Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

A new book is out Earth Charter, Education and the Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 : Research, Experiences and Reflections edited by Mirian Vilela and Alice Jimenez, The Earth Charter (EC) is a document with sixteen principles powering a global movement. When you apply it to your business, school or community, you begin turning conscience into action to make all life on Earth thrive. In 1987, the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development issued a call for creation of a new charter that would set forth fundamental principles for sustainable development. The drafting of an Earth Charter was part of the unfinished business of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. In 1994, Maurice Strong, the secretary general of the Earth Summit and chairman of the Earth Council, and Mikhail Gorbachev, president of Green Cross International, launched a new Earth Charter Initiative with support from the Dutch government. An Earth Charter Commission was formed in 1997 to oversee the project.  Ea

Guest blog by:  By Chantal Line Carpentier, Drew D'Alelio, Bruno Cardoso Zuccolo, Olivier Combe and Raymond Landveld . (endnote 1) Facing another global crisis, governments are spending trillions to revive their economies amid growing calls from different corners to channel these funds to the underfinanced Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Recently UNCTAD took a deep dive (hyperlink) into responses to two separate but comparable crises: the 2008/09 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic . The response to each were compared using a sample of 20 countries (endnote 2) and the European Union to assess whether governments stimulus packages increased support toward structural economic reform to achieve: SDG7 (affordable and clean energy), SDG2 (zero hunger, improved food security and sustainable agriculture), and SDG5 (gender equality and women’s empowerment). T he study found that stimulus packages in 2020 are much larger but less channeled towards these key SDGs, w

Over the coming months I will share some interesting stakeholder   initiatives  in support of the Sustainable Development Goals – Issue 1 will look at an initiative  from the following stakeholders: Foundations Local Government Industry NGO  initiative Education  Initiative FOUNDATIONS (taken from the SDGFunders web site) SDGFunders.org is a great platform to see what foundation is funding which goal or target and where they are funding them. This has resulted in the development in some contries of foundation platform.  SD Gfunders.org aims to make data on philanthropic investments more accessible while enabling data to track progress and tell stories about effective collaboration. The website offers the most comprehensive representation available of foundations’ giving aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).   The site includes: · A dashboard of indicators displaying funding from philanthropy by goal, region, country, and population group · A lis

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 Forum on