Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Guest blog by Youssef Nassef, Climate Adaptation Director - UNFCCC, former Ambassador, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Egypt. Originally published here. As delegates gather in Bonn for SB 64, I find myself reflecting on a journey that has unfolded over more than a quarter century.  Today, discussions on least developed countries (LDCs) are firmly embedded in the climate agenda.  Dedicated agenda items, constituted bodies, funding arrangements, adaptation plans, and references throughout the Paris Agreement all reflect a broad recognition of the special circumstances and needs of LDCs.  Yet this current reality masks the remarkable journey that brought us here.  When I joined the UNFCCC secretariat in 1999, there was no dedicated LDC Group within the negotiations as we know it today. There were no decisions specifically devoted to operationalizing support for LDCs. There was no Least Developed Countries Expert Group (LEG), no Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF),...

Guest blog from Climate Analytics - originally published here . Climate Analytic s is delivering cutting-edge science, analysis and support to accelerate climate action and keep warming below 1.5°C. The UN General Assembly has sent an important signal: the world’s highest court has clarified States’ legal obligations on climate change. Yesterday's UNGA resolution is an important affirmation of the International Court of Justice’s landmark advisory opinion on climate change.  The ICJ opinion from July 2025 made clear that climate action is not optional: States have legal obligations to protect the climate system and to cooperate in line with the 1.5°C limit.  These obligations apply to countries whether or not they are Parties to the Paris Agreement. Yesterday's resolution recognises the ICJ opinion as an authoritative clarification of international law, including States’ duties under climate treaties, customary international law, human rights law and the law of th...

Guest blog by Bertha Iris Argueta Tejeda, Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer, Climate Justice Eurodad - the European Network on Debt and Development. She is an economist, and t focused on public policy in general and on the agricultural sector in particular. Originally published here. The OECD’s latest report on Climate Finance Provided and Mobilised by Developed Countries (covering 2013-2024) confirms a significant shift in how climate finance for Global South countries is being delivered. While the US$ 100 billion climate finance goal was exceeded for the third consecutive year, this is not being driven by increases in bilateral public funding, but by a growing reliance on private finance mobilisation and multilateral development banks (MDBs). Meanwhile, adaptation finance continues to lag behind despite growing needs in many vulnerable countries. This shift raises important questions about the future of climate finance under the   New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) , wh...

Guest blog:  Lenni Montiel:  Senior UN Development Leader (Ret.) | Former UN Assistant Secretary-General |UNDP Resident Representative | Governance, Public Policy & Multilateral Diplomacy | Leadership Advisor & Trainer | Chevening Scholar.   Lenni writes  on  LinkedIn about the  UN a nd international development. Originally published here. U N80 started as a conversation about efficiency It has become a conversation about power. After following the process closely, I believe the most important lessons emerging from the first phase of UN80 are not about any individual proposal. They are about how reform actually happens in the United Nations. I've seen this pattern before in General Assembly and ECOSOC debates over the years. We saw similar dynamics during Rio+20 for instance. The moment ownership becomes the question, the conversation changes. Here are 11 lessons emerging so far: 1️⃣ Yes to reform, but not on faith alone. Many Member States su...

  Guest contribution for SUNx Malta  |  Based on the TSSF–SIIL Implementation Architecture Research Sequence (Papers #01–#11) and applied destination diagnostics by Suzanne Duffour, Yun Consultancy A Question the Intergovernmental Process Has Not Yet Answered Under the Paris Agreement, Parties submit Nationally Determined Contributions. In tourism-dependent economies, these contributions increasingly reference nature-based tourism as a climate co-benefit and identify tourism infrastructure among climate adaptation priorities. As the global stocktaking process matures and implementation expectations intensify, a question has moved to the foreground that the commitment architecture alone cannot resolve: how do these national-level pledges actually reach the operators, destinations, and workforce systems responsible for delivering them? The frameworks exist. The commitments are genuine. Yet across destination ecosystems — from protected-area tourism corridors...