Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Capacity Building for UNEA participants Wednesday 13 th of March Green Tent, UN Compound, Gigiri, Kenya  10:30 to 1:30pm If you want to learn more about how the system works, how to lobby member states and what tools you might use to engage in UNEA and the Sustainable Development Goals or just a refresher, then this is the workshop for you. Last UNEA’s most popular workshop is back and again run by its two seasoned lobbyists: Felix Dodds, Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina and Jan Gustav Strandenaes, Senior Advisor on Governance for Stakeholder Forum. The workshop will cover the following elements: A little on Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) NGOs, Major Groups and other Stakeholders Why attend UN meetings – some case studies of successful campaigns and Multi stakeholder Partnerships SWOT and other tools National preparation Understanding the countries, bureau and secretariat What to do at ...

Guest blog by Oli Brown who is an   Associate Fellow, Energy, Environment and Resources Department, Chatham House. Former UNEP  Senior Programme Coordinator, Disasters and Conflicts sub-programme. It was   first published here. As I write, delegates are starting to arrive in Nairobi for the  United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) . The Assembly starts in earnest on Monday 11 th March and will run for five hectic days of meetings, side events and late-night negotiator huddles, probably ending late on Friday 15 th  March. Next week’s gathering will be just the fourth time that the Assembly has ever met. The first UNEA was held in 2014, and it has been organized roughly every two years since. This year’s version will bring together more than four thousand representatives from 190+ governments, civil society groups, the private sector and other parts of the United Nations. The main assembly meeting of ministers of the environment is surrounded by a clutc...