Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

A Year in Review High-Level Dialogue UNEA 7 2025 has been a tough year for multilateralism, where, in many of the forums I have been operating in, we have mostly been trying to defend the gains we have made over the past 10 years. My political activities for this year have focused on multilateral environmental agreements, nitrogen, and plastics. As one of my hobbies is writing, I have continued collaborating with Chris Spence on articles and another book. The publication of Environmental Lobbying at the UN is a replacement of the 2004 book How to Lobby at Inter-governmental meetings. It is richer, and we hope it is a must for anyone working as a stakeholder in the intergovernmental arena. Chris and I are nearly ready to submit a proposal for a new book to our wonderful publisher, Routledge. If they accept, it will come out in June 2027. I have just finished attending the seventh United Nations Environment Assembly. January Handed in the manuscript for Environmental Lobbying...

UNEP press release:  Heads of State, Ministers of environment and other representatives from 175 nations endorsed a historic resolution at the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) today in Nairobi to   End Plastic Pollution   and forge an international legally binding agreement by 2024. The resolution addresses the full lifecycle of plastic, including its production, design and disposal. “Against the backdrop of geopolitical turmoil, the UN Environment Assembly shows multilateral cooperation at its best,” said the President of UNEA-5 and Norway’s Minister for Climate and the Environment, Espen Barth Eide. “Plastic pollution has grown into an epidemic. With today’s resolution we are officially on track for a cure.”  The resolution, based on three initial draft resolutions from various nations, establishes an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), which will begin its work in 2022, with the ambition of completing a draft global legally binding agreement by the...

Guest blog by  Leida Rijnhout , associate Stakeholder Forum, facilitator of the Major Groups inputs into this process since 2017.  Next week we will celebrate UNEP’s 50 anniversary. Two days of special sessions with dialogues and exchange of ideas on where to go with UNEP for the next decades, will be held on Thursday 3 and Friday 4 of March. While member states are getting ready for a big party, at the same time, the same member states are preparing the funeral for UNEP when negotiating the political declaration for the UNEP@50 event. As you may know it was already in 2019 when the UNGA adopted a resolution called 73/333, which the main objective to present “a political declaration on a high-level meeting with a view to strengthening the implementation of international environmental law and international environmental governance, in line with paragraph 88 of the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, entitled ‘The future we want’”...

  Save the Date Please share with your networks   Building Meaningful and Effective Engagement by Major Group Stakeholders with the United Nations Environment Assembly-UNEA 5.2, and the Nations Environment Programme  Including matters pertaining to UNEP@50, Stockholhm+50, and Towards Resolution 73/333,  “Strengthening Environmental Governance and Law ” A Series of Online Webinars for Stakeholders in Each of the Six UNEP Regions Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future  (SF), with the support of the  United Nations Environment Programme’s  (UNEP) Civil Society Unit in Nairobi, invites you to take part in one of six new regional capacity-building webinars for  Major Group Stakeholders . Focused on the run-up to  UNEA 5.2 , the resumed session of UNEA-5 from 28 February to 2 March 2022, the webinars will also include content relevant to the Special Session of the Assembly on 3 - 4 March 2022, which is devoted to the commemoration o...

MARCH 29th-31st March:   Arab Regional Forum for Sustainable Development  input to the 2021 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) - focusing on SDG 1 (no poverty); SDG 2 (zero hunger); SDG 3 (good health and well-being); SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth); SDG 10 (reduced inequalities); SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production); SDG 13 (climate action); SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions): and SDG 17 (partnerships) APRIL 5-11th April:   Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund 7-8th April: G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting  - the G20 in 2021 will be held under the themes of  People, Planet, Prosperity  ( Please not that the G20  (hosted by Italy) is the European Union and the countries of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Ko...

The following text is part of the Plastics Update Issue 5 from the negotiations in Nairobi. Editor: Contact: Jane Patton, No Waste Louisiana (jane@nowastela.org)  Full newsletter  downloaded here. The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) and several global environmental agreements have taken an interest in plastic pollution, especially marine plastic litter, recognising it as a serious and rapidly growing issue of global concern which requires an urgent and global response. Following the UNEA3 meeting in December 2017, UN Environment formed an Ad-Hoc Open-Ended Expert Group (AHOEEG) to present options to combat marine plastic litter and microplastics for global consideration of member states, experts, and civil society. Several representatives of the  #BreakFreeFromPlastic  movement are in attendance for the first of two AHOEEG meetings in support of a joint call for  an international legally binding   agreement on plas...

PLASTICS AT UNEA Newsletter The following tet is part of the Plastics Update Issue 4 from the negotiations in Nairobi. The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) and several global environmental agreements have taken an interest in plastic pollution, recognising it as a serious and rapidly growing issue of global concern which requires an urgent and global response. Following the UNEA3 meeting in December 2017, UN Environment formed an Ad Hoc Open Ended Expert Group (AHOEEG) to present options to combat marine plastic litter and microplastics for global consideration of member states, experts, and civil society. Several representatives of the #BreakFreeFromPlastic movement are in attendance for the first of two AHOEEG meetings in support of a joint call for an international legally binding agreement on plastics and plastic pollution . Referred to as “Option 3” in the content analyzed in this meeting, this position, endorsed by 6 of the 9 Major Groups and co-signed by many ...

At the United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi before Christmas Jan Gustav and I ran a training session for three hours for nearly 100 stakeholders attending the UNEA meeting. You can download the presentation from here. Many organizations waste a huge amount of their money not training up their staff to engage in the negotiations they send them to. If your organization wants to have training on how to engage with the intergovernmental negotiations then do email me for a price. Comments about my experience at this: "He is a genius for convincing the most skeptical legislator of the eminent reasonableness of the sustainable development case."  RT Hon JOHN GUMMER MP former UK Secretary of State for the Environment “Felix has been a passionate campaigner for people’s involvement in the central challenges of our time – how to balance our consumption of natural resources with the earth’s capacity, at the same time as addressing global inequality and pover...