Is this you or your organization?

  • You don’t have days or weeks to work through UN websites to understand the issues they are focusing on. And how and when you need to engage.
  • You don’t have a successful UN strategy to advance your issues.
  • Your stakeholder organization is attending the UN for the first time and doesn’t know which part of the UN system to engage with.
  • Your stakeholder organization has been to a UN negotiation or event, and you still find it very confusing.
  • New staff need support to be effective at an upcoming UN negotiation.
Who I am and what I have done.
  • Over the last forty years, I have helped organizations develop successful UN strategies and trained and mentored their staff.
  • I was the Executive Director of the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future (1992-2012). In that role, I chaired the first UN Conference to propose a set of indicative Sustainable Development Goals, chaired the UN NGO coalition on sustainable development for four years, and authored or edited over 25 books on sustainable development.
  • After Rio+20, I was the advisor to the Ford Foundation, helping their grantees engage with the development of the Sustainable Development Goals. I also put together the multi-stakeholder coalition lobbying for SDG 11 on Sustainable cities and communities. 
How can I help your organization?
  • Understanding the UN system and where and how your organization can be effective within its labyrinth.
  • Develop with you an effective 3–5-year strategy to move forward with your issues at the UN.
  • Build up capacity within your organization to enable your staff to be effective at their next UN meeting.
  • Mentoring your staff at a UN meeting.
  • Being available to answer questions before, during and after the UN event.
Lobbying and building your strategy at the United Nations

My consultancy offers specialized stakeholder engagement, advocacy, and risk management services for governments, international agencies, NGOs, and other stakeholders worldwide. We bring over 40 years of firsthand expert experience to lobby and deliver the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement, and other multilateral environmental agreements.

Felix can help your organization in:
  • Understanding where to engage in the UN: Produce a report that identifies the areas of the UN where your organization should focus its engagement.
  • Advocacy Narrative: Develop a concise narrative for your campaign.
  • Advocacy Strategy: Help develop a strategy for your campaign.
  • UN Advocacy: Understanding the UN and how it operates, where, when, and how you can influence member states in global negotiations.
  • Identify Governments and Officials: Identify the key governments and UN officials that need to influence – and the appropriate relationship that the organization has and needs to have with them.
  • Develop a plan for expanding those relationships.
  • Organize Meetings with Key Governments and Officials: Having identified the key people to work with, facilitate meetings with them for the campaign.
  • UN Training: Training on how to lobby at the United Nations.
Achievements

Some key achievements over the last twenty years include:

  • Stakeholder Coalitions and Dialogues –
  • Set up global stakeholder coalitions around the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (1993).
  • Habitat II (!995).
  • Second World Water Forum (2000)
  • UNEP GPA on Land-Based Pollution to the Marine Environment (2006),
  • WHO European Health and Environment Conference (1999).
  • International Renewable Energy Agency stakeholder engagement strategy (2014).
  • The Working Animal Alliance (2019)
  • Stakeholder Dialogues: I proposed and developed the idea of stakeholder dialogues to the UN General Assembly for Rio+5 and then developed the dialogues with the UN (1996-2001).
  • Organized Stakeholder Dialogues: At the Bonn Water Conference (2001), the Bonn Energy Conference (2005), the Bonn Nexus Conference (2011) and two of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (2007 and 2009)
  • Created the first Global Network for Regional Governments: The Network for Regional Government for Sustainable Development (2002)
Sustainable Development Goals
  • Successfully suggested the themes for Rio+20: Worked to secure Rio+20 and facilitated the workshop that defined the four areas for the conference through the Donostia Declaration (2008) — Green Economy, Sustainable Development Governance, Emerging Issues and Review of Commitments
  • Secretary to a Member State Friends Group: Act as the secretariat for the government Friends of Governance for Sustainable (2014 to present)
  • Chaired the UN Conference to put forward the first set of SDGs: The UN Conference Sustainable Societies Responsible Citizens suggested the first set of Sustainable Development Goals (2011)
  • Secretariat for the Monaco Sustainable Use of Oceans Conference (November 2011)
  • Member of Planet Under Pressure Steering Committee for Conference March 2012
  • Promoted the idea of the Nexus: Co-directed two conferences in 2014 and 2018 on the Nexus for Water-Food-Energy-Climate — securing Nexus targets in the SDGs. Then, Lobbied for the inclusion of Nexus-related targets in the SDGs (2014/15)
  • Established the multistakeholder group for SDG11: Put together and advised the coalition (2013) that successively campaigned for an Urban Goal (SDG11) to be included in the Sustainable Development Goals and helped secure targets in the governance goal (SDG16)
Climate Change
  • Advisor to CIWF on the creation of a coalition on Nitrogen (2022- date)
  • A Lead Expert for the Tourism Panel on Climate Change report “Tourism and Climate Change Stocktake 2023″(2023)
  • Co-creator and coordinator of the Water and Climate Coalition for the UNFCCC (2007-2014)
Sustainable Finance
  • Advisory Board for the President of the UN General Assembly Informal Expert Group on Sustainable Development Finance: This advised the production of the Brookings Report Links in the Chain of Sustainable Finance: Accelerating Private Investments for the SDGs, Including Climate (2016).
  • Developed a new UN GA resolution: Campaigned successfully for a new annual UN General Assembly resolution on sustainable investment. This was based on ideas in the Brookings Report below (2019)
Disaster Risk Reduction
  • Principal Investigator (PI) for UNC-Chapel Hill in a three-year, multi-university research project funded by the Belmont Forum — Governance of Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience for Sustainable Development (2020-2023)
  • Member of the Organizing Team for UNDRR Seventh Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (GP2022) Thematic Session: Breaking the Silos – Toward Multi-hazard, Multi-sectoral Approaches to Managing Risk.
United Nations
  • UN Secretary-General elections: Wrote the policy background papers for one of the UN Secretary-General candidates (2016).
  • I was a member of the Advisory Board: This was for the Review of the Global Compact (2018).
  • I was a candidate for the UNEP executive Director position. In 2019, I ran unsuccessfully for the position.
  • Advisory Board for the UN Economic Commission for Europe’s Sustainable Energy Division’s Carbon Neutrality Project. 
Blogs, podcasts, LinkedIn, and other social media

Blogs: I have a blog where Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee, and life. With over two million visits, the blog is a valuable resource for staying up-to-date on sustainable development and climate change issues at the UN.

Podcasts: My channel, Sustainable Societies Café, is on Spotify. Every Wednesday, a new podcast explores chapters from my books. We have already covered Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy, Tomorrow’s People and New Technology, and Stakeholder Democracy.

LinkedIn: You can follow me on LinkedIn, where I share content, here.

BlueSky: I left Twitter, but I can now be found on BlueSky here.

Website of Felix Dodds: This can be found here.Wiki of Felix Dodds: This can be found here.