Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

  by Felix Dodds and Jenkins Thomas 2015 seems such a long time ago. After such a successful year for multilateralism with world leaders adopting in September the 17 SDGs and their 169 associated targets and then in December  Paris Climate Agreement as the reference point for driving global efforts towards sustainable development.  What would 2016 bring? Now as we start 2017 we know that the next four years, at least sustainable development and climate, will be tough and it seems we will need a defending strategy. A good question as the world seems upside down is who are our defensive team? 2015 had developed this shared political commitment to ensuring that no one would be left behind on the journey to sustainability. However, at that time, there was little thought, if any, on how the goals would be attained in an expeditious manner. Instead, what preoccupied the minds of many, which turned out controversial, was how financial resources for technology de...

'Guest blog by Laszlo Pinter reproduced with permission of The Integrated Assessment Society' Laszlo Pinter, Professor, Central European University, Hungary, and Senior Fellow, International Institute for Sustainable Development, Canada Integrated assessment has been conceived as a field specialized in tackling real world science-policy problems that are technically and politically complex and carry significant risk and uncertainty. Already used in challenging global policy processes covering, for example, biodiversity and climate change, IA is seen as well-positioned to support the implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs). In order to explore this proposition, TIAS held two webinars in early 2016. The first event on February 2 covered the IA /SDG interface from the conceptual and strategic point of view through talks by Mark Levy, Deputy Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network  (CIESIN) at Columbia University; David O’C...

By Shelly Palmer originally published here . Named one of LinkedIn’s Top 10 Voices in Technology, Shelly Palme r is CEO of The Palmer Group, a strategic advisory, technology solutions and business development practice focused at the nexus of media and marketing with a special emphasis on augmented intelligence and data-driven decision-making. He is Fox 5 New York's on-air tech and digital media expert, writes a weekly column for AdAge, and is a regular commentator on CNBC and CNN. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com  or subscribe to our daily email  The “willing suspension of disbelief” is the idea that we (the audience, readers, viewers, content consumers) are willing to suspend judgment about the implausibility of the narrative for the quality of our own enjoyment. We do it all the time. Two-dimensional video on our screens is smaller than life and flat and not in real time, but we ignore those facts and immerse ourselves in the stories as if they we...

There is no question that 2016 has been a year of surprises whether it was Brexit, Leicester City winning the Premier League or the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series. But perhaps the biggest surprise of all was a tv reality show host and property developer with no political experience winning the US Presidency. Looking over the political landscape, there is a global trend towards nationalism and Xenophobia. - some would draw parallels with the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s.  A year after the success of countries agreeing to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement we now have an incoming President who seems to be a climate denier. His nomination of the CEO of Exxon Mobile as his Secretary of State doesnt just worry those who think his close ties to Russia are problematic but the company that he runs knew that burning fossil fuels would contribute to climate change as early as the 1970s. With the recent release of company papers, it is ...

Interview  Felix Dodds on Five Years of Nexus Felix Dodds is a Senior Fellow at the Global Research Institute and a Senior Affiliate at the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina and an Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute. He was the co-director of the 2014 Nexus Conference on Water, Food, Energy and Climate and has become a leading voice for the Nexus. Felix makes the start for a new series of Nexus interviews. First published on the NEXUS PLATFORM  NEXUS Platform: The Nexus approach was very much created at the Bonn 2011 Nexus Conference and sharpened in Chapel Hill 2014. After now five years of Nexus: did the initial idea ­­– increase the understanding of the interdependencies across water, energy, food and other policies such as climate and biodiversity – start to work out and why? Felix Dodds:  There is no question in my mind that the Nexus approach was one of the important differences between the Millennium Development Goals and the...

By Felix Dodds and Thomas Jenkins Democratic elections have been a long-cherished practice in much of the western hemisphere. Aided partly by informed citizenry, the tradition is firmly entrenched in the electoral processes because of active participation of the middle class in campaigns and policy making. Elections and their outcomes are taken very seriously in that part of the world to the extent that if a sitting President or Prime Minister loses even a referendum, he has to exit office to protect his own integrity, and the wishes of the citizens. Are we beginning to see that trend shaping other parts of the world? Or are recent political events across the globe merely a product of political dissatisfaction? Well, since 2010, Africa and the Arab World have been seeing some revolution.  Strong political currents are sweeping there, and a new dawn of leadership is being ushered. Côte d’Ivoire went to polls in 2010 and elected then opposition leader, Dr. Alassane Ouattar...

The new United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has had his first key appointments. He has hired Amina Mohammed of Nigeria as the U.N. Deputy Secretary-General. We all know and admire her for her work serving as the Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Post-2015 development planning. She played a critical role with the Ambassador Kamal and Ambassador Donoghue in facilitating the process that culminated in the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015. Since then she has been a  Minister of Environment of Nigeria, from 11 November 2015. As his Chef de Cabinet he has chosen Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti of Brazil. Many of us working in New York will remember her as Ambassador for Brazil from July 2007 to November 2013. She played the critical role in following up President Lula's call for a new Summit on sustainable development made in September 2007. First persuading G77 to support the call in October 2008 and ...