Tag Archives: sustainable development

A Dialogue on Sustainable Development and Peace, Neema Kihwelo and Robert Zuber

2 Nov

Dear All,

In lieu of another piece from me at this time, we decided to post this back and forth between myself and Neema Kihwelo a young woman of Tanzanian origin and formerly a student at Columbia University.  Neema is not in New York at this juncture but has been helping us fill a gap with respect to our concerns with human rights and peace and security issues – the widening development inequalities and debt burdens which exacerbate tensions which can (and do) lead to violence in various forms.  Neema has shared expertise which we would otherwise only sporadically have access to, expertise which helps to “round out” our core policy concerns and more directly links progress on sustainable development to progress on peacebuilding.

In the Security Council this past week, the US representative shared his disdain for the Sustainable Development Goals believing them to be a needless distraction from the “real work of peace.”  Contrary to this view, we affirm that such Development which includes a fairer system of international finance, urgent debt relief, counter-corruption measures and greater international solidarity and trust are actually indispensable to any peace which can ultimately be sustained.

Neema started off the conversation with her review of the important UN event below.

Towards a Risk-Informed Approach to Development Financing Resilience Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow Second Committee Side Event, UN General Assembly

UNDRR and UNDP opened with a strong call for country-led transformation moving from project-by-project interventions to a “systems finance” model. They stressed integrating risk analysis and financing into core government policy across all sectors, anchored in three pillars: scaling risk-informed investments, strengthening national systems, and promoting cross-sector action.

Panel 1: Financing Gaps, Local Capacity, and Innovation

Key Highlights:

● Global disaster risk financing needs are estimated at USD 2.3 trillion annually, yet only 25% is currently mobilized, signaling an urgent need for more effective resource allocation as ODA continues to decline.

● Panelists identified a risk appetite mismatch between capital holders and the credit profiles of vulnerable nations, with perceived or actual credit risks obstructing private and institutional investment in resilience.

● The UNCDF and partners showcased practical de-risking innovations such as climate insurance programs in the Pacific and Africa, financial inclusion facilities for African small banks and SMEs, and mobile-based insurance payouts that provide citizens rapid  compensation after climate shocks.

● Subnational governments face fragmented and misaligned financing options. As highlighted by Paul Smoke, private financing remains scarce, concessional funds unevenly distributed, and infrastructure transfers often bypass local resilience priorities.

● The panel called for expanding incentive-based and intermediary finance, such as municipal development banks and blended finance partnerships, to empower local  governments, improve creditworthiness, and attract sustainable private investment.

● Strengthening loan repayment systems, targeted bond frameworks, and aligning financial instruments with measurable resilience outcomes were seen as central to enabling locally owned, durable disaster risk investments.

Critical Reflections: While Panel 1 presented innovative tools and strong technical solutions, the discussion revealed persistent structural obstacles. Many pilot initiatives depend on external actors and lack domestic ownership or policy mainstreaming. Subnational entities where vulnerability is greatest still face limited capacity to absorb, implement, and sustain risk-informed investments. National reforms to integrate resilience into public budgets remain incomplete, and incentive frameworks for private investment are not yet delivering at scale. The price of inaction, however, is rising without deeper collaboration, governance reform, and equitable access to finance; innovation risks outpacing inclusion.

Panel 2: Tailored Solutions for Vulnerable and Local Contexts – Financing strategies, concessional mechanisms and partnership

Rwanda: Rwanda presented a strong example of national ownership in risk-informed development. A roadmap for universal early warning coverage by 2027 is being implemented through coordination across ministries and financing from the Rwanda Green Fund and National Risk Reduction Fund. Its partnership with the World Bank’s contingent credit line mechanisms represents a shift from reactive to proactive financing, anchoring resilience in domestic resource mobilization and job creation within green sectors.

Portugal – “Safe Village, Safe People” Programme: Portugal’s model of community-led wildfire risk reduction demonstrated how local partnerships can operationalize systemic resilience. The program combines structural safety measures with behavioral change, conducting local drills, appointing Local Safety Officers, mapping safe zones, and training volunteers in vulnerable rural areas. Recognized by the EU, World Bank, and G20 as a leading example, this initiative highlights how risk preparedness can be localized effectively to address vulnerable demographics such as older and isolated populations.

Private Sector & Digital Finance – Global Policy House: Michelle Chivunga (Global Policy House) emphasized digital transformation as a driver of resilience finance. She urged governments to invest in data ecosystems, digital literacy, and energy sustainability for data centers to support AI-readiness and analytics for disaster response. Highlighting alternative capital sources such as digital assets, tokenized resources, and cryptocurrency, she framed private-sector innovation as essential for inclusive growth. Her remarks underscored the need  for citizens to be co-architects, not beneficiaries, ensuring that digital transitions are participatory, ethical, and community-led.

Comparative Insights and Overarching Gaps

● Financial Innovation: The event showcased diverse instruments, contingency funds, DRF strategies, Cat DDOs, and risk pooling but large-scale blended mechanisms involving private and digital finance remain nascent. Sustained pilots, harmonized regulation, and stronger domestic financial ecosystems are crucial for scaling impact.

● Data, Digital, and Equity Challenges: While digital readiness was frequently mentioned, data ethics, infrastructure, and harmonization gaps persist, particularly across low-capacity and rural contexts.

● Decentralized Capacity: Subnational entities require tailored tools and credit enhancements to invest in risk management autonomously, supported by practical governance and fiscal reforms.

● Participatory Shift: Rwanda and Portugal reframed local actors as partners in design and delivery. Similarly, Chivunga’s proposal linked digital and financial inclusion directly  to SDG progress, envisioning resilience as both an economic and social justice outcome.

Zuber Response

Hello Neema,

I’m sitting in a UN cafe waiting for 6th Committee to start and thinking about your good reflections on the Thursday event.  You are more on top of all this than I am, and I appreciate it very much.

One part of your assessment struck me particularly: “National reforms to integrate resilience into public budgets remain incomplete, and incentive frameworks for private investment are not yet delivering at scale. The price of inaction, however, is rising without deeper collaboration, governance reform, and equitable access to finance; innovation risks outpacing inclusion.” 

The UN has been pushing states to adopt more robust early warning mechanisms for the SIDS and other small developing states.  And there is plenty of discussion on the importance of blended finance and domestic resource mobilization.  But amidst all of the positive interventions, something doesn’t add up and I can’t put my finger on it.  

Clearly one issue relates to the gaps, sometimes enormous, between pledged funds and delivered funds.  It is so easy to promise, but delivery runs into obstacles including funding already promised for other purposes (ie. peacekeeping, specialized agencies), the proliferation of earmarked funds rather than general operating funds which can be mobilized quickly to meet crises, the relative lack of anti-corruption policing as well as measures to ensure that natural resources remain in domestic hands and can thus contribute to domestic budget priorities.    

All of this is important, and all of this seems insufficient to building a more peaceful world.  What is missing? 

Pinning some of this resource inadequacy on “colonial legacies” is true, in my view, but doesn’t illuminate the path forward aside from demanding a reset to ensure that domestic resources remain under domestic control and that colonial puppeteers cut the manipulative chords for good. 

But governments don’t always have the best interests of constituents at heart, and in some instances the “theft” of resources has occurred with the active support of governments which have also in some instances enabled the “illicit flows” that we spend so much time talking about here and which the wealthier nations and investment banks have enabled as well in their own way.  

I don’t know, Neema.  Seems at times like we have too many culprits and not enough solutions.  We humans and our motives are a mixed bag for sure. 

All best,

Bob

Neema Response

I hope you are well and have had a good start to the week. I completely agree with your sentiments, and I guess this is what I have always found challenging about policy work versus the realities of implementation. The moderator at the end of panel one captured it perfectly when she said that solutions exist, but financing remains a challenge. That struck me, because again it raises the question of what a real resolution forward looks like.

I agree with you that humans are a complicated bunch. While colonial legacies have undeniably shaped today’s inequities, they can’t fully explain the persistent dysfunction in how we mobilize and govern resources. What has been needed for a while now is  a genuine overhaul of governance systems at both global and domestic levels. The protests we’re seeing across the Global South, from Nepal, Madagascar to Kenya and beyond, reflect deep frustration with governments that feel disconnected from citizens’ realities and with global systems that still appear extractive rather than empowering.

Blended finance continues to be celebrated as a silver bullet for unlocking private capital, but in practice it often reproduces the same hierarchies it claims to fix. Risk perceptions make finance prohibitively expensive for small or climate-vulnerable states, while accountability mechanisms remain weak. Without tackling the systemic biases about who defines risk, who controls resources, and who truly benefits, even the most innovative mechanisms risk becoming old tools repackaged.

Maybe what is missing is the connective tissue between global ambitions and local realities. That means putting greater focus on institutional intermediation and trust infrastructure. National systems need the capacity and credibility to absorb and direct funds effectively, while international institutions must learn to share rather than centralize risk and decision-making.

Best,

Neema.

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Kicking the Can: A Plea for More Tangible Urgency, Dr. Robert Zuber

27 Jul

From this instant on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. ― Epictetus

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. Pablo Picasso

A year from now you may wish you had started today. Karen Lamb

Some of us keep missing the breakthrough because we don’t want to cross the bridges of growth that look like weakness, solitude, loneliness, and delay. Andrena Sawyer

If you choose not to deal with an issue, then you give up your right of control over the issue
and it will select the path of least resistance.  Susan Del Gatto

That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds. Charles Dickens

We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us — of the definite with the indefinite — of the substance with the shadow. Edgar Allan Poe

You may think twice about beginning to build your ark once it has already started raining. Max Brooks

The comfort zone is a region where great dreams go to get murdered, buried and forgotten.  Michael Bassey Johnson

The truth which has been spoken too late is more damaging than a lie. Amit Kalantri

The High-Level Political Forum has concluded for yet another year.  Under the leadership of Ambassador Bob Rae of Canada, Ministers, other diplomats and NGOs convened at UN Headquarters to assess both global and national efforts to fulfill a multitude of promises made in 2015 on sustainable development and good governance, including getting the 2030 Development Agenda back on some reasonable facsimile of a right track.

The HLPF consists of plenary sessions, side events (often the most interesting aspects) and what are known as Voluntary National Reviews where governments present efforts and outcomes on sustainable development priorities and receive input on how they can expand/improve such efforts.  One major culmination of all these efforts is the adoption of a Ministerial Declaration which will be presented in the General Assembly in September at the opening of its 80th session in the hope of achieving some sort of consensus adoption by those a bit higher up the political food chain than most of those who attended the HLPF.

The Declaration (https://docs.un.org/en/E/HLPF/2025/L.1) is a difficult read in at least two senses.  The 21-page, single-spaced document is a litany of issues which the global community acknowledges require urgent attention, especially in the five key focus areas of this HLPF – ensuring health lives, promoting gender equality, decent work for all, sustainable use of oceans and marine resources, and revitalizing global partnerships with a special focus on finance for development.  Moreover, side events attempted to incarnate some of the urgency suggested by these priorities, through topics such as access to housing and workforce empowerment, localizing social development and how AI is reshaping government operations.

he HLPF represented some of what is best about the UN, even amidst its current financial limitations, as issue after issue which weighs heavily on both our global agenda and on future prospects for younger staff and interns are given significant attention. There is perhaps no place on earth where so many global problems –problems which cannot be managed by any one country alone – are put on the table for consideration by diplomats and other stakeholders.  In this “see no evil” moment in our collective history, the willingness to acknowledge and specify the gravity of these times is most welcome.

But acknowledgment has its own caveats which our younger colleagues are often quick to point out. Negotiators at the UN are rarely key decisionmakers in their own governments, nor are they responsible for implementing the resolutions they pass – the “promises” which they make but have by professional design little or no role in honoring. 

Moreover, there is a growing disconnect between the loftiness of our aspirations and the current malaise (at best) of our human condition, our propensity to tell only the truth which suits our purposes, to accept cruelty and abusive governance as signposts of a corrupted reality we have not done enough to challenge, to cheer on technological advances without asking ourselves if human beings now seemingly resigned to a “race to the bottom” can do any better than exploiting such technology for private gain. If we collectively fail the test of a fairer and more compassionate humanity, and even the recent “Mandela Day” events suggested that we might well be on our way to doing so, is there any chance that we can rescue technological advance from being a shiny new toy to increase our already draconian levels of inequality?  Some young people are dubious.  I am compelled to join that sentiment.

But there is a second, related theme in the Declaration which comes up over the over at the UN and certainly at this HLPF – the virtual obsession by the UN and its member states with large conference events on topics from climate change and finance for development to ocean health and the status of the Least Developed States.  You often hear at the UN statements such as “the upcoming conference on (name a topic) provides an important opportunity” to push forward on commitments which, in the main, were made at previous major conferences and which largely remain as un-ripened fruit on the vine.

Why do we need conference after conference, pact after pact, outcome document after outcome document as though the major, often carbon-sucking events from which all this emanates will ever justify the expense of energy and money they require?  And why do we need so many of these events when the UN exists on a daily basis to promote those sorts of collaborations?  And dare we ask: Has the Paris agreement actually resulted in lowered global emissions?  Do we really need more climate-focused COPs (now on number 30) hosted by governments often hostile to significant aspects of climate activism, whose policies in more than a few instances promote deforestation and fossil fuel use which has gotten us into this mess from which we are now struggling to extricate ourselves?

Why is it considered to be some incarnation of multilateral heresy – mild or severe — to raise these conerns?

And while we’re at it, what of the failures of the Security Council on peace and security and its blatantly obvious impacts on our ability to meet our sustainable development obligations?  Peace and security were not a major focus on this HLPF but in the Council chamber where we spend much time implications for sustainable development were disturbingly and stubbornly clear. How do conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine impact our sustainability scorecard?  What about Sudan and Myanmar which have largely fallen off the diplomatic radar?  What of the tensions in South Sudan, Libya and elsewhere which threaten to unravel some very hard-won political and protection gains?  And why did the HLPF and the Council, as in years past, choose to keep each other at arm’s length?

The point here is really not to bash the UN so much as to call attention to some of its structural and procedural flaws as it enters a period of profound budgetary uncertainties in a world which stands in desperate need of sanity and healing.  Why do we continue to hold large international meetings with little regard for whether the outcomes actually justify the event? Why does the president of ECOSOC leave office upon the conclusion of the HLPF rather than continuing to use the office to push harder for outcomes and consequences that truly matter?  Why, given all that we know about the state of the world and its current trajectories, do we continue to kick the proverbial can down the road, pointing longingly towards the next major event which is as unlikely to break policy impasses as were previous ones?  Why do we act as though what we have been doing is good enough when the indicators of sustainability continue to point, often decisively, in the wrong direction?

For the sake of us all, especially for the young and those yet to come, this serial policy procrastination must end.  We need more truth-telling, more honest discernment, a greater capacity for compassion for those who have been waiting far too long for relief, a resolve to stop confounding constituents and, if we are able, to stop disappointing ourselves as well.

We are called now, more perhaps than in the past, to cross bridges of growth which have long beckoned, bridges for ourselves which can enable more tangible outcomes for our institutions and constituencies. The HLPF and its Declaration are heavy on sound analysis of our dire straits but short on breakthroughs.  We need breakthroughs and we need them soon.


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To Expect and Inspire: Sides of a Precious Policy Coin, Dr. Robert Zuber

19 Jul
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You see what is, where most people see what they expect.  John Steinbeck

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect. Jane Austen

You said we cannot sail through, how were you so sure?  Mehek Bassi

Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.  Samuel Johnson

Peace begins when expectation ends.   Sri Chinmoy

There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. Nelson Mandela

You can devise all the plans in the world, but if you don’t welcome spontaneity; you will just disappoint yourself. Abigail Biddinger

As many of you know, the past two UN weeks were devoted to the High Level Political Forum (HLPF), a monumental effort by the Economic and Social Council to clarify the expectations of states regarding their commitments to the 2030 Development Agenda and to assess the SDG-related performance of states through a process of Voluntary National Reviews.

This HLPF represents, in essence, the half-way point in a 15 year commitment to sustainable development made in 2015 to shift the direction of a global community in positive ways, but one which has actually seen many core Sustainable Development (SDG) commitments experience course reversals.  Among others, we are not on track to reduce poverty, address food insecurity, eliminate our fossil fuel dependences, end government corruption or build the durable partnerships needed to bring the health and other material circumstances of global citizens up to even minimum standards in this polarized and unequal world.

Given these and other SDG setbacks, those which the pandemic did not help but also did not cause, one would have been forgiven for assuming that this HLPF would be characterized by the kinds of energy and passion largely absent fronm diplomatic discourse.  If there was ever a time to step out of line, to show both urgency and flexibility in terms of how we define the times and our responsibilities to those times, to inspire as well as deliberate, to reassure as well as to demur, this would have seemed to be it.

And we did get some of that, including in the plenary session on ocean health and in “side events” such as one on “water and climate,” another on “invisible” older women, and a third on the sustainability role of local and regional governments, all of which got us closer to clarifying the urgency of the moment and showcasing a bit of the determination needed to overcome challenges, in part due to the active presence in these meetings of issue-relevant NGOs.  And yet, as the conference rooms filled up and the ministers uttered their statements, we could well regret that the polar ice caps continue to melt into the sea, children wait in vain for another meal, our freshwater reserves continue to evaporate or succumb to plastic pollution, and we continue to put pressure on what remains of life-saving reserves by doubling down on water sucking agricultural and meat producing practices, as well as on automobiles which represent a double-whammy of massive water (in production) and fossil fuel uses.

In this and other UN settings, it is fair to ask if what we propose for state and non-state action is possibly sufficient to avert levels of looming catastrophe for which, as with the current pandemic, we remain largely unprepared.

Stepping back for a moment, I was reminded this week of a position which has long guided my own thinking – that how was assess is largely a function of what we expect – that multiple people can look at and describe the very same situation and yet assess it differently based on their own expectation of performance.  Indeed, around the UN as elsewhere, much of the difference in how we identify and evalauatae the performance of this system is a function of what we have been led to expect or allowed ourselves to expect. 

And, I must say expectation levels seem to be headed south as quickly as levels of ocean health. Responses to some of my own frustrations about UN progress on sustainable development or the maintenance of international peace and security is some version of “well, what did you expect?”  The flaws in this response, to my mind at least, are obvious in an institution which seeks on the one hand to raise expectations for multilateral engagement while simultaneously dampening them with reminders that, well, it’s the governments that determine objectives and outcomes and the rest of us can do little more than make our case and hope that some other than the usual suspects is actually listening to what we say.

Another flaw in this complex and often-troubling scenario is the assumptions that expectations are what we have of others, that our role in this drama is largely a passive one, waiting to see if persons or institutions can deliver on what are often inflexible and even fantastical assumptions about how “others” should behave, how the world “should” work, expectations so often disconnected from reality, so often insufficiently flexible to circumstance but also insufficiently engaged with the people and/or institutions to which the expectations are directed. 

I must say that most of the quotations I unearthed for this piece (and didn’t include) failed both the flexibility and engagement tests.  One after another cautioned against having any expectations in the first place, not as a result of some Buddhist epiphany but so one could avoid “disappointment.”  As with so much else in life, the choice to recalibrate these dubious assumptions, to refine our expectations such that they remain both flexible and engaged was difficult to find. That we should be willing to see what is actually present, to refrain from predetermined notions of what “ought to be,” notions seemingly also designed to limit our own participation, is a curse which we have the ability and the obligation to curb.

Where this HLPF was concerned, it was a struggle for some not to give in either to a passive cynicism or a deep disappointment that, yet again, conclusions were not sufficiently relevant to the urgency of the times and young people were no closer to securing a world they can live with.   After “consensus” adoption of the Ministerial Declaration for this HLPF, delegations began to pick apart its provisions, with one caveat after another directed towards language in the Declaration from which delegations maintained the right to distance themselves, some on sovereign policy grounds, others on grounds of culture. Especially troubling to me was the fact that this distancing was most often directed towards language on climate change and reproductive rights, areas of particular urgency for our young people as the planet continues to bake and women’s rights continue to lean in the wrong direction.    

For us, despite another round of discouragement, these caveats must be understood as setbacks but not deal-breakers. If there is not sufficient urgency or inspiration in UN conference rooms, there is still space for us to supply it.  If delegations try to “go small” in keeping with their instructions from capital, we can do our part to expand the frame, to keep the focus on areas of greatest threat, to reassure constituents that we will continue to apply an active and flexible lens to global problems which we know are unlikely to disappear unless we do.

We also recognize that the “cherry picking” around the operative paragraphs of the Ministerial Declaration is unlikely to reassure an anxious global public wondering if the many ministers and leaders of diplomatic missions gathered for this HLPF actually understand what is now at stake. Perhaps they’ve simply heard it all before, heard it so often in fact that there is no longer shock value, no longer anything to hear that can inspire anything more than tepid motions towards a “consensus” which is unlikely to motivate states not already “all in” on sustainable development to significantly shift their national priorities.

What we need to add to the mix is more inspiration, words and images that can move people, move them in ways that our “flat,” cautious and cliche-ridden policy language often cannot, move them to take up their rightful place in the world and affirm the life that can still be theirs.

Indeed, the most inspirational moment of the week might well not have been in the HLPF at all, but in the Security Council of all places where Colombian and UN officials convened to honor the release of the Final Report of the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Co-existence and Non-Repetition. The Declaration emerging from this report is most everything a document of this sort could be — smart and humble, informed and forward looking, generous and fair, tethered both to a complex national history and the spontaneity of its current moment, this and more in gorgeous, moving prose which seeks to vindicate the “blood of brothers” shed over and over by mapping out specific pathways allowing a weary nation to “go further until we love life.”

At the UN, it is now most often the president of the General Assembly who speaks in such tones. But he will leave his office soon and it is up to the rest of us to decide how to maintain that culture, a culture that inspires and assesses courageously, a culture that is not satisfied for one moment until the words on paper become hopeful change for the millions who long for it. For us and others the task is also to maintain flexible expectations in the face of the “unexpected sparks” of change, along with a posture which conveys that a sustainable peace still lies in our hands, especially so as we are able to resist the temptations to see only what we want to see or hurl pre-deteremined expectations at others from the sidelines.

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Word Play: Expectations Fit for a World in Crisis, Dr. Robert Zuber

19 Sep
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Expectations were like fine pottery. The harder you held them, the more likely they were to crack. Brandon Sanderson

If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. William Shakespeare

Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own. Paulo Coelho

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect. Jane Austen

It wasn’t that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn’t expect. Lev Grossman

After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another?  Tom Perrotta

You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. John Steinbeck

Earlier this week, my dear friend and Green Map colleague, Wendy Brawer, sent me a photo of a group of young people staging a “die-in” in front of UN Headquarters to protest the lack of movement on climate change from the world body and, more specifically, from many of its member states.

This protest occurred on a week when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report which reached conclusions more discouraging than shocking – that at our current rate, we will not only fail to reach the Paris Climate agreement goal of remaining at or below 1.5 degrees C, but that we are likely to exceed 2 degrees C of warming leading to a bevy of unwelcome consequences including exceeding “critical tolerance thresholds for agriculture and health.”

The Secretary-General, as is his want, warned states yet again of the “insufficiency” of current efforts to reduce emissions, proclaiming that we are running out of time to do so while acknowledging in public (as we and others have been warning for some time) that the COP 26 climate conference scheduled for later this year in Glasgow carries “a high risk of failure.”  Indeed, we have been concerned for months that COP 26 might well generate more emissions than its outcome document will mitigate; moreover that we don’t need yet another major conference to underscore the urgency of the moment, an urgency well documented in a bevy of UN reports as well as at prior COP events which, collectively, do not seem to have yet inspired anything akin to a proportionate response.

The young people lying on First Avenue are certainly taking climate warnings seriously.  Their youthful years already compromised by a raging pandemic, personal debt burdens and shrinking economic options, these activists recognize a threat to their future that may soon reach a point of no return, the effects of warming that will keep their adult lives pivoting endlessly from one crisis to another, from drought to flooding, from farmlands which no long yield their bounty to pandemics and hurricanes creating fresh human emergencies with equal frequency.

That they chose to lie down in front of the UN was, to my mind at least, communicating a dual signal; on the one hand a recognition that the UN as a body has not met expectations, has not converted the warnings it liberally proclaims into tangible and proportionate responses by many of the member states which pay its bills and authorize its policy commitments.  At the same time, there is a sense that, if only it could speak with one voice, the UN is still a place where aspirations for peace, equity and environmental health could be converted into something more concrete and results-oriented than large conferences making even larger promises unlikely to be kept.

Assuming that I have this pegged correctly, this dual assessment by these youth activists closely mirrors our own.  As we start to wind down nearly 20 years in and around UN Headquarters we are inspired by the range (and sometimes depth) of issues on the UN’s agenda, but also discouraged by how many of those issues get bogged down in matters both political and procedural.  We are dismayed at how often statements by governments are as likely to cover up key truths as to magnify them, how often the things left unsaid are more significant to the future of the planet than what states actually share, how much easier it is for states – whether on climate or armament, whether on vaccine distribution or aid to Yemen — to make pledges than to honor them.

Like others around this UN system, our assessments are largely a function of our expectations.  We know that people can observe, even without preconceptions, the same institutional circumstances at the same moment and come away with quite different assessments of their value and significance, depending of course on their expectations of those institutions in the first instance.  If we expect little and those expectations are exceeded, assessments are likely to be positive.  If we expect much and such expectations are not met, assessments are likely to be considerably more pessimistic.  And if we expect too much, more than the UN or perhaps any institution can bear without cracking apart altogether, we risk deep disappointment much more inclined to cynicism than to activism.

We have long been in this second camp and sometimes had to struggle not to be in the third. We have always been of the belief that the UN community –including we NGOs — has been insufficiently willing to match policy to urgency, has been insufficiently willing to convert its institutional processes and commitments into actions which demonstrate that we truly understand the times we face, the burning of forests and bridges, the flooding of waters and excessive armaments, the states that talk a better game on multilateralism than their domestic political situations allow them to play.  We have witnessed, time and again, states verbalizing support for urgently-needed policy change or even institutional reforms only to undermine either when the time comes for the UN to meet the moment.  We have also witnessed, more than we would ever wish, states equating national interest with global interest or other stakeholders assuming that one single policy lens or set of recommendations would ever be suitable to reset a world now characterized by such cultural, economic and ideological disharmony.

But to be fair, there are pockets of forthrightness in this multilateral system which give credence to higher expectations that the UN itself continues to both encourage and frustrate; states, UN agencies and NGOs insisting that we talk about reducing the production of armaments and ammunition as well as about arms diversion and trafficking; states and others insisting on fair and equitable representation in Secretariat offices and even in the Security Council; states and others which have shown the way on sustainable energy and ocean health critiquing those still addicted to fossil fuels and/or oblivious to biodiversity loss; states and others urging “readiness” for future pandemics even as we struggle mightily, if unevenly, to contain the current one. 

As this strained planetary moment unfolds, we are compelled to honor all who dare to elevate levels of expectation for the UN system. To that end, one of the signature events of this UN week was the handover of the presidency of the General Assembly from Turkey’s Volkan Bozkir to the Maldives’ Abdulla Shahid.  During his final remarks as president, one which we felt he was a bit sad to relinquish, Mr. Bozkir provided what characterized his entire term, what he himself called a “blunt” assessment of our planetary conditions and the role that the UN should play – must attempt to play – in shaping a more peaceful and sustainable world.  He noted here as he did throughout the year the heavy lifting which must be assumed by this “most representative” Assembly in meeting our responsibilities to sustainable development, to peace and security, and to the reduction of global inequalities.  He implored colleagues to abandon nationalist lenses and “go it alone” approaches, including on climate change, and urged greater attention to how this “unique body” can be used more effectively in the pursuit of a sustainable peace.  And as though any of us around the UN should ever need this reminder, he reminded us anyway that “words are not enough.”

Not nearly enough.  Not now.  Not at this precarious moment in history.  Not for the millions of global constituents longing for peace and the development “dividends” which peace brings.  Not either for youth lying prone on First Avenue hoping both for a voice in global policy and for a clear sign that those working a stone’s throw from their street protest can match the urgency of the moment with leadership and resolve to take at least some of the grave threats facing these young people off their collective plate.

If such an expectation is too much for the UN system, if the bar of an inclusive and sustainable peace proves to be just too high, then we would do well to wonder if the institution will ever be, as we say over and over, “fit for purpose.” Whether we are strong enough to pursue this or not, whether the UN is ultimately able to assume a loftier mantle or not, that “purpose” now is nothing short of saving us from ourselves, of peventing the symbolic “die ins” of our activist youth from becoming an omen of our collective future.



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Island Innovation Holds its 2021 Summit, by Jessali Zarazua

17 Sep

Editor’s Note: Jessali is our fall 2021 intern sent to us by our good friend and colleague Dr. Simone Lucatello at the Instituto Mora in Mexico City. While here, Jessali will explore every possible facet of UN policy, including time with one or more diplomatic missions, as she pursues research interests for her thesis. Jessali took an immediate interest in the Island Innovation “Virtual Island Summit” which highlighted an extraordinary array of isses relevant to sustainable devevelopment, especially in the world’s many small island states. Her summary of what she saw and heard is below.

Between the 6th and the 12th of September, the Virtual Island Summit (VIS2021) was held with world-class speakers and more than 10,000 attendees from over 100 island communities including from the Arctic, Caribbean, Europe, Indian Ocean, Pacific Islands, South America and beyond. This conference included input from policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, and NGO leaders who for one week shared their expertise regarding the unique threats and circumstances of island communities, sharing recommendations and examples of good practices from around the world.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the conference is that it was a zero-carbon event thanks to the use of modern technology that facilitated participation and minimized harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Also, through a cross-section of collaborative perspectives, the Summit emphasized the need for input and partnerships from across private, public, academic and NGO sectors. Furthermore, during the sessions there was discussion of all 17 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in addition to other topics pertinent to island communities, such as the blue economy, education, renewable energy, climate change and how to finance sustainability projects. The following is an abstract of some of the sessions we followed, their core ideas and themes.

On day 1, the session “Renewable Microgrids: An Economic, Reliable and Sustainable Energy Transition for Islands” featured discussions on how renewable energy, implemented through microgrids such as islands, can guide sustainable development resulting in a substantial reduction in both CO2 emissions and fuel imports.

On day 2, during the “Save it from the Shore – A Circular Economy for Islands” session, it was brought-up that island beaches increasingly suffer from marine plastic pollution, revealing the fact that what is carelessly thrown away in one place inevitably turns up somewhere else, adding to the pressure on island communities to find sustainable ways of dealing with others’ waste as well as their own. The objective of this session was to give an opportunity for knowledge sharing. For example, sargassum might actually be one potential solution to climate change when used as a bio stimulant or in building materials.

During day 3, the session “Forging the Future of Food: Building Security and Resilience in Agriculture,” analyzed how best to implement sustainable agricultural practices and food systems that can contribute to more resilient communities for the benefit of current and future generations. In this context, food security and food sovereignty are two important pillars of the agricultural sector where science is crucial to informing policy, ensuring that resources are used sustainably for future generations, including sustainable uses of extractive economies such as fisheries. One of the conclusions was that while islands are currently overly dependent on food imports, small countries can grow a lot of food; it is simply a matter of using land more efficiently.

The same day, the session “Climate and Environmental Justice: Island Perspectives” highlighted the importance of justice as both a core tenet of societies and a core principle of sustainability. Within the context of the climate crisis and while taking action to mitigate it, justice becomes even more important. Climate and environmental justice is supporting a global shift towards sustainability by providing equitable and inclusive solutions for all those affected by the climate crisis.

On day 4, there was a session “Innovation and the Future of Tourism” with case studies highlighting innovative and green tourism initiatives. The main pourpose was to show that sustainable tourism is a key component to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and  is also needed to help the tourism industry to recover from the global pandemic. On that same day, the “Why are the UN High Seas Treaty Negotiations important to the Caribbean?” sesion highlighted this first global negotiations to address sustainable ocean policy in over 30 years, one which provides a once-in-a-generation (and perhaps final) opportunity to conserve ocean biodiversity. One of the conclusions was that if island states are to be able to continue to rely on the ocean, then we need to think about how we govern, preserve and protect the high seas. Rather than belonging to anyone, ocean areas beyond national jurisdiction should be seen as belonging to everyone. This session also provided an overview of negotiations to date, as well as highlighted the Caribbean’s role in the negotiations by leading stakeholders in the region.

On day 5, the “Pioneers of the Caribbean in Renewable Energy” session highlighted how Curaçao set the objectives and priorities for the development of an effective and sustainable energy system so as to reduce dependence on petroleum imports. Efforts are also being taken to modernize the electricity distribution structure, optimize mobility and replace the use of crude oil-based products with natural gas to facilitate the transition to a fully sustainable society. All of this answers one or more problems faced by small islands regading their high electricity costs. There is no doubt that combining tourism with renewable energy is a very important sustainability step.

During day 6, the “Breaking Echo Chambers: Innovating Inter-island Knowledge Sharing” session featured a panel discussion focused on bottlenecks in communicating information to bring about effective action. Island nations face many shared struggles against the impacts of climate change such as vulnerable coastlines, damaged ecosystems, and people on the receiving end of the impacts of global inaction. In this context, webinars provide a really good opportunity for people to break silos, abandon their echo-chambers and meet people outside their usual spaces to share knowledge and best practices.

Finally on day 7, the session “Unite Behind The SC1.5NCE – an Intergenerational Dialogue on the Future of Islands” was held. Here the SC.15NCE NOT SILENCE campaign was analyzed, including its call for governments to publicly support the IPCC 1.5C Special Report and urgently align their climate goals accordingly. This session was very fruitfull because of its  intergenerational dialogue about the future of islands amidst a bevy of climate and ocean threats.

The Island Summit also included interactive sessions in various formats that imitated a traditional in-person event with digital opportunities to interact with speakers and other attendees towards creating an online community and network. Discussions of a global nature were held about climate action, the blue economy, clean energy transitions, post-pandemic recovery, island sustainability, migration, and cultural preservation. There were also “Supporting and financing climate and clean energy projects” sessions focused on specific regions, such as the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, and Lusophone states. Potential investors were given guidance on how to invest in climate adaptation and clean energy projects in these and other regions.

In addition to the content sessions, stories were shared from the islands, such as by “Chagossian Voices”, a grassroots organization of Chagos Islanders who depicted the decades of trauma and injustice suffered by the forcibly displaced Chagossian community. During that session, Louis Elyse, a member of “Voices”, asked the international community to recognize Chagos as an independent nation. Participants also were treated to a collection of previously unseen pictures of everyday life in the 1960s and 70s taken on the Isle of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland during the session “Fàgail Bheàrnaraigh | Leaving Berneray”.

Along with this, plenary sessions were organized at regional level and dedicated to discussions with industry leaders about how their islands are implementing the Sustainable Development Goals to meet the needs of future generations. The most common priority noted was the need for urgent action from governments and all segments of the global community to reverse the global climate crisis. Demonstrated unity was evident regarding the reality that vulnerable small island states face storms and other extreme weather events with limited capacity. “It is not a matter of money, but a matter of the continuity of our existence,” noted Ambassador Walton Aubrey Webson from Antigua & Barbuda. In a similar vein, Philip J. Pierce, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia reminded participants that “small nations like Saint-Lucia contribute little to problems like pandemics and the climate crisis but pay the highest price.”

This Summit as a whole provided an incredibly opportunity to gain insight into tackling sustainability issues faced by island communities and how we all can help build a better future for island residents. Islands offer opportunities to locally contextualize strategies for recovery and renewal, and it was uplifting to hear how much is already being done. Small Island States are on the frontline of the climate crisis through no fault of their own. They contribute just 1% of global emissions but they face rising sea levels, more extreme weather events, and devastation to local industries and livelihoods. We need to act now in solidarity with small islands states to secure our common future.

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Time Lord: Heeding our Hourglass of Sustainability, Dr. Robert Zuber

18 Jul

Now the time has come. There’s no place to run.   Chambers Brothers

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.  Andy Warhol

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.  Kurt Vonnegut

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.  Mother Theresa

The future is uncertain but the end is always near.  Jim Morrison

The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do.  Neil Gaiman

Time moves slowly but passes quickly.  Alice Walker

In an earlier phase of the work of our small organization, we were preoccupied with the development of an Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS), a rapid-response, gender-inclusive mechanism under UN auspices which could respond rapidly and effectively to threats of genocide and other mass atrocities. UNEPS was designed to combat abuses which our current system of conflict response is still unable to address at sufficiently early stages to prevent the long-term damage – to families and communities, to farms and civilian infrastructure – which remain as a horrific legacy of so much armed violence and gross rights violations in our current, famine-stricken, gun-saturated world.

Despite some of the large and unwieldy egos which congregated around this initiative, and despite some persistent disputes over the contingent size and funding mechanisms for such a force, the underlying premises of UNEPS remained sound.  It recognized that where response to grave violence and other crises is concerned, time is always of the essence.  Prevention is always preferable to resolution in the conflict sphere, and our collective record on matters of prevention is not yet particularly laudable.  But once a looming crisis is recognized, there is – or should be – no time to waste.  When dealing with threats of mass violence, delay means death and misery.  Moreover, the longer a conflict is allowed to fester, the more elusive a negotiated peace or even an adopted cease fire tends to become. 

With UNEPS, we often used the analogy of firefighting in our outreach, as firefighters are acutely aware of the need to arrive at fire scenes rapidly and with capacity adequate to the blaze.  Any delay in response merely intensifies the threat to both citizens and firefighters, and often ensures that a fire that might have easily been contained turns into a blaze that scorches thousands of acres and uproots life both human and animal.  The same logic applies during injury car crashes or when a mother recognizes that her child’s illness is more than a garden-variety cold.  In these or other circumstance, emergency response is not a luxury but a priority, one which gives the sick and injured the best chance of a full recovery.

While there is no UNEPS incarnate in the world , the UN system and several of its regional partners have taken on board the importance of rapid reaction, including in both peacekeeping operations (where late arrival endangers civilians and complicates peace prospects) and disaster risk response (where early warning combined with even earlier preparations gives communities the best chance of surviving more frequent, violent storms and other climate shocks). But the UN is also hampered by fungible timelines largely dependent on the will of member states: the will to agree on resolution language with measurable impact; the will to fund the structures and personnel needed to make prevention viable; the will to honor multilateral commitments through dedicated national implementation strategies; the will to ensure an end to impunity for abuses as the best means for preventing their recurrence.  

To spend as much time as we do in UN discussions and processes is to participate in a twilight zone of urgency and delay, a place where crises are recognized but invariably subject to the vicissitudes of extended and often intense negotiation, wherein states have the space, if they choose to use it, to both join the consensus on crisis language and impede the consensus on crisis response.  We see elements of this “zone” evident in our pandemic response where practical (and funded) responses to the urgent need for “vaccine equity” still fall well-short of our rhetoric.  We also see elements of this in the willingness of states to pat themselves on the back for their virtuous commitments to the alleviation of famine and other global threats, commitments which are often not honored in full (and at times not even in part) and which, in any event, represent only small percentages of what we liberally allocate for mass casualty weapons, fossil fuel exploration and other civilization-threatening investments.  

What we don’t see nearly as often as we would wish is sufficient progress towards what Kenya’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Security Council this past Friday called “an architecture of shared burdens,” a multilateral system made up of what she called “capable states” that both protect their own citizens and contribute more of their national skills and capacities to the global commons. 

What else might be implied by this notion of “capable?” In part it refers to states which understand, as DSG Amina Mohammed noted in several venues this week, that the success of our world depends on our ability to localize key commitments, to promote public involvement rather than more state control, to invest in the skills and capacities needed to make our responses to conflict and other global crises more than token, more than piecemeal.  “Capable” states recognize when their policies are actually “pushing” people further behind, as noted this week by a Bangladesh professor.  Capable states acknowledge, as Niger recently confessed, that our humanitarian responsibilities are often invoked to “remedy the shortcomings” of our human community, that so much of the “need” we seek to address is the product of conflict and climate threats we could do much more to prevent.  Capable states also recognize that what the president of ECOSOC referred to as our current “prefect storm” of economic, heath and environmental challenges cannot be resolved in isolation or half-heartedly, nor can we delude ourselves that time alone will heal what we must commit much more to heal ourselves.  Capable states know that they must model the norms and behaviors that they seek to promote in others, that an architecture of shared burdens cannot be built on the backs of states which themselves decline to share or which insist on talking more than listening or, for that matter, acting.  

And capable states know that our collective clock is ticking, our global hourglass is quickly draining its sand, the metaphorical wolves we have ourselves brought into being are making ample progress in bringing our very house down. Despite some stunning technologies and many hopeful local initiatives, we have allowed threats to our present to flare largely out of control and we can hardly miss their effects in the form of flooding and fires, unprecedented levels of heat and intensity of storms, and a global community that seems often to be in meltdown mode, eager to attack and reluctant to share, eager to exploit and reluctant to respect, eager to withdraw and reluctant to protect.

Pakistan’s Ambassador Akram was right this week to point to a “emerging global consensus” on debt relief, universal vaccination, women’s participation, climate mitigation and adaptation, and ending the digital divide, elements of a consensus that he did much to promote during his ECOSOC presidency and his stewardship of this year’s High Level Political Forum (HLPF). And yet the Ministerial Declaration from the recently adjourned HLPF is a testament as much to the politics of the UN as to an active consensus that can reassure communities in need or distress that their trust in multilateralism remains well-founded.

The representative of Slovenia, speaking on behalf of the European Union, acknowledged as much.  Despite helping to beat back amendments to the declaration (proposed mostly by Russia) that would have stymied references to matters as fundamental (to us) as human rights, gender equality and biodiversity protection, the EU statement lamented the absence of a more “action-oriented” document which takes ample responsibility for “building back greener” and vigorously preparing our global society to prevent and address the “future shocks” which are virtually certain to come our way.

And perhaps also to reference in clear and unambiguous terms that the future envisioned in 2015 at the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals is a long way from realization; and that as a result there is now literally “nowhere to run” from the ubiquitous drought and pandemic variants; from the heatwaves that now stretch to the Arctic and the deadly flooding which impacts communities across the so-called developed world; from the food insecurity that is quickly becoming a discouraging global norm and the violent outbursts from people with malevolent intent or who simply, if mistakenly, see no other pathway to express themselves.

As we learned from our own, uneven UNEPS experience, sound policy is about more than saying the right things but is about ensuring timely and capable response to threats which, as we now see in this global moment, are only becoming harder to tame.  Despite some good efforts at global level underscored by innovative technology and abundant data, we often seem “trapped in the amber of the moment.” Our hourglass has almost drained, and yet we continue to squander precious time to demonstrate the courage and cooperation needed to free ourselves and our constituents from our largely self-imposed constraints. Time may seem to move slowly, but our chance at a sustainable future is passing much too quickly. We cannot allow another moment to drain away. Let us begin in greater earnest to reverse current trends while the opportunity to do so still beckons.

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Midsummer Dream: Inspiring Honest Progress on Development and Peace, Dr. Robert Zuber

19 Jul

Imagine if we had no secrets, no respite from the truth. What if everything was laid bare the moment we introduced ourselves?  Catherine Doyle

So it became the law of universe, to have the profoundest of the words cloaked in the darkest of the masks.  Jasleen Kaur Gumber

We all become what we pretend to be.  Patrick Rothfuss

Masked, I advance.  Rene Descartes

How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are? Isn’t the mirror hostile enough?  Jeanette Winterson

Done with hiding and weary of lying, we’ll reconcile without and within.  John Mark Green

It is a sultry mid-summer morning in New York City, a Sunday following an intense and difficult week both for my country and for the United Nations system as a whole.

At the UN, the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) and its focus on implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) came to a close; the Security Council held a discussion on the pervasive problem of “sexual violence in conflict” with briefers including UN Envoy Angelina Jolie; and the annual Nelson Mandela lecture was turned over by the Foundation bearing his name to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who proceeded to outline what seemed to be an endless series of urgent global challenges from a podium in New York rather than in South Africa.

In the aggregate, these UN events highlighted the urgency of effective multilateral engagement while calling attention to the policy areas where such engagement has not yet produced sufficient results; has not brought justice for victims, has not overcome health disparities or digital divides, has not resolved conflict consistently or reversed most human-inflicted damage to our climate, has not ensured welcoming borders for displaced persons seeking refuge from armed conflict or grave rights abuses.

Indeed, one of the subtexts of the HLPF as it drew to a close is the number of sustainable development commitments which seem to be headed in the wrong direction – certainly on climate but also on food security, on the protection of civic space, on societies which are genuinely inclusive of cultural minorities, persons with disabilities, and other groups too often destined to remain on national margins.  Thankfully, there was no attempt at the close – including by Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed — to deflect attention from the reality of our current deficiencies, especially on development finance, but nor was there any lack of rhetorical support for the UN’s role at the center of fulfilling the promises on sustainable development made to global constituents.

As most UN watchers will recognize, at least in part, talk can be a bit cheap around the UN, perhaps even more so in the digital realms to which UN events have been confined over these past few months. An insight from Egypt this week, that this not the time to “make a point” but to “make a difference,” actually served to underscore a problem which has long plagued the UN – that “difference” is made at national level, that the power of implementation resides in national capitals, and that progressive-sounding words by UN diplomats are as likely to mask government intentions as to clarify them.

This rhetorical mask-making is often well-represented in UN policy engagements.  Diplomats come to New York to represent national interests and to hopefully do so in a way that does not needlessly jeopardize the possibility of multilateral breakthroughs.  But the job also involves creating impressions of countries more progressive in their outlook than is often the case, creating in effect the mask that hides realities at national level including, at times, realities which even directly contradict the policies advanced by national diplomats in multilateral settings.

Such policy mask-making affects many states far removed from Egypt.   My own country, for instance, continues to posit itself as a beacon of justice and freedom in multilateral settings despite the many instances in which we have twisted our own values, let alone those of the UN Charter, to serve mostly partisan interests.  This is not a phenomenon unique to this current administration, and yet we must be clear that authoritarian tendencies sweeping parts of the planet expose masks of progressive multilateralism that diplomats continue to wear and whose contours the UN is desperate to maintain.

In my own country, there are images in abundance of men in military garb (and with no identification) beating and tear-gassing lawful protesters.  There are images of leadership deliberately suppressing COVID-19 information under the absurd guise that if you don’t count an infection, it never happened.   In a country where so many have given so much of themselves to advance the values that we say we cherish, the refusal to wear masks to prevent viral spread has somehow been turned into a symbolic exercise of American “freedom,” a misleading and ultimately risky dimension of this expertise-denying, scapegoating and conspiracy-obsessed cultural moment where we all believe what we choose, and where much of what we “believe” is indulgent of the grievances of our tribe. We forget that cloth coverings are not the principle masks we routinely employ to confound others regarding who we really are and what we really care about.

All while distancing itself from the work of UN agencies and failing to fulfill core responsibilities as the “host state,” my country continues to do what many other countries at the UN do, exhibiting masks of progressive multilateralism with scant expectations that policies espoused in Turtle Bay will be reflected in policy commitments in capital.  And since the UN is dependent on its funding from these very same states, its arsenal of coercion beyond expressions of normative intent is highly circumscribed.

But as conflicts resist resolution and some development goals threaten to recede into functional indifference, UN leadership seems to be reaching a point of considerable frustration, if not outright panic.  SG Guterres has been a bit over-exposed of late, but he has also been increasingly strident in promoting the SDG “blueprint” for the world, rightly highlighting some of the many changes that we need to make now to ensure a greener, healthier planet with forms of governance that “deliver better,” and with divides digital, gendered and economic which are finally being narrowed.

Responses to Guterres’ agenda have often been borderline effusive.  Diplomats seem to affirm the value of his pronouncements, agreeing (as with Morocco) that the world we are obligated to build is one which must be built together.   But laying out our urgent circumstances is only part of the responsibility of leadership, leadership which the CEO of the Mandela Foundation noted yesterday is now more prone to consolidating power than inspiring people to contribute their best. We are now only rarely inspired to lower our masks and take up our practical duties to justice and sustainability, to move beyond rhetoric and help build that “new social contract” called for by the SG which can help guarantee that promises made by leadership are also promises kept.

One of the week’s most striking moments for me was in the Security Council where a civil society activist, Khin Ohmar, was describing the sexual violence that routinely occurs in Myanmar and which is grounded in “structural gender discrimination” which the Council has done relatively little to address. “I am not the first person to bring this issue to your attention,” Ms. Ohmar observed.  “You’ve heard this all before.”

We have indeed heard it all before: on sexual violence, yes, but also on climate and hunger, on refugees and torture, on oceans and weapons.  We’ve heard it over and over, more times than we can count and certainly more than we can psychologically process, descriptions of a world that is careening into an uncertain future where both human rights and development progress are under considerable strain and where all of the hand-wringing we do has not affected “root causes” nearly as much as it needs to.

Frankly, this narrative of dysfunction has begun to wear us down. We don’t need more recitations of our half-failures so much as we need inspiration to re-energize our most important commitments, including the task of ensuring that investments of our time and treasure are fully relevant to the problems we wish to address.  And we must also find the means to inspire UN diplomats to direct more multilateral energies back home, to remind their own leaders that the real key to preserving multilateralism is not about the quality of our UN statements but about the willingness of states to put into more urgent practice the values that attracted them to multilateral frameworks in the first place.

Inspiration at this moment is one of the rarest of commodities, that Mandela-like combination of passion and honesty which believes in human potential even as it cuts through our masks of misleading rhetoric, our tendency to “hide” behind protocol and position, our feeble attempts to reconcile from a distance, our ability to hear only what we want to hear and then act on only a small portion of that.  As the SG likes to say, “time is not on our side.”  What we have to say in response is that higher levels of inspiration will be required if we are to make the best possible uses of the time we have left.

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Gold Rush: Ending the Confinement of Youth Voices, Dr. Robert Zuber

3 May

eni

It’s going to take some time, this time. Karen Carpenter/Carole King

What a weary time those years were — to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability. Charles Bukowski

This is the age you are broken or turned into gold. Antonia Michaelis

Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten. Rob Sheffield

Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others. Hermann Hesse

The adult mind can lie with untroubled conscience and a gay composure, but in those days even a small deception scoured the tongue, lashing one against the stake itself. Daphne du Maurier

This past Friday I was privileged to log in to a presentation by students of Otis College of Art and Design as part of a class directed by Gina Valona and focused on creating conditions for “inclusive governance” and “environmental stewardship” through their organization T.I.A. — Transparent, Inclusive and Accountable government for all.

Her coaching of these young people has clearly been superb, and the results were stunning. Despite the COVID-inspired disruptions, limitations and discouragements, these students created a series of hopeful projects which, if they could be funded and duly implemented, would better connect the people of Los Angeles with their natural and built environments, helping them make healthier decisions, connect more effectively with government officials, and engage a much wider array of stakeholders in the longer-term, post-COVID work of sustainability. From mobile curriculum and “Green Mapping” to design for a TIA Mascot and a Los Angeles Environmental Center, these young voices were determined to be recognized amidst the gloom of an isolating, stealth virus and an economy on the brink.

This isn’t the only youth-energized project that we come across. We have extraordinary young people passing through our joint office regularly, many working on initiatives dedicated to lifting the veil of weapons-related policies that have been  allowed to continue threatening entire societies. And we have written previously about the (#1MillionTrees2020) eco-leadership of Burundi’s Emmanuel Niyoyabikoze which actually attracts more attention on our twitter feed than any other initiative we cover.

As we surely recognize, there is plenty more where that came from: Caring for the planet and its diverse communities. Living for others.

From our vantage point there are many good reasons to lend whatever coaching and publicity we can to youth initiatives. We recognize the need for our political and social leadership to get younger, more diverse, more attentive to the values and aspirations of generations now and those to come, more sensitive to the unique constellation of obstacles and limitations – from pandemics to climate threats – that force too many young people to sit on their often-legitimate impatience rather than directing their abundant energy to more personally satisfying and socially productive ends.

From those whose early lives have been dominated by the aspirations of schooling to the even greater number of young people seeking more immediate employment opportunities to keep their families fed and safe, we struggle still to make space for young people, to exit the ride we’ve been on for some time and let the next group of younger ticket holders take their seats. Their collective clock is ticking and too many of us seem deaf to its ominous warnings, more akin to a time-bomb than a travel alarm.

The UN struggles at times to hear as well, as do many of the governments which form its membership. But this past Monday, under the leadership of April’s president Dominican Republic, the Security Council revisited its responsibilities to promote and ensure participation through its Youth, Peace and Security agenda (Resolution 2250). Among the more compelling statements was the one delivered by UN Youth Envoy Jayathma Wickramanayake who questioned whether governments are up to the challenge of creating a viable, multi-generational, change framework. As Belgium made clear, rightly in our view, if the lives of young people are to bear the scars of climate change and pandemics, hate speech and economic upheaval, shouldn’t they also be consulted?

The Youth Envoy made additional reference to the frequent media images of “irresponsible youth” while lamenting what she sees as the less frequent images of young people renouncing violence and caring for the needs of their communities. Her statement points to one of the problems with discussions of this sort, the endless struggling over stereotypical imaging that mis-defines entire groups of people, indeed in this instance, entire generations; theirs of course, but my own and others as well.

The larger truth is that efforts of young people to find their voice, to find their place, to move past the obstacles that often seem both formidable and endless – these are often very personal, even intimate struggles embodying dimensions both individual and generational. They are struggles now buffeted by pandemic distancing and economic uncertainty, but also by gross inequalities that represent a large and hostile foot on the necks of millions of young people who will never be invited to policy discussions or consulted about the path forward in this seemingly impediment rich and opportunity poor world. If this is indeed the stage of life, as it was for me long ago, where we are either “broken or turned into gold,” we have for too long accepted “broken” as the inevitable outcome for so many young people, ensuring that their often-considerable idealism and rightful sensitivity to the hypocrisy of we older folks who purport to “lead” them will be forever buried under a virtual avalanche of survival-related concerns.

At the UN on Monday, one of the most successful statements was delivered by the Ambassador of Niger, during which he pointed to the remarkable “optimism” expressed by many youth in his youngest of the world’s continents despite impacts on their young lives from violence, disease and unemployment. I have been in many parts of this “youngest continent” and have seen the talent taking shape in many forms and at many levels. I beheld as well the frustrations related to forms of economics and governance that are not making sufficient space for youth nor are they doing enough to nurture the skills and aspirations of young people, including those for whom displacement remains as likely a prospect as a university degree. How long will governments interpret youth advocacy and energy as a threat rather than an engine of social renewal? How long can this youth optimism possibly survive when the “gold” they might well become is so often ignored or dismissed by their elders?

It is surely a “weary” time for many of the world’s young people, a time when levels of trust in older folks are often lower even than levels of opportunity.   One of the blessings of youth has been, and surely remains, its varying but considerable levels of resilience, especially to disappointment.  We have all made messes in our lives, fallen out of line, suffered pain and heartbreak, sometimes self-inflicted.  Many of us have made decisions about labor and love that resulted in less than we imagined but from which we were able to move on rather deftly, to learn what we could and head out again on an uncertain, unpaved path. Many of us have boxed ourselves into corners but managed to escape their confinement and resolved never to find ourselves in such a place again.

But this time seems different, different of course from what people like me experienced long ago, but also different in terms of what is required of the youth of today. In this age of viral loads and climate meltdown, of mountains of debt and economies too strained to service them, the message to youth too often is that we expect them to remain patient while keeping their lives on hold, restraining their tongues, deferring their dreams, and socially isolating in confined spaces. It makes me sadder than I can communicate to think of so many energetic young people stuck in a starting gate with no clear sense of when the horses on which they are sitting will be released.

I know that the release will come. The obstacles will shift. The mean-spirits that dominate our political discourse will give way to kinder, more honest voices. The economic addictions that have imperiled the planet will evolve into a softer consumption. And the recognition will grow that young people are neither saviors nor narcissists, but people of varying portions of optimism, skill and energy who are often quite able and willing to help us all make the transitions we in our socially-distanced, stay-in-place realities are now so desperate to make.

But sadly, much of that is unlikely to happen as soon as it should.  The old habits and fresh challenges of the moment seem much too daunting. We must all keep working at ending the confinement of youth voices, youth potential; but also warning them honestly.

It’s going to take some time, this time.

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Denial Land: Resisting the Allure of the Normal, Dr. Robert Zuber

29 Mar

Emergency

Life went back to normal after that, as it will do if you’re not careful. Michael Montoure

Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land. Jim Butcher

Maybe everyone should talk to themselves. Maybe we’re all just afraid of what we’d say. Katie Kacvinsky

People have gotten used to living a botched-up life. Jaggi Vasudev

All of us prayed for normal. But so far, normal only meant more misery. Katie McGarry

Normal is the recession of our hopes and dreams. Natalie Gibson

Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone. Joni Mitchell

Sitting in my little room with my little red computer, I had a conversation recently with my longtime friend and downstairs (NY) neighbor about the need to use some of this “viral time” to think about the world that will emerge at some point or other, a time to prepare for decisions we have to make about the priorities of our institutions, the health of our agriculture and oceans, the transparency of our politics, the strength of our multilateral arrangements.

As I concluded my not-so-enlightened rant, she interrupted me with a reminder: that the reform of our politics and economics is largely predicated on the type of people we want to be, the inner reform that (as we at Global Action have actually maintained for some time) must accompany structural reform; structures that can otherwise offer only promises of relief from the burdens of misery and danger that so many in our world experience, the “recession” of the hopes and dreams that so many of us have simply forgotten how to realize.

This inner reform constitutes the basis for the talks that we need to have with ourselves about ourselves.

And we need to have them as a matter of urgency.   Five years ago the UN settled on a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of a 15 year commitment to create a world that was cleaner, healthier, fairer and less violent. Joining those many who cheered adoption of the goals and targets, we lamented only that there was so little in the agenda that was focused on ourselves, the erstwhile captains of the boats that we keep steering treacherously close to the rocks despite our lofty intentions to do otherwise.

Five years in, many of the SDGs are lagging significantly behind their promises. We have given precious more than lip service to ending food security, gender balancing our institutions, providing universal health care access, and fulfilling other core commitments.   We have continued to expend vast fortunes on military hardware, some of which ends up actively fomenting misery, fear, displacement and instability on virtually all continents. We have economies that have stretched the inequalities they could otherwise have narrowed, offering more and more to fewer and fewer, and draining funds for a wide range of essential public services in too many global societies. We have undermined inclusiveness in social and political life and used technology to compromise elections rather than ensure their integrity.

And this was all happening before the COVID-19 onslaught, the immediacy of which has positioned the full implementation of our various SDG commitments even further in the distance. Adding to the trillions we have spent on military hardware and tax breaks for the wealthy, we now must spend trillions more propping up economies whose vulnerabilities have been laid bare, with little left over to effectively tackle the problems that had already brought us to a collective tipping point.

Moreover, due to the spread of COVID-19, we can no longer gather in public places to demand better of our institutions, including relatively straightforward matters such as ensuring broader access to clean water for drinking and hand-washing, or a decent education for our children.   The hopes and dreams of many millions are clearly in “recession” as rarely before and it will take more – much more – than an “all clear” signal on the pandemic from our governments for us locate the track we should have been on in the first place.

If indeed we are to board the right train going forward, we will need more implementing wisdom from our now-stretched institutions, of course, but also more from ourselves. As frightening as the current pandemic can be, the greatest test of our mettle (not to mention our collective sanity) might well come at the end of this threat, when we must decide whether to truly “leave no-one behind,” or return to the faux-comforts of “normalcy” – the resurgence of old habits — some of which are related to faith, family and community, but also those related to economic predation and pollution, of political and climate instability, of xenophobia and discrimination, of armed conflict and the evermore sophisticated weaponry with which it is waged.

We know that, especially in the West, “normal” is one of those things against which we are “privileged” to rebel until we know longer have the things that normally fill up our zones of comfort. And as we sit in our places of quarantine struggling harder than usual (for us) to procure some of what we have become “accustomed to”, unable to socialize, or find toilet paper, or even to offer a hug, the allure of the “normal” is rearing its head once again. People ask “when can we get back” to that time when we now imagine that, for us at least, everything seemed to be just dandy; how can we reincarnate that selective memory of ourselves being more or less happy and content, a time when we could walk freely in our parks, sample copious amounts of restaurant food,  and expect reasonable levels of attentiveness from our doctors and grocery clerks, some of the very people whose lives are now literally on the line for the sake of the rest of us?

In this current, romantic longing  for a return to normalcy, we’ve forgotten how much we’ve accommodated often “botched up” lives; indeed how the choices we’ve made in the name of “normal” have created ripples of misery for others – those close at hand and others far away — that we have resolutely refused to acknowledge. Most of us don’t have the skill to rescue desperately sick virus victims or enjoy access to government officials with the power to free prisoners incarcerated for political reasons and now terrified of a viral death sentence. But we can begin that conversation with ourselves about what we truly care about, the deeper values often buried under superficial habits and self-delusional memories, and to consider seriously how we are able and willing to contribute to a more sustainable world once this current threat abates.

A primary attribute of “Denial Land” is the belief that “normal” was better than it actually was, that it is something to which we should now aspire rather than something to scrutinize and revise.  The suffering that we have too-often accommodated or explained away does not need to dominate our post-COVID reality. The decision about what that reality will look like lies largely with us, based in good measure on the conversations that we are now willing to have with ourselves.

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Identity Theft: Restoring Access and Dignity for Millions, Dr. Robert Zuber

8 Mar

Without dignity, identity is erased. Laura Hillenbrand
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.  Oscar Wilde
Living a lie will reduce you to one.  Ashly Lorenzana
We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Albert Einstein
I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. Audre Lorde
You are a thousand things, but everyone chooses to see the million things you are not. m.k.
One of the most interesting aspects of life inside UN headquarters these days is the diversity of conversations and events focused on what the Secretary-General has designated as the “Decade of Action” regarding fulfillment of our responsibilities to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  This decade seeks to make clear that while the SDGs require us to “stop doing things” such as polluting our oceans and discriminating against migrants, it also requires us to raise the bar to ensure food security, promote the rule of law,, create decent employment opportunities and much more.
From alleviating the impacts of violence on children to the statisticians charged with monitoring progress on goals from gender to environment, the UN is indeed making a good faith effort — and must continue to demonstrate even more — to honor its unprecedented promises to bring sustainable dividends to those for whom such dividends in the past have largely been a mirage.
And yet, sitting through these UN discussions of varying levels of interest and passion, there are several trends that we frequently notice.  First, there tends to be more problem sharing than problem solving. This “Decade of Action” is admittedly still in its infancy but it has not yet sufficiently permeated the “culture” of UN conference rooms.  Parallel reforms to the UN’s resident coordinator system offer the promise of development that is more tailored to circumstance and better coordinated with national development priorities.  But at headquarters the talk is still much about the logistics of forthcoming meetings or policy guidance on actions still to be taken rather than on states inspiring other states to do more for those genuinely in danger of being left behind.
The second thing we notice is a failure to clearly articulate the ways in which parts of the UN system are still “in the way” when it comes to fulfilling our common SDG commitments.  The primary culprit here might well be the Security Council, whose half-successes on preventing and resolving conflict (see Iraq or Yemen) contribute to enormous pressure being place on UN agencies responsible for humanitarian and development assistance.  Of the looming threats in the world that have the potential to wipe away development progress and drive humanitarian need to the breaking point, the persistence of armed conflict and the trafficking and excess weapons production which provide its oxygen remain as major culprits.  Indeed it seems as though more sustained policy reflection is in order regarding the “drag” on sustainable development coming from within the system responsible for ensuring such development.
And finally we notice that so much of the policy discourse focused on SDGs comes from the mouths of persons, like myself, who surely live under threats from climate change, ocean degradation and weapons of mass destruction, but for whom the bulk of needs and access issues associated with SDG commitments do not directly apply.  Indeed, even a cursory review of the 2019 Sustainable Goals Report reveals this often gross disparity between those in danger of being left behind yet again and those, like me, who are virtually never left behind.
For instance, according to the UN report, food insecurity is on the rise in many global regions, yet my own food access is both abundant and stable.  Access to fresh water is under threat in many places, but the quality of New York City drinking water is virtually unmatched among major global cities.  There have seemingly been some significant health-related improvements in recent years — notably with regard to tuberculosis, HIV infection and under 5 mortality rates — but health care access for many millions, especially those homeless or displaced, bears little or no resemblance to the doctors to whom I have access and who find ways to keep this now-aching shell of a body intact. Millions of children lack access to schooling and adults to literacy training, but my own educational profile is unassailable.
One can go up and down the line, across all SDGs and indicators to reveal a truth that those who make development policy live in very different realities than those who seek development assistance; that we in the policy community inadvertently put on display some of the very inequalities we profess to address. This is, at least in my own context and surely for others as well, a manifestation of privilege largely undeserved, a function of skill that surely exists, but skill that has also found its points of access to opportunity and resources far beyond its portion.
One such “portion” especially caught our eye this past week during a side event hosted by the UN Statistical Commission focused on a manifestation of inequality that is largely off our collective radar but which creates uncertainties and threatens dignity at depths that most of us could scarcely contemplate — and that is the matter of identity.
Identity is something we think about often in “developed” societies, though not in the same way that its deficit implies for the quality of life of too many in our world.  In our islands of privilege, we tend to see identity largely in terms of access and attention.  On the one hand, we generally possess multiple indicators of identify — birth certificates, marriage licenses, school diplomas, drivers licenses, credit cards, passports, social security cards, home and business addresses.  On and on it goes, pieces of paper that allow us to board airplanes, cross borders, access loans and medical attention, keep our increasingly complex lives in order, and  lay the groundwork for the next levels of success and privilege.
On top of this abundance is our other identity-related obsession, the “identity” that helps us to build a brand, get noticed, make sure “people are watching” both in the sense of earned recognition and in the sense of attention more akin to celebrity than substance, attention that “eclipses” as much of the self as it reveals.  In such instances we are more likely to exercise those “muscles” of separation and distinction than of complementarity and respect. The enormous personal benefit of being identified in this world as a diplomat, teacher, designer, farmer, nurse or even an NGO, is both a manifestation of our professional success and a privilege tethered to our worldly status, in response to which we now tend too often to skew the balance between the “optical delusion” of personal pride and the larger truths of gratitude and service.
But beyond the bloated contents of our wallets and egos, let the reader reflect for a moment what it would be like to survive in a world of constant uncertainty or even displacement, without anything like a proper paper trail to help establish who you are, where you came from, who you are connected to, who (if anyone) is watching your back.  No birth records or credit cards, no forwarding addresses for your personal effects, no national documentation that might be recognized as such by another state’s officials, no way for others to “know” who you are aside from whatever words you are able to successfully exchange with strangers. And, to say the least, no equivalents of the  little “blue badges” that allow those of us privileged to have one to access UN Headquarters and its many material and identity benefits.
In the Christian tradition this is the season of Lent, a time to do more for others but also to stop doing things which cause harm to the dignity and well-being of others — all in recognition of the gifts that accrue from a sojourn of faith, gifts that we did not earn, could not earn, gifts that have been lavishly bestowed  but in response to which much is also expected. It would be especially appropriate in this season to recall the many contributions from those who have made us who we are, the unearned identity conferred on us which underpins our own dignity and which, in our view at least, should inspire a more humble and just response to the identity and dignity needs of others.
That we in our “advanced” societies and our policy bubbles are literally “saturated” with identity opportunities and resources in a world where millions literally have little or nothing to “show” for themselves is one of the more profound and cross-cutting aspects of global inequality.  During the aforementioned Statistical Commission side event, reference was made to the launch of the UN Legal Identity Agenda. As we contribute as we are able within and beyond this UN policy space to identifying and reducing poverty, food insecurity, employment discrimination and other global scourges, we pledge as well to devote a bit of extra energy to ending the identity deficits which place both service access and human dignity in perpetual danger.

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