Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Those who are reading this blog will know I am a huge fan of Principles as an important first stage to address key areas. We have the principles for responsible investment, the same for banking. We have principles for people first PPPs for the SDGs being developed by the UNECE. They in their latest on their forum call for other regional commissions to develop a similar approach relevant to their specific circumstances. Now we have some for Sovereign Wealth Funds. For those who can remember this was one of the recommendations form the  Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A future worth choosing The report of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability in 2012. The report said: "174. Sovereign wealth funds are also important in this regard. The total assets of such funds currently stand at nearly $3 trillion and are expected to reach between $6 trillion and $10 trillio n by 2013. Twelve new sovereign wealth funds have been established sin...

Human Rights and Sustainable Development Thank you for inviting me to address the fifth World Forum on Human Rights here in Nantes in France. I would like to cover three things in my speech. The impacts of Rio and its commitment to human rights The landscape of the new development goals for 2015 What human rights activists should focus on Some of the NGOs and media presented Rio+20 as a failure. That is not how I see it and I believe they contribute to weakening multilateralism. In 1992 I once equated a UK NGO as ‘Thatcher’s Children’ more interested in column inches than in the issue they claimed to be campaigning on. Clearly the challenges ahead are huge. This is because so many of the commitments made by governments over the last forty years since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on Human Environment have not been delivered. I do not know how many of you are aware of the excellent work by Johan Rockstrom of the Stockholm Resilience Center o...

President Sarkozy's visit to Lula on 6 and 7 September, saw him expresing the French support to the Rio +20 Earth summit. "La France soutient pleinement le souhait du Brésil d’organiser en 2012 un nouveau sommet de la Terre, 20 ans après le premier Sommet qui s’était déjà tenu à Rio de Janeiro. Ce nouveau sommet pourra constituer une occasion privilégiée pour réaliser des progrès décisifs et nécessaires en matière de gouvernance internationale de l’environnement". "France fully supports the desire of Brazil to organize in 2012 a new Earth Summit, 20 years after the first Summit had been held in Rio de Janeiro. This new peak may be an ideal opportunity to make decisive and necessary progress for international governance of the environment. " A copy of the full text is downloadable at the www.earthsummit2012.org