Your Voice at the UN - Friday, May 11
These past two days there has been a lot of speculation about how late negotiations will go… whether negotiations wouldn’t finish until midnight or so on Friday, continue throughout the weekend…. There was even talk about reconvening in two weeks time to finish. UN interpreters (a crucially important bunch that does an amazing job) are only paid through 6:30 pm, and all formal negotiations have to stop when they are released by the clock.
As you may already have read in the news, the 15th Convention on Sustainable Development officially closed on Friday without producing any policy document at all. This was NOT expected, at least not by any of the “buzz” that made it to my ears. So, the products of this conference are every country’s individual position statements, attempts at a collaborative text to recommend policies around sustainable development, and… several weeks worth of contributions to the New York economy by all there for the conference. The world, through the UN, has failed to find consensus.
This is my take. The UN is set up to address our common interests as all nations on one globe. It doesn’t work to advocate narrowly for self-interest. Because policy is non-binding, and because all nations must come to a CONSENSUS in order to move forward, isolationist behavior corrupts the entire process.
The second item on the agenda at closing night was to elect a new chair for the next 2-year cycle. Zimbabwe was chosen to chair the next Convening, with Iran and Israel assisting. For those of you who don’t follow international politics closely, Zimbabwe has been accused of severe human rights abuses recently and has been politically unstable with civil strife for some time now. The U.S. refuses to deal with Zimbabwe. Iran is an oil-rich country that voted, at least in all cycles of this commission previously, for a prolonged dependency on oil. Israel is holds a similar position.
I am still digesting exactly what this means for my outlook on the UN, on humanity itself and how we calculate risk, behave and govern ourselves, as well as on the role we can play to best contribute to all of this. I will post one more blog entry after I’ve had the chance to digest this, addressing where we (the MBD community and our supporters) go from here, and where the merge of sustainability and microenterprise fits into development.
Until now, and in leiu of a definition and a sustainability stat, here are some photos from these amazing two weeks of sessions.
As you may already have read in the news, the 15th Convention on Sustainable Development officially closed on Friday without producing any policy document at all. This was NOT expected, at least not by any of the “buzz” that made it to my ears. So, the products of this conference are every country’s individual position statements, attempts at a collaborative text to recommend policies around sustainable development, and… several weeks worth of contributions to the New York economy by all there for the conference. The world, through the UN, has failed to find consensus.
This is my take. The UN is set up to address our common interests as all nations on one globe. It doesn’t work to advocate narrowly for self-interest. Because policy is non-binding, and because all nations must come to a CONSENSUS in order to move forward, isolationist behavior corrupts the entire process.
The second item on the agenda at closing night was to elect a new chair for the next 2-year cycle. Zimbabwe was chosen to chair the next Convening, with Iran and Israel assisting. For those of you who don’t follow international politics closely, Zimbabwe has been accused of severe human rights abuses recently and has been politically unstable with civil strife for some time now. The U.S. refuses to deal with Zimbabwe. Iran is an oil-rich country that voted, at least in all cycles of this commission previously, for a prolonged dependency on oil. Israel is holds a similar position.
I am still digesting exactly what this means for my outlook on the UN, on humanity itself and how we calculate risk, behave and govern ourselves, as well as on the role we can play to best contribute to all of this. I will post one more blog entry after I’ve had the chance to digest this, addressing where we (the MBD community and our supporters) go from here, and where the merge of sustainability and microenterprise fits into development.
Until now, and in leiu of a definition and a sustainability stat, here are some photos from these amazing two weeks of sessions.
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