Habitat III — the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development — will take place in October in a new global context. Post-2015, international agreements and processes offer the opportunity for Habitat III to make more real transformative commitments in pursuit of a sustainable and just urban future than its predecessors. But if it is to do so, flaws in the revised Zero Draft of the New Urban Agenda must be urgently addressed. While IIED, IDS and DPU collectively welcome the current transformative commitments, the revised Zero Draft lacks both an overarching vision that recognises the vital links between the three commitments and a consistent approach to implementation.
The current contradictions threaten to make the commitments ineffective individual workstreams. To reach its transformative ambition, we argue that the final New Urban Agenda must make these connections, and suggest four specific ways in which it could achieve greater coherence and inclusivity.
The 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are the only country grouping to have a dedicated article in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Article 4.9 commits all parties to the convention to take full account of their specific needs and special situations with regard to funding and technology transfer. As part of efforts to implement this commitment, in 2001 the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) was established to support LDCs in their climate change actions. But 15 years later, the fund is empty while the backlog of projects waiting for resources continues to grow. Is there a future for the LDCF in the post-Paris climate regime? The LDCs argue that there should be, but the fund needs strengthening.
Kazakhstan has taken a lead among Central Asian countries in mapping a path towards a green economy. While environmental degradation has often been discussed, only recently have environmental concerns begun to be addressed within the mainstream economy. In 2011 the Kazakhstan government asked IIED to help define its approach to ‘greening’ the economy. Focused initially on the Green Bridge Partnership Programme of investments, in a positive step the Kazakhstan government adopted its own Green Economy Concept, which provides the overall policy context. This report analyses progress to date and makes ten recommendations on the enabling conditions needed for Kazakhstan to achieve a substantial transition to a green economy.
The past decade has seen a rapid expansion in the development of voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) to address key sustainability issues for commodity supply chains. Major growth in the production and sales of certified/verified agricultural products has been fuelled by increasingly ambitious private sector sourcing commitments, particularly among blue chip companies.
This Review provides a bird’s eye view of the global market trends of 10 commodities and the 16 most prevalent standards initiatives paving the way for more sustainable production and trade. The review looks at the governance, criteria coverage and implementation practices of standards initiatives that are active in the agriculture, forestry and biofuels sectors. The standards initiatives studied had certified/verified production with an estimated trade value of US$31.6 billion (2012).
This Review is a strategic planning tool for businesses, policy makers and stakeholders seeking to build more sustainable supply chains. The Review is a collaborative effort of IISD, IIED, FAST, ENTWINED and IDH.
This guide aims to encourage early dialogue and diagnosis in and by developing countries on what a green economy would mean for their country.
Green economy and green growth are hot topics. Definitions, evidence, debates and increasingly, policies, have tended to be dominated by powerful countries and international groups. Several intergovernmental organisations are making it a priority and are announcing policies and programmes; but they each have different approaches.
This proliferating work on the international scene provides rich material which can be highly influential in developing countries. However, there are risks of considerable bias if the concepts are not first explored by stakeholders in-country. As the 2012 Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development concluded, green economies should take very different forms according to a country’s diverse capital endowments and needs. As such, green economic policy and investments need to be tailored at both national and local levels.