Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Belém, 6 November 2025 Excellencies, Excelências, Agradeço ao Presidente Lula, ao Presidente da COP, e ao Governo e ao povo do Brasil pela calorosa hospitalidade   em Belém. Muito obrigado pela vossa liderança e firme compromisso com o multilateralismo – num momento em que o nosso mundo está em jogo. President Lula, you have called this the COP of truth. I could not agree more. The hard truth is that we have failed to ensure we remain below 1.5 degrees. Science now tells us that a temporary overshoot beyond the 1.5 limit – starting at the latest in the early 2030s – is inevitable. We need a paradigm shift to limit this overshoot’s magnitude and duration and quickly drive it down. Even a temporary overshoot will have dramatic consequences. It could push ecosystems past irreversible tipping points, expose billions to unlivable conditions, and amplify threats to peace and security. Every fraction of a degree means more hunger, displacement, and loss – especi...

Last week the Secretary General presented his report on Re-positioning  the UN Development System to Deliver the 2030 Agenda.  This is happening at a time when President Trump has told the State Department to reduce US funding by more than 50% to UN programs. and as he is cutting State and US AID budgets by 37%. There will be a second Secretary General Report in December. This is in accordance with the request of the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review (QCPR). That document will provide further clarity on the measures and ideas mentioned in the present report, in particular regarding proposals for the improvement of the Resident Coordinator system. That report will also respond to the QCPR call for a system-wide strategic document, and will provide recommendations on how funding efforts can better align with the work required from the United Nations in response to the 2030 Agenda. So, what are the highlights of the first report? The report identifies three gu...

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...