Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

  Guest blog by OneStop ESG - Sustainability marketplace & media | Sustainability service providers, jobs, courses & insights. First published here The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are the world's shared blueprint for 2030. A professional's guide to how the goals fit together, what the latest progress data shows, and where business fits in the remaining years. In September 2015, all 193 United Nations member states did something unusual: they agreed on a single plan. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development set out 17 Sustainable Development Goals, underpinned by 169 targets, covering everything from poverty and hunger to climate, oceans, justice, and global cooperation. It remains the closest thing humanity has to a shared blueprint for a better future, and the only development framework that virtually every country on earth has signed. A decade on, the blueprint is both vindicated and under strain. The goals have driven measurable gains that would not have ha...

Guest blog: Richard Lee , Global Head of Communications @ Wetlands International Governments meeting at the UN Convention to Combat Desertification conference in Mongolia have decided to postpone negotiations on a decision to tackle drought until the next COP in Egypt in 2028. Wetlands International is alarmed by this failure to make any progress on drought. “Incredibly, governments have failed to agree an approach to tackling drought despite the ever-growing list of drought disasters around the world. Just this year, Europe has suffered a historic drought, while a strengthening El Nino could fuel devastating droughts from southern Africa to Amazonia. We believed that the world’s worsening droughts would force the world’s governments to act. We were wrong. Delaying a decision on drought for at least another two years will cost more than time: communities and economies worldwide will pay the price. This was an opportunity for governments to signal their commitment to combating drought...

Guest Author: Nazeer Ahmed (PhD, Economist). My r esearch integrates economics, management, and data-driven approaches to address challenges in sustainable agriculture, food systems, environmental economics, climate change, agricultural policy, and rural development.   Where is global economic growth coming from in 2026? The answer is becoming increasingly difficult to separate from a broader transformation in the geography of the world economy. While discussions of global growth often focus on whether the world economy is expanding or slowing, an equally important question is which economies are generating that expansion. The distribution of global real GDP growth provides a revealing picture: a relatively small group of economies is responsible for a remarkably large share of the world’s incremental economic activity, with Asia increasingly positioned at the center of this process. The International Monetary Fund’s 2026 World Economic Outlook projected global growth of 3.3% in ...

  Guest blog by:  Michael Stanley-Jones, Fellow, Environmental Policy and Governance, United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health & Claire Egehiza, University West, Sweden “Integrating learner-centred approaches into sustainable development curricula ensures practical and lasting impact across developing regions.” – Enzo di Taranto Capozzi, author, diplomat and climate-tech entrepreneur What happens to almost two decades of knowledge when a major international development programme comes to an end? Our recent chapter in Springer Nature’s Curriculum Development for Sustainable Development: Theory and Practice (2026) explores this question through the experience of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Poverty-Environment Initiative and Poverty-Environment Action for Sustainable Development Goals (2005–2018, 2018-2022) across more than 30 developing countries. Titled “Sustainabl...

17 – 28 August | 17th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification | UNCCD COP 17 | Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia 8 – 22 September | 81st Session of the UN General Assembly, Opening and General Debate | UNGA 81 | New York, United States 18th September  | The Sustainable Development Goals Moment  22-26th September  | High-Level Week (and the 28th) 23rd September  | High-level meeting to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Declaration on the Right to Development 23rd September  | The Secretary-General will convene a high-level meeting on climate action and the just transition, focused on accelerating a just and orderly energy transition to renewables; mobilizing and scaling up affordable finance and investments for developing countries; and delivering adaptation and resilience support in an era of climate overshoot 24th September  |    High-level meeting to address the existential threats p...