Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Date Change Advisory: The Nexus Conference  has been moved to March 5th - 8th, 2014. The Nexus 2014: Water, Food, Climate and Energy Conference has been moved to Wednesday, March 5 th through Saturday, March 8 th due to the scheduling of a just-announced meeting of the UN Sustainable Development Goals Open Working Group.  This date change allows for participants to engage in immediate discussions of the most recent UN deliberations at the Conference and it presents an opportunity to extend the early bird registration deadline to January 31 st .  The Conference comprises a variety of panel discussions, interactive and networking sessions, and research presentations aimed at increasing the dialog around Nexus issues.  To view the agenda click here .  To register for the Confe...

Speech to the The Internet Governance Forum he IGF 2013 is being held in Bali, Indonesia on 22-25 October. The overarching theme for the 2013 IGF meeting is: "Building Bridges"- Enhancing Multistakeholder Cooperation for Growth and Sustainable Development". A video of the speech can be watched here   I want to cover four areas in my presentation A little of history of the MDGs Their implementation The development of SDGs in the run up to Rio – I’ll leave Jan Gustav in the final session to take you from   Rio to now Some lessons for World Summit on the Information Society process   The history I remember well the preparations for the Millennium Summit in 2000. It was happening just as the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) was starting to gain traction. Like many environment and sustainable development NGOs ‘Stakeholder Forum’, which I was then the Executive Director of, made a strategic decision that the Millennium Summit seemed to be go...

68 th session of the General Assembly Overview of events with opportunities for civil society participation around its opening week The following events during the High Level Week of the 68th session of the UN General Assembly are intended to substantively contribute to shaping the post-2015 development agenda, including the Sustainable Development Goals. Major groups of Civil society and other stakeholders will have an opportunity to engage in the inter-governmental processes, with limited access, as well as in a series of UN and/or civil society led events that will be open to all NGOs.  Participation details for each of these inter-related events are provided below. In addition, governments and/or civil society are convening side events for which dates and venues will be confirmed by late August. A provisional list of relevant side events can be accessed here:   http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/proposed-side-events-2013-special-event.pdf Friday 20 Septemb...

As the outcome from Rio+20 continues to have impact long after the delegates have left Rio Central. Two weeks ago we saw the agreement on the setting up of the High Level Political Forum operating under the same rules as the old CSD for stakeholder engagement. The ongoing work of the Sustainable Development Goals Open Working Group and now announced the membership for the I ntergovernmental Committee of Experts in Sustainable Development Financing . The latest is the follow through on “85(k) strengthen the science-policy interface through review of documentation bringing together dispersed information and assessments, including in the form of a global sustainable development report, building on existing assessments; The Division for Sustainable Development within the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs are in the process of producing the first Global Sustainable Development Report. They have also opened it for input: “ Social and natural scientists , here is you...

I have been involved in international stakeholder politics for over two decades and sustainable development policy development for nearly three. Over the years, I have helped set up four different global coalitions of NGOs at the UN – around the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (1993), UN Habitat (1996),WHO (1999) and the Water and Climate Coalition (2007). I served as co-chair of the CSD NGO Steering Committee from 1997-2001 (note 1). I also served as chair of the 64 th UN DPI NGO Conference (2011). During the 1996 UN GA Special Session on Agenda 21, I played a leading role in introducing stakeholder dialogues to the United Nations. (Governments went into informal session to enable me to put the suggestion before them.) I then helped organize the CSD multi- stakeholder Dialogues from 1997-2001, the Bonn Water Dialogues (2001) and Bonn Energy Dialogues (2004). I share all this to explain that most of my time around the UN has been dedicated to expanding the...