Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

  Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage edited by F elix Dodds and Chris Spence is now available on Routledge, Amazon and most onsite bookshops. If you pre-order on Routledge site and use the code FLE22  at checkout you will get an extra 20% off the book. Present retail price is around $27 . "Environmental Heroes in Diplomacy tells an important story.  The individuals chronicled here took on daunting challenges in negotiating global agreements on some of the biggest issues of our times. Through courage and determination, they managed to forge positive action. These stories and their collective message reaffirm one of my core beliefs - multilateral diplomacy, when carried out with vision and persistence, actually works. The efforts and achievements highlighted in these chapters are a clear illustration of three crucial action points for achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. First, every human being, especially our leaders, must be unr...

In 1962 President Kennedy asked us to look to the stars he said: “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.” (Kennedy, 1962)  As a child it inspired me – as did Star Trek – and yes I had a telescope for my eighth birthday and looked to the stars. For my ‘works experience’ as a 15-year-old I went for two weeks to work at the at the Bayfordbury Observatory in Hertford just outside London. I was also inspired by my father who had also worked on the UK’s Blue Streak programme which was being developed to maintain the independent nuclear deterrent for the UK but also to give the UK the possibility of developing their own space programme. Government apathy killed the project. I used to love...

"We are writing, on behalf of civil society organizations representing more than a million Americans, to request that the U.S. Government enthusiastically support the proposal now before the United Nations to hold an Earth Summit in Brazil in 2012. We hope that you will see the Summit as an opportunity to consolidate the gains made in your first Administration towards sustainable development and to catalyze actions worldwide to build a new green global prosperity." In a letter signed by groups that include NRDC, WEDO, Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace and US National Wildlife Federation they remind the Preisend that: "The last time a U.S. President participated in an Earth Summit was 1992. There is a whole new generation of leaders and a swell of youth behind them whose lives and understanding of the world will be shaped by the events in the next several years. As you told Ghana’s parliament in July 2009, “above all, it will be the young people – brimming with ta...