Financing for development

This week at the United Nations, additional sessions for consultations on the Revised draft of the Outcome document of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (12-15 May). 

There have been some substantive and promising steps forward including some dampening down on the blatant references to Public-private partnerships and less overt courting of the private sector and foundations.  There appears to be a lot of effort being dedicated to ensure that the synergies between the FFD process and Post-2015 development agenda are maximized. But if you go beyond words or political “hot air” then there appears to be a fundamental lack of economic commitment to action or belief in the possibility to achieve genuine change.

One positive was the addition of “Our goal is to eradicate poverty and hunger in this generation” yet a number of delegations appeared to find “in this generation” to be unclear and did not support its inclusion. While putting a specific timeframe on eliminating poverty is hard – within one lifetime should be achievable and if we were to be ambitions we would aim for sooner rather than step away from specifics. By 2050, the human population is projected to be 9.5 billion (UNEP, 2015) and the extremes of wealth and poverty have been widening at unacceptable speeds. As Oxfam noted early this year, if current trends continue, the world’s richest one percent would own more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth by 2016.

The aspect of the Post-2015 development agenda that appears to have any likelihood of contributing the impetus we need to accelerate change appears to the Sustainable Development Goals. They are numerous, and messy but the time for quick and easy fixes has long passed. We have to be willing go beyond the simple and actually dive deep to find the root causes such as greed and inequality.

As the post-2015 summit looms closer, hopes increase for an “ambitious” development agenda. But a lot of key actors are taking a pragmatic look at the costs and asking — where is the money going to be coming from?

It’s not going to be the private sector.

Read more

Goals for the Rich

Post-2015: Measuring the (real) scope of ambition

World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2015

Hold the Rich Accountable in New U.N. Development Goals, Say NGOs 

The Employer of Choice: How Will Corporate Citizenship and Sustainable Shared Values Create a New Competitive Edge?

In this interactive Harvard Business Review webinar we discuss how company's try to attract tomorrow’s employees. This includes the need to adjust to how employees work differently. Millennial's are digital natives. Social media is a crucial means of communication. Social networking has created expectations for greater interaction, transparency, and participation, blurring the lines between professional and personal lives.The emerging millennial workforce care about company values, good corporate citizenship and to contribute to society.


To become employers of choice, employers must embrace these trends and turn them into organizational strengths. It was great to be one of the three finalists selected to share what it takes for a corporation to be an employer of choice and the programs that leading companies are putting in place to achieve this goal.

You can find it here: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/08/the-employer-of-choice-how-wil/

"Sustainable" Mining...any such thing?

I wish I could find an article that talks about Sustainable mining in a believable way. I feel like I am caught in a bizarre "emperors new clothes" scenario...where everyone has spent so much money that they insist it must be true and exist. Either that or its the holy grail of sustainability. Cliche's aside...I would love to hear your opinions? Sustainable Mining -- fact / fiction / myth?

Mining!

Have you thought about the impact of mining? I hadn't. Very very recently I started researching the impacts of mining on forests, the environment and how they are long term (not "short term" as all mining reports claim. This naturally made me start to research sustainable mining but I hit a dead end. It seems that there is no such thing...considering how much earth's population relies on mining...that is sad :(

But its very nature, mining is digging out or stripping what we value from what we undervalue. Economically gold does not have the same price as a living tree in the forest. You can make huge income and profit on the mineral deposits under the ground but not so much from letting what is above that ground alone. I read article after article about governments not wanting to force capacity building on mining companies incase they stop mining there due to the "added cost". Shouldn't someone hold them accountable? Shouldn't that someone be the government? When you are measuring profit in millions, you can't tell me that spending a few thousand on being more sustainable or not raping the environment you leave behind will be a deterrent.

Considering that our planet has finite resources...shouldn't that be more valuable to the global population than the jewelry they wear or more valuable to governments than losing (unlikely) a small number of mining contracts?!?

Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_mining

Rio+20 Anniversary...what has been achieved? A stocktake

I can't believe that just one year ago Rio+20 was over. The 2 years proceeding it had been a whirl of preparations, negotiations, meeting new people and trying to build capacity. It has been tough to keep caring, keep engaged and not give up. Frequently we went without sleep, skipped family mile stones, missed out on real life stuff and we were so lucky at times not to get fired from our day jobs.

Today is one year since that. One year ago we read our final statement. I can still remember the final minutes as I left Rio centro to the background of colleagues (children and youth) frantically trying to squeeze the last few minutes of media attention. I remember feeling slightly detached. Yes, we had achieved a lot but the real battle had not even happened yet. The real battle was trying to get anything implemented.

A week ago, I did a google hangout on the anniversary of Rio+20. It focused on the successes since Rio+20. But what has been achieved? The youth / child movement has gotten weaker and more fragmented. Post 2015 coalition children and youth working group (led by a ngo that is not child or youth led) actually charge its members over 1000 euro to join and constantly tries to undermine the Major Group of Children and Youth. Some member states are trying to actually get rid of the Major Group structure which would live women, children and indigenous peoples most vulnerable. But no one wants to hear the negatives.

This googlehangout focused on how to engage more young people. Let me know what you think?

Huh? REDD+ what?

"REDD plus what?"  A familiar question now that I have started working on this project and preparing to facilitate knowledge sharing from Guyana.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is a set of steps designed to use market and financial incentives in order to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases from deforestation and forest degradation. Its objective is to reduce greenhouse gases.

 I found this interesting intro video which is a start:

To make things easier...I will be focused on the Guiana shield and specifically Guyana.

The Guiana Shield region contains the largest complex of uninterrupted and intact primary tropical rainforest on earth. It is vital in the global battle against climate change due to its huge storage of carbon dioxide and capacity to absorb CO2. The region contains 10-15% of the world’s fresh water reserves and an extremely rich diversity of plants and animals, most of which are unique to this region.

However, despite the wealth of natural resources in the region, the poverty level remains high. High levels of external debt and weak institutional capacity exert an increasing pressure on governments and local populations to choose economic activities which are beneficial on the short term, but that are often unsustainable, damaging the unique character of the eco-region.

This has led to a lack of land use planning, as well as the production of illicit drugs, illegal mining and logging, ill-planned infrastructure projects, and expansion of the agricultural frontier. All of which are putting an increasing pressure on the ecosystems of this unique eco-region.

#FitchTheHomeless

How shallow has our world become?

Its time for change! I liked this video I recently saw to join the movement:

 Boycott time! Lets give to the homeless... :)