Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

By Felix Dodds and Chantal Line Carpentier who   is Chief, UNCTAD New York office of the Secretary-General, former UN DESA Major Groups Coordinator where she facilitated non-state actors’ contributions to the SDGs negotiations. She’s an Agricultural and Environmental Economist with PhD. from Virginia Tech and MSc. and BSc. from McGill University The financing for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement will need a refocusing of private sector finance. In that context, it might be useful to just look at the UN ecosystem of initiatives on   private sector finance to address these issues. There are several entry points in the UN system which can have an impact on the private sector. These include: UN General Assembly The annual UN General Assembly resolution on “Promoting investments for sustainable development. [A/C.2/L.40]” (UN, 2020) (see UNCTAD section below) UN ECOSOC forum on Financing for Development “About the Forum The ECOSOC...

Guest blog Written by Chantal Line Carpentier, UNCTAD, and Katrin Kuhlmann, Georgetown Law School first published here. Trade-restrictive measures imposed  by G20 governments  have reached historically  high levels , a trend that has only increased with the pandemic. Worldwide, supply chains are also constricting, and some countries are promoting reshoring of production due to both technological change and more inward-looking trade and economic policies. As experts and world leaders assess the intricate supply chain vulnerabilities of our essential goods following COVID-19-related trade restrictions, opportunities arise to realign the structure and substance of trade rules to respond to rising inequalities, climate change and frustrations with trade’s role in development.  That is ironically the call made by the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to achieve its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as  recently reiterated  at the World Tr...

Guest blog by Katrin Kuhlmann, Chantal Line Carpentier, Negin Shahiar, Tara Francis, and  Ana María Garcés Escobar  The authors encourage comments, thoughts, or feedback at mail@newmarketslab.org and UNCTADNY2@un.org.    Changes in the international economic order have brought to the forefront two divergent trends in global trade that will continue to play out over the course of 2020. On one end, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is facing significant reforms following the U.S. Administration’s decision to block new Appellate Body judges.  At the same time, according to the WTO and the Financing for Development Report 2019, the incidence of trade-restrictive measures imposed by G-20 governments has reached historically high levels.   In light of this, today’s appeals for mutually beneficial gains from trade ring increasingly hollow, seemingly replaced in some parts of the world and increasingly even at the multilateral level by the simpler noti...