N processes, well done Felix and Chris!”
Liz Thompson, Ambassador, Barbados
Table of contents
Chapter 1: Why do UN meetings matter? The case for getting involved.
Chapter 2: What are international agreements on the environment and sustainable development? Who is involved?
Chapter 3: How does a UN meeting operate?
Chapter 4: Why attend a UN meeting?
Chapter 5: How should I prepare for a UN meeting?
Chapter 6: What to do at the meeting: Starting off.
Chapter 7: What to do at the meeting: The middle stage.
Chapter 8: What to do at the meeting: The end game (and what comes after)
Chapter 9: What is it like being a government representative?
Chapter 10: Using media to highlight your presence and reinforce your message
Conclusion
"This book is brilliant. Beautifully written, engaging and informative. Felix and Chris are able to explain how the UN works better than anyone else I have met. This book is their gift to the next generation of those seeking to influence positive outcomes at this incredibly important institution. For all its faults and complicated processes, the UN represents the main global fora to promote world peace. Importantly - and as this book points out - the UN has convened positive progress across a broad range of associated issues and over a long period of time. However, it is becoming increasingly obvious to many that unsustainable economic growth is going to drive geopolitical unrest that could undermine financial markets and national security. We are going to need the UN to be well informed and increasingly effective on harnessing financial markets to help stop such disasters from taking place. I wish luck to all those who seek to help the UN promote more sustainable economic development that undergirds world peace. The UN needs you. And you need this book."
Steve Waygood, Chief Sustainable Finance Officer at Aviva Investors
"During my days as UN Major Groups Coordinator, I witnessed firsthand how inclusive stakeholder engagement and multilateral collaboration are critical to shaping the UN decision-making, especially the Sustainable Development Goals. This book is an essential resource for anyone striving to navigate UN complex processes and help influence the environmental agenda. After offering a convincing argument to engage, it equips stakeholders and negotiators with description of processes, concrete steps, timelines, and practical strategies, including by building alliances to amplify their voices, to do so. At a time when multilateralism is more important than ever to address global challenges like climate change, inequality, and sustainable development, this guide empowers readers to actively engage in shaping policies that create meaningful, lasting change.”
Chantal Line Carpentier, Head, Trade, Environment, Climate Change and Sustainable Development
“Felix and Chris have UN lobbying down to an artform and this book is an excellent guide to how to hone your skills and become more effective and have greater influence in multilateral negotiations and in shaping global environmental outcomes.”
Andrew Higham, Co-Founder Future Climate Cooperation
“Let Felix and Chris be your guide. They put in the 10,000 hours, they know who the people are and how the system works, or doesn’t, and where the power is or isn’t. “
James Cameron, Hon Fellow Grantham Centre, Imperial College London; Director Ignite Power; Senior Advisor Pollination, Worthwhile Capital, Undaunted.
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