Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

 Dear Friends Below are seven of my books since the Rio+20 Conference, which you may find useful if you are engaged in sustainable development, climate change, lobbying at the UN, new technologies, and the history of intergovernmental negotiations. Chris Specne and I are working on a new book which will be out for the HLPF in 2027 called  Political Heroes of the Environment: Profiles in Courage. The second in the Heroes series. We are looking for a production company that might be interested in pitching this to the streaming services.  This book provides a step-by-step, insider's guide to lobbying and engaging successfully at the United Nations. It reveals how the United Nations, which plays such a key role on issues from climate change to pollution of our air, land and sea, really works.   From the very basic question of how to ensure you can even attend the event, this book offers hard-to-find information to help readers through this lab...

In 2014 The Water Institute at the University of North Carolina hosted conference on the Water, Food, Energy and Climate Nexus. It played an important role in the discussion in the SDG Open Working Group on the interlinkages between Goals. In 2016 Jamie Bartram head of the Water Institute and I brought together some of the key presentations from the conference into a book ' The Water, Food, Energy and Climate Nexus: Challenges and an agenda for action'. We invited the then Prince of Wales to write the Foreword which he agreed to do. The issues he raised in 2016 have moved even more to the centre of the political agenda. The climate crisis has accelerated and the links between their impacts on food, water and energy are now clear to anyone who is looking. In 2016 the idea of the circular economy was not yet being discussed in the negotiations. In 2022 the new negotiations on a Plastic Convention have it as a central part of the negotiations. His insights into the challenges we f...

It is always challenging looking back on a year and forward to the next. I guess the highlights of 2019 were after three years of work the UN General Assembly passed the resolution on Promoting Investments for Sustainable Development . Passed on November 27 th 2019 by the UNGA. The original idea for such a resolution was a result of work started under the Danish Presidency of the UNGA of Mogens Lykketoft. He commissioned a report the Chain of Sustainable Finance:   Accelerating Private Investments for the SDGs, including Climate Action from that report there was an ongoing discussion in member states and stakeholders including the private sector led by AVIVA. In 2018 Nigeria championed the idea and the resolution passed under the Nigerian Presidency of the UNGA of Tijjani Muhammad-Bande. For me the sad part of it was I was out of the country in the UK when it happened. At the start of the year, it was a pleasure to serve on the UN Global Compact Internal Review T...

Addressing Resilience through the Nexus of Water-Food-Energy; Cities as SDG Laboratories was organized by the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future and the International Science Council  and the UNC Water Institute. The power point that supports this can be found here.   The Rural-Urban Nexus:   Cities are to be seen not in isolation, but intrinsically connected with broader ecosystem as part of a metabolism of flows and interconnected social and ecological processes. A substantial proportion of the water, energy and food that supports urban living is supplied from rural areas outside the cities. The largely one-way flow of these resources together with the pollution and waste generated in urban spaces have a determining effect on patterns of rural development and the integrity of the ecosystems services. The Nexus approach has already shown itself to have a crucial part to play in ensuring that the supply of water, energy and food services to ci...

Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals . T he Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal set of seventeen goals and 169 targets, with accompanying indicators, which were agreed by UN member states to frame their policy agendas for the fifteen-year period from 2015 to 2030. Written by three authors who have been engaged in the development of the SDGs from the beginning, this book offers an insider view of the process and a unique entry into what will be seen as one of the most significant negotiations and global policy agendas of the twenty-first century.  The book reviews how the SDGs were developed, what happened in key meetings and how this transformational agenda, which took more than three years to negotiate, came together in September 2015. It dissects and analyzes the meetings, organizations and individuals that played key roles in their development. It provides fascinating insights into the subtleties and challenges of high-level nego...

Guest blog by Robert Brears who is the author of Urban Water Security, Founder of Mitidaption, and Our Future Water. " @Mitidaption Faced with climate change and environmental degradation many cities are turning to Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) solutions to enhance climate resilience as well as restore the health of ecosystems. BGI is a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas, ranging in size from rain gardens right up to green streets, that are designed and managed to deliver a wide range of environmental, economic, and social benefits including improved water quality (BGI captures and cleans storm water, ensuring waterways are healthier), reduced potential for flooding (BGI slows down and holds storm water allowing it to soak into the ground), enhanced resilience to climate change (BGI can use water as a resource for communities and natural habitats), reduced infrastructure costs (BGI reduces the volume of water entering the sewer system, increas...

The Full Report from the Conference can be found here. Message from the 2018 Nexus Conference The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals can only be achieved if they are pursued in an integrated manner. For this reason, the Nexus community of researchers, academics, NGOs, policy makers, the private sector and other key stakeholders came together at the 2018 Nexus Conference at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We have concluded that the Nexus approach remains essential in recognizing the indivisible nature of the SDGs and that such an approach is fundamental in delivering these goals. The Nexus approach brings into focus the positive synergies and potential negative tradeoffs that arise when working to achieve the ambitious 2030 Agenda, and it is helping to develop more practical solutions to address key issues. Understanding the interlinkages between water, energy, food and climate plays a crucial role in delivering sustainable outcome and helping gl...

Message from the Nexus Conference The draft outcome Message from the Nexus Conference is available here for you to read and send us focused comments and suggested changes. Please submit all comments by April 1, 2018 . A new version will be produced for the conference to have available and a final version after the conference will be circulated to the Member States for their consideration when they are preparing the Ministerial Declaration for the UN High-Level Political Forum. We would appreciate it if you sent any changes to the text as track changes to nexus@unc.edu. Any comments should be sent to the same address. Registration for the April 16-18th Conference can be done here.  About the Conference The “Nexus” approach is the one that focuses on overlaps across sectors while respecting sectoral expertise in order to make better plans by understanding interactions.(Stockholm Environment Institute, 2017)The Water Institute at the University of North Carolina at C...

The deadline for abstract submissions has been extended until November 15, 2017. Registration  is now open, with "early bird" discounts available until November 15, 2017.     Confirmed speakers include: •                      Elliott Harris: UN Assistant Secretary-General UNEP •                      Liz Thompson : former Energy and Environment Minister Barbados •                      Pauliina Murphy: Head of International Government Engagement at Aviva •                      Maruxa Cardama: Special Adv...