MY NEW BOOK

Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage 

Available Now.

 
   

November 2016

 

My first comic is out and i hope you enjoy it. It is with PCI Media and UNICEF and can be downloaded here. As I said to the press:

“I first met Father Christmas at the age of three in a clothing store in the U.K. in Derby, and I became Chair of Father Christmas Youth.  I then organized a stakeholder consultation around gift-giving practices in my freshman year at University of Surrey.  I hope to have Santa lead a”workshop on the Nexus of Climate Change, Water, Energy and Food.

I was inspired to write about Santa from my own childhood Christmas memories.  He was always a positive, reassuring figure, who seemed to provide hope even in troubling times. He seemed like just the right hero to guide us through this crisis.”

Santa Claus –

“It seemed to me we have been dashing to disaster.”

“The whole purpose of my life is to encourage hope and bring happiness to the world’s children. But if we keep putting more greenhouse gases into the air, we’re going to lead ourselves to a world that has very little hope and happiness for children for many generations.”

Also just out is my new book Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals: A transformational agenda for an insecure world written with Ambassador David Donoghue and Jimena Leiva Roesch.

 

 "Learning from the process that engaged so many stakeholders at national and international level is important for future multilateral negotiations. This contribution from three actors intimately involved in the process offers rare insights into a long, challenging and ultimately fruitful process. I hope many readers will enjoy the insights presented in this book and be inspired to realise that the impossible is possible through compromise, partnership and leadership."

– from the foreword by Mary Robinson, President of the Mary Robinson Foundation: Climate Justice, Former President of Ireland (1990–1997) and Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997–2002)

"This is an important book that charts the journey we went on and the challenges faced in agreeing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. I hope it will help people understand what was achieved and help those now, and in the future, engaged in the implementation of this agenda."

– from the foreword by Ambassador Macharia Kamau, Permanent Representative of Kenya to the United Nations in New York, USA, co-chair of the negotiations for the Sustainable Development Goals (2012–2014) and co-facilitator of Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2014–2015)

 

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October 2016

I facilitated five events and spoke at one in Quito as the event had no negoations as the New Urban Agenda had already been agreed in New York then it was an event full of side events. A kind of Global Forum of ideas.

Who could not buy a Panama hat which is a traditional brimmed straw hat of Ecuadorian origin. Traditionally, hats were made from the plaited leaves of the Carludovica palmata plant, known locally as the toquilla palm or jipijapa palm, although it is a palm-like plant rather than a true palm.Straw hats woven in Ecuador, like many other 19th and early 20th century South American goods, were shipped first to the Isthmus of Panama before sailing for their destinations in Asia, the rest of the Americas and Europe, subsequently acquiring a name that reflected their point of international sale, "Panama hats", rather than their place of domestic origin.

 One of the events i facilitated was the German governments Follow up on the New Urban Agenda 

 

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September 2016

At the High Level session of the UN The present and past Presidents of the UN General Assembly (UNPGA) launched a new report which i had the pleasure of being on the informal expert group for. The report was produced for the PGa by Brookings Institute. It looked at the strategies to shift capital towards investments that generate climate action and sustainable development at the United Nations event the new report titled “Links in the Chain of Sustainable Finance: Accelerating Private Investments for the SDGs, including Climate Action.”

"The ambitious goals of Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement on climate change have not yet been matched by an equally ambitious financing plan that will get the right resources to the right places at the right time. Despite articulation of a global financing framework in the UN’s 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda, both public and private financing for sustainable development are underperforming relative to expectations and needs.   Public resources command attention because they can be programmed by government commitments with some degree of confidence on a multi-year basis. Publicly-funded investments can also incorporate non-market environmental, social and governance issues into project design, selection and implementation. It is certainly the case that many countries still need to mobilize more domestic public resources for the SDGs and climate action. There are, however, well-understood limits to public financing, including pressures on official development assistance (ODA) due to diversion of resources to humanitarian relief and to economic strains in major donor economies, many of which have roots in the most recent global financial crisis."

The paper explores the question of how to align the responsibilities of interconnected investor, policy, regulatory, and corporate actors in a manner that creates incentives for reorienting capital flows toward SDG priorities. It further proposes a practical timetable linked to major international events in 2019, 2020 and 2023 – by which Member States can work with private sector leaders to ensure that both public and private investments meet appropriate environmental, social, and governance standards to achieve the international agreements captured in the  2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development..

 
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August 2016

At the end of July Habitat III final preparatory session happened in Surabaya in Indonesia. Unfortunately zero text  was agreed though we were entertained by the local city very well.

 

 Also published in August was By Dr Minu Hemmati and Felix Dodds  was Paper 3: High-quality Multi-stakeholder Partnerships for Implementing the SDG paper collection the recommendations from the July workshop “Multi-stakeholder partnerships for implementing the 2030 Agenda”. 

The main purpose of the workshop was to discuss how to best foster high-quality multi-stakeholder partnerships for implementing the 2030 Agenda.

 

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July 2016

On Tuesday the 12th of July I spoke at a side event launching the  ‘Water – Food – Energy - Climate Nexus’ The event was moderated by Reinhard Krapp, Minister: Head of Economic Department of the Government of Germany authors speaking included Liz Thompson: Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and Executive Coordinator for the UNCSD Rio+20, David Le Blanc Division for Sustainable Development and Gary Lawrence former Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer for AECOM Technology Corporation It was followed by a book signing at the UN bookshop.

At the High Level Political Forum the Global Research Institute and Catalyst hosted a workshop on Multi-stakeholder Partnerships held at the Paper Factory.

  

 

 

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June 2016

In an effort to establish guiding principles for PPPs in implementing the SDGs, Communitas organized a convening of leading thinkers and practitioners with a broad range of views on PPPs for urban infrastructure. Presenters and participants included representatives from local government, the UN, NGOs, researchers, development institutions, and the private sector. The convening provided a venue for an exchange of views on the potential benefits and risks of PPPs with the aim of identifying conditions under which such partnerships can be beneficial for cities and regions. 

Draft Principles for Public-Private Partnerships for Urban Infrastructure 

And to relax off to Carolina Beach where my friend Michael let me drive his JEEP :-)

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May 2016

One of my favorite groups is the Monkees and  I had the chance to go to the 50th anniversary tour event in Charlotte  days before their new album ‘Good Times’ was released..

 

or a band that was put together for a TV series in 1966 who would have imagined that 50 years ago some of their great songs would still be part of the music landscape. But they are classics songs like 

, but originally by the Monkees. A song written by the great Neil Diamond one of the reasons for the success of the Monkees was who was writing their songs in addition to Neil people like Harry Nilsson, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, John Stewart, as well as Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

In preparation for the new album there was a call out to indie rock song writers for input. Just like the 1960s the new album is a hit list of todays great song writers Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard and XTC's Andy Partridge, Rory Gallagher and Paul Weller.

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