Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Wow we are, we hope, into the last five days of the Post 2015 process!!!!  By Friday there should be an agreement and lots of hugs, I understand, all round. Between now and then though there is some tough negotiations to be undertaken.  have to admit I didn't stay up to wait for ‘final draft’ of the Declaration to come out. I had spent part of Sunday evening at a 'Make A Wish' concert at the Bitter End rock venue in West Village.   So we are now down to the real negotiations. After my morning in the Vienna Cafe this is some of the areas I believe will cause some discussion and negotiations this week. The preamble has grown somewhat and has become more of a laundry list under the 5 Ps (Planet, People, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership) by doing so I think misses the point of the preamble and I don’t think what we have now under the 5 Ps adds anything.  The most import...

The Newish Declaration Well we have the text forthe final negotiations for the Post 2015 Declaration . Don’t those attending the Finance for Development (FfD) wish they had our facilitators? Well I much more like the preamble than last time! I am a sucker for People, Planet and Prosperity part as it was the slogan for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development and adding Peace and Partnerships (also a WSSD priority) is pretty cool. On the targets the co-facilitators have taken a lead and put into the text the technical revisions that they had proposed in the zero draft. Hmmmmmm that is going to be interesting to see how that plays. The proposed change to the ocean target 14c is left still to be discussed. I am sure the changes in the targets will be a central part of the negotiations in the first week. I think the human rights and gender text seems better and it does look like the mention of CBDR in para 10 will cause the usual fights. I tried in a previous blog ...

What was very interesting about the last session of the post 2015 negotiations is that there seemed to be a convergence of views on what the main elements of  The Declaration might be. This will make it easier for the co-facilitators to produce a zero draft by June. Of course there were disagreements over issues such as common but differentiated responsibility and how to phrase human rights and I am sure when the text comes out a few more things. There was some very thoughtful comments by countries such as Panama on how to structure the document and again surprisingly there was much more support for the secretary generals six themes being part of The Declaration with possibly enabling paragraphs which would help in the media side of promoting the outcome. These are to just remind everyone: People: to ensure healthy lives, knowledge, and the inclusion of women and children Dignity: to end poverty and fight inequality Planet: to protect our ecosystems for all societies and our ...

Monday is the first day of the next phase on the SDGs, it all started in July 2011 in Solo Indonesia when Paula Caballero from Colombia supported by Guatemala and Peru suggested that we should have agreed some Sustainable Development Goals. That suggestion has gone through many iterations to the point where at the beginning of 2015 we find ourselves with 17 Goals and 169 targets, The big question is will this change? I don't think so. For those stakeholders just joining the discussion who may have amazing ideas - well you are too late. One of the great lessons that I have learnt from being around intergovernmental meetings for the last twenty years is be there at the beginning.  Probably the most influential input that stakeholders made from the UN DPI NGO Conference in Bonn to the SDGs was two months after the meeting in Solo when they came up with 17 SDGs. The paper became the main reference document for government discussions in the coming months. It covered 70% of what be...