Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

For those in lockdown and need some reading material I thought I would bring into one blog a set of books that I have written or edited on sustainable development. I have grouped the books into themes that will help the reader to focus on areas they are interested in. These are: The Vienna Cafe Trilogy: T he books look at the history of sustainable development from the 1960s to the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals. So far there are three these are: Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals: A transformational agenda for an insecure world From Rio+20 to a New Development Agenda: Building a Bridge to a Sustainable Future  and  Only One Earth   The environmental security/insecurity books: which started with:   Human and Environmental Security: An Agenda for Change (2005) Climate Change and Energy Insecurity: The Challenge for Peace and Development (2009) Biodiversity and Ecosystem Insecurity: A Planet in Peril (2011) The Water, F...

Guest blog by Adam Rogers: has worked for the United Nations for the past 20 years, and is currently a senior advisor with the Development Impact Group within the UN Development Programme.  Until recently he served as the Regional Representative for Europe for the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, as well as the coordinator for the World Alliance of Cities Against Poverty --a network of more than 900 cities that are committed to the cause of advancing human development within the urban context.   The UN is getting ready for its annual showcasing of innovations from developing countries, with the intention of scaling them up The strategic intent of what is today known as South-South cooperation is to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals through greater cooperation among countries of the South. The “South”? The South, or the Global South, is a term used to refer to those countries challenged by elevated levels of poverty. When looking...

I am writing this blog from Key Largo while attending the Humphrey Bogart Film Festival. I try to attend at least two film festivals a year and this is my third time in Key Largo. The place is still recovering from the Hurricane there is rubble and remains at places along Ocean Highway but most seems to be back to normal. On my way down here, I have been listening to the audio book Writer,Sailor, Soldier, Spy  which brings to light for the first time this riveting secret side of Hemingway's life - when he worked closely with both the American OSS, a precursor to the CIA, and the Soviet NKVD, the USSR's forerunner to the KGB, to defeat Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The book starts with the story of Hemingway looking for the survivors of the great Hurricane of  1935  it had 200-mile-an-hour winds and had conspired with politics, the Depression, and petty bureaucracy to turn disaster into tragedy.  As part of the New Deal there were three veteran work camps on the key...

Guest blog by  Narni Brooke-Adil shejoined Innovation Forum in June of this year shortly after finishing her bachelors in business and finance at Cass Business School. Her interest in sustainability was enhanced after taking a module in the last year of her degree, although she has grown up very aware of the world’s looming sustainability issues, in particular climate change. She was fortunate enough to secure a job with Innovation Forum straight after finishing her exams and is enjoying the role immensely.  The London deforestation conference will be her first forum and is already shaping up to be a great event, we hope to see you there!  The newest methodologies, technologies and industry examples for implementing zero deforestation policies 14th-15th November 2017, London Join us at us at this debate-driven business conference designed to provide delegates with the practical guidance necessary to build and implement effective zero deforestation commitment...

Submit your abstract and register today   http://waterinstitute.unc.edu/conferences/nexus-2018/ We hope you will engage in the second Nexus Conference – Water-Food-Energy-Climate will be on the 16-18 th of April 2018 in Chapel Hill in North Carolina organized by The Water Institute at the University of North Carolina.  It will focus at the Nexus at the urban level. First, we would hope you would share the possibility of you, your colleagues and any one you know who might be interested submitting abstracts for the conference Second, we are looking for the chance to develop collaborative research out of the conference. Third, we would hope that you and others might attend the event which will also feed into the reviews of the relevant Sustainable Development Goals. We have engaged an International Advisory Board  ( http://www.cvent.com/events/nexus-2018-water-food-energy-and-climate/custom-18-7a6bb88243834db2b933a40829319d4d.aspx ) to help to focus the co...

What follows is a Civil Society Manifesto on  PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS (PPPs) We, 151 national, regional and international civil society organisations, trade unions and citizens’ organisations from 45 countries, are increasingly alarmed by the growing use of PPPs around the world What is a ‘Public Private Partnership?’ PPPs are essentially long-term contracts, underwritten by government guarantees, under which the private sector builds (and sometimes runs) major infrastructure projects or services traditionally provided by the state, such as hospitals, schools, roads, railways, water, sanitation and energy. PPPs are promoted by many G20 governments, and some public development banks – such as the World Bank – as the solution to the shortfall in financing needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Since the late 1990s, some countries including the United Kingdom, Portugal and Hungary have embraced PPPs ranging from healthcare and education to transport – with t...

Smart Water Solutions From data to digital water: the water system innovation Two Days of Interactive Sessions @ G-STIC 2017 The recent digital revolution is making a huge potential available to manage our water more efficient and ‘smart’. Newly emerging digital paradigms for data retrieval, analysis and storage create the ability to share and exchange data at various scales: local/urban, regional and river basin. Data-driven and process-based models can offer precise monitoring, forecasting and visualization capabilities, all of which are key to support far-reaching water system innovations. In the session on Smart Water Services , we focus on how digital wa...