Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Guest Blog by: Oli Brown   Associate Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Department, Chatham House. The original is published here .  Make no mistake, when  Erik Solheim   resigned  as head of  UN Environment  on 20th November 2018, less than two and a half years into what most likely would have been an eight-year tenure, the timing was not of his choosing. The proximate reason for his defenestration was a damning report by the UN’s internal auditors, known as the Office for Internal Oversight Services. The report excoriated his travel expenses, which amounted to nearly $500,000 spent on business-class flights and hotels over the course of 22 months. It also detailed a variety of other eye-catching issues, such as spending nearly 80% of his time out of the organisation’s Kenyan headquarters and relaxing HR rules for favoured staff members.  It is vanishingly rare for Under-Secretary-Generals (USG) in the UN system to be forced...

The Background As those who read this blog know I have been very critical of the way that Erik Solheim has led the United Nations Environment Programme from the moment I interviewed him after his selection. I don't intend to go over those arguments again but you can read them in these blogs by me and others: Interview with Erik Solheim the new Executive Director UNEP  (July 1st 2016) UNEP and the private sector: a complicated relationship?   (May 18, 2018) Guest Blog: UNEP and the Private Sector part 2 - an IPEN Letter to SAICM Secretariat Expressing Concern about the Joint Int'l. Council of Chemical Assoc. – UNEP Study (May 23rd) Time for the UN Global Compact to Evolve into the UN Due Diligence Mechanism? A Real Chance with the 2018 Partnership Resolution  (November 1st 2018) Statement by Erik  Solheim On Saturday, I received the final report on the audit of official travel undertaken by the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services. As I ...

With Antonio Guterres as the new UN Secretary General now agreed by the UN General Assembly it will not only be Hilary Clinton who will be working with their transition team.  A number of key positions in the secretariat are expected to change. We also don't know how many of the present Under Secretary Generals and Assistant Secretary Generals he will want to change. This includes the appointment of a new Deputy Secretary General or possibly two? There have been suggestions particularly in the report  by the ECOSOC the Independent Team of Advisors Co-Chaired by Mr. Juan Somavia (former ILO Executive Secretary) of Chile and Mr. Klaus Töpfer of Germany (former Executive Director of UNEP) that there should be two one for development (sustainable) and the other for peace and security. In the summer we also saw the change at UNEP with Erik Solheim taking over as Executive Director. He faces a very immediate challenge of expressing the vision of what should UNEP now rep...

 UNEP is under new leadership with Erik Solheim (Norway) the new Executive Director of UNEP and so i took the chance to interview him as he takes up the helm from Achim Steiner. 1.      What would you say is your vision for UNEP? I am very much looking forward to being engaged full time at UNEP. There are such good people in the organization and outside the organization working with UN Environment to ensure that we are an effective voice for the environment. We should remember that UN Environment is just one actor in a world where governments, business, civil society and, of course, public opinion are the driving forces. The key role of UN Environment is to inspire everyone to work very hard on the environment and to set standards on how we should move forward, UN Environment should bring best practices from those that have been successful on the environment so that everyone can learn from those examples. We should be the go-to organization on th...

Erik Solheim according to Norwegian newspapers is to be announced today as the new Executive Director of UNEP. And later today Monday the 2nd of May ABC News confirm too. He faced stiff competition for the number one job on the environment in the UN system. In the 6 Executive Directors of UNEP it will mean that developed countries will have had 5 of them with two Canadians (Strong and Dowdeswell) and Germany (Toepfer and Steiner). The only Executive Director to come from a developing country was  Dr. Mostafa Kamal Tolba who died recently. Erik brings considerable experience to the position having held been from 2007 to 2012  the combined portfolio of Norway’s Minister of the Environment and International Development; he also served as Minister of International Development from 2005 to 2007. During his time as minister Norwegian aid reached 1%, the highest in the world. Since January 2013 he has been the Chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC). ...