Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Insights on key issues at the last informals ahead of HABITAT III Conference By Yunus Arikan, Head of Global Policy and Advocacy, ICLEI World Secretariat National government negotiators are gathering at the UN Headquarters in New York City on 7 – 9 September to seek consensus on key issues for a New Urban Agenda before finally heading to the HABITAT III Conference in Quito, Ecuador on 17 – 20 October. This briefing and opinion piece aims to highlight key issues ahead of this meeting. 1. Sustainable urban development in action worldwide While HABITAT III negotiators are struggling to agree on the details of a New Urban Agenda, local and subnational governments, in collaboration with their partners at the local, subnational, national, regional and global levels, are already accelerating action under numerous fields of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  On the SDGs, the City of Seoul, South Korea hosted a major conference on advancing the Urban Sustainabl...

Guest blog by  Franziska Schreiber:  Franziska  works at adelphi as a Project Manager in the field of urban transformation. In her work, she primarily focuses on international negotiations processes relevant to cities, and also works on aspects of urban governance, sustainable urban development, and the intersection of city planning and social cohesion. She is the author of various studies, policy papers and recommendations, and is developing diverse dialogue formats for current political processes. ( originally published in devex ) Nearly 70 percent of the world’s population is projected to live in cities by 2050. Today, there is broad political consensus that cities will be critical to global transformation. This was not always the case. Through negotiations last year on the Sustainable Development Goals, urbanization gained political attention at the global level. This was in part thanks to the successful lobbying of numerous local actors for a stand-alone goal — ...

This e-book series is about an exploring new ideas; it will hopefully provide some inspiration about how we might think differently about a sustainable future and the route to achieving it.    –Joss Tantram What’s it all about? The quest for a sustainable future is all about questions. Some are big and some are small. Some are about the nature and purpose of our systems of value, and some about how we value our loved ones. Sometimes the smallest questions have the biggest answers. Children’s ability and commitment to asking questions often outstrips our ability to answer them. This is not merely that an incessant stream of ‘why?’ questions is tiring, it’s also that some of the time we genuinely don’t know the answers to the questions we are asked or are unprepared to deal with their true implications. As we grow up, we often keep questioning, but the scope of those questions can narrow due to the practical need to balance a sense of wonder with passing an exam or...

  A transformational agenda for an insecure world by Felix Dodds, Ambassador David Donoghue and Jimena Leiva Roesch (publication November 9th 2016) Republished from Inter-Press Service by Felix Dodds It’s been almost one year since heads of state and government adopted ‘Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ - the ambitious agenda which contains 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and 169 targets. In fact, 2015 was one of the most important years for multilateral agreements. Not only did the governments sign up to SDGs on 25 September 2015, they also reached the Paris Climate Agreement and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda as the framework for funding the two policy agendas. The SDGs were the culmination of four years of negotiations, starting in July 2011, with the initial proposal by Paula Caballero from the government of Colombia. These negotiations saw the most participatory process in UN history. The vision reflected in the Heads of ...

The third straw poll for the new United Nations Secretary General happened today and there have been some interesting developments. The largest change has been Miroslav Lajčák moving from tenth to second with now 9 encourage (up from 2) and 5 discourage (down from 6 and only 1 no opinion). Miroslav was until the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia a member of the Communist Party.  He has been Slovakia’s ambassador to Japan and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He joined the Czechoslovak foreign ministry in 1988. Between 1991 and 1993 Lajčák was posted to the Czechoslovak and subsequently the Slovak embassy in Moscow. He was Slovakia’s Ambassador to Japan to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later Serbia and Montenegro), Albania and the Republic of Macedonia. He was the EU's supervisor to the 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum. He has served as Foreign Minister of Slovakia three times and is also severed also as Deputy Prime Minister until March 2016. he was a s...

Gene Wilder was possibly one of the greatest comics of the late 1960s through to the end of the 1990s. My favorite film of his was ‘The Producers’ where he played a hysterical Leo Bloom Jewish accountant who worked out you could make more money from a play that failed than one that succeeded. Staring next to Zero Mostel who played the Jewish Producer proceeded to seduce little old ladies of their savings for the production of the play.They come up with what they think is the utterly tasteless musical play purporting to be about the happy home life of a brutal dictator.  The play opens with a lavish production of the title song, "Springtime for Hitler", which celebrates Nazi Germany crushing Europe ("Springtime for Hitler and Germany/Winter for Poland and France") This got Wilder a nomination for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Though the film was not a box office success it became a cult movie afterwards. It was converted into a huge successful B...

For decades, Archbishop Tutu has preached a message of unity through ubuntu – what affects one of us, affects us all. The Los Angeles show kicks off UNITY: The Desmond Tutu Legacy Projec t, a global effort spearheaded by the Archbishop, his daughter Mpho Tutu and the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation to ensure his work for peace, justice, and equality continues for generations to come. Each concert will unify musicians, actors, artists, and activists who will lend their voices to raise awareness of Tutu’s life work and global impact. All artists are donating their time for this international cause. I am interviewing Jason Rothberg who is the lead producer for this and other events happening over the coming months to celebrate Archbishop Tutu and Astrella Celeste who is producing the t-shirts in support of the project. Jason you have been involved with other charity events but how did you get involved with this project and what do you hope it will achieve? Thank...