Tag: Member News

Without governments stepping up climate action at COP23, we will all be left behind

As climate change poses a major challenge to achieve Agenda 2030, countries need to reaffirm their commitment to the Paris Agreement and to its implementation with greater ambition. IFOAM – Organics International calls on parties to the first ever climate COP to be hosted by a small–island state to concentrate on alleviating the problems of those who suffer most from climate change although they have contributed least to the problems.

With planetary warming setting a record of about 1.1°C above the pre-industrial period, it is clear that climate actions play a central role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. We expect world leaders gathered at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn to show that President Trump’s decision to turn his back on the Paris Agreement leads to a more strengthened, not weakened global alliance to tackle climate change and achieve the SDGs.

For millions of people in the most vulnerable regions of the world, it’s not only their lives and land which are directly affected by climate change, but also their food security. In these cases, adaptation means making farms more resilient.

Agroecological farming systems such as organic agriculture can bring this resilience to food systems while enhancing soil-carbon sequestration. In addition, agroecology contributes to a number of SDGs by reducing poverty and environmental pollution and improving food and nutrition security and human health.

To recognize this, Parties should establish a UNFCCC work program on agriculture and food security to prioritize the permanent reduction of non-CO2 emissions in agriculture as well as adaptation issues and the need to safeguard land rights and food security in order to make the inevitable links to other SDGs.

You can learn more about what we expect from and do at the COP here.

To follow our activities and updates on COP23 check out www.facebook.com/ifoam.organic/

NGDO Platform finds innovative ways to engage Lithuanians on the SDGs

For several years, polls have consistently shown that the SDGs remain a mystery to many in Lithuania. This year, in order to change the statistics and create more awareness, the Lithuanian NGDO Platform chose several interactive methods for our SDGs campaign, from creating SDG ambassadors, running a hackathon to tackle human trafficking, to using forum theatre to encourage greater understanding and empathy.

The first and by far the most successful initiative was the SDGs Ambassadors – this involved dozens of people who had had very little prior knowledge on what the SDGs were. The response to the call to organise workshops to present the SDGs was overwhelming – it was clear evidence people do want to get involved in global topics, these just need to be presented in an engaging way. Largely self-organised, this campaign reached the furthest corners of the country, including youth and community centres, secondary schools, and universities.

Another initiative was a Hackathon/Hack for Development, where 42 ICT students from Kaunas University of Technology’s gifted program were invited to come up with solutions via technology to global challenges such as human trafficking together with development and ICT experts. As the Hackathon also involved ICT businesses, many new partnerships were formed, and the winning solution got the chance to be developed as an app.

NGDO Platform also used forum theatre (part of the Theatre of the Oppressed, an applied theatre method) to invite people to be the trigger for change themselves. Forum theatre is a participatory practice where actors present a conflict situation relevant to the audience, in which the audience is then asked to intervene suggesting possible solutions. Based on equality and understanding, we had professional actors enact through stories what it feels like to be Muslim in Lithuania.

With rising islamophobia and hatred towards migrants and refugees, we used this method to provoke open, honest discussions among members of the public, many of whom later reported that the experience helped them challenge their own preconceived notions as well as think about openness from a different perspective. The goal was to create greater cultural awareness and tolerance and challenges preconceptions on inequality, migration and emigration, and equal opportunities.

Additionally, more conventional methods were used in the campaign, including a photography exhibition raising questions about resource exploitation across the globe, various panel discussions involving politicians, representatives from the NGO sector, and the media, as well as interactive workshops introducing SDGs in educational institutions. A colourful informational leaflet featuring the world’s best practices on the SDGs was created specifically for the campaign and 3,000 copies were distributed and available in libraries, youth centres, and popular cafes.

The National Non-Governmental Development Cooperation Organisations’ Platform (Lithuanian NGDO Platform – www.pagalba.org) brings together 21 Lithuanian non-governmental organisations working in the field of development cooperation and development/global education. NGDO Platform was established on 29 March 2007.

SDG5 and the #iwantworklifebalance campaign

COFACE Families Europe was selected to be in the SDG Multi-stakeholder platform to support the implementation of the SDGs and voice the concerns of families

of all types without discrimination. The network carries out different advocacy actions at EU level, including a recently launched social media campaign in support of the EU Work Life Balance (WLB) directive. This EU directive is currently being examined by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.

COFACE’s Europe-wide #iwantworklifebalance campaign was launched on the occasion of the 23 October EPSCO Council to shore up citizen support for the directive. This is a key channel to implement the European Pillar of Social Rights and make a real contribution to achieve more gender equality in Europe in line with SDG 5 targets 5.1, 5.4 and 5.5. How so? Families struggle to cope with their multiple responsibilities, therefor it is fundamental to help them reconcile their work, family, care and private lives.

The proposed WLB Directive is an essential tool to enable women to enter and stay in the labour market but also to promote more gender equality at all levels, from inside the family to employment and the broader society. This will help break stereotypes of what is a “man’s or woman’s job” both in the family and in the workplace and will improve the sharing of family, house and care responsibilities. Penguins are an integral part of our campaign since they are natural examples of sharing of responsibilities in parenting. If they take turns in caring for the kids and foraging for food, why can’t we?

The #iwantworklifebalance campaign will end…with the adoption of the WLB Directive.

More here to join the movement! http://www.coface-eu.org/campaigns-2/work-life-balance/For more information: secretariat@coface-eu.org

Why affordable housing is key to deliver SDGs

Evictions, fuel poverty, increasing homelessness, more people on waiting lists for social housing: these are all elements of the human and economic cost of the policy failures to provide affordable and adequate housing. Cédric van Styvendael, the President of Housing Europe, reminds us: “In Europe we are lucky to live in probably the most privileged part of the world, but we still need to make sure that nobody is left behind.” Housing Europe members are helping deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals, because investing in affordable housing is investing in sustainable development.

Most major European cities are confronted with a great deal of pressure when it comes to housing: urbanisation, migration, labour mobility and demographic changes feed rising housing exclusion rates.

A lack of affordable housing and the resulting exclusion are among the key risks faced by our cities, regions and societies at large. Eurofound is warning that inadequate housing costs our economies 195 billion Euro annually. At the same time, one in ten Europeans spends more than 40% of their income on housing related expenses. The human and economic cost of this policy failure, or in some cases a policy vacuum by leaving it to the market, is becoming difficult to brush over. Among the 17 SDGs and the 169 associated targets, some are more particularly linked to housing. Housing Europe, which envisions a Europe that provides access to decent and affordable housing for all in communities which are socially, economically and environmentally sustainable and where everyone is enabled to reach their full potential, therefore supports the Sustainable Development Goals.

With its campaign “Housing for All” and the contribution to the UN Habitat III conference, Housing Europe has already reminded policy makers of the importance of adopting housing policies that promote sustainable development.

Housing Europe members represent the interest of 43,000 local housing organizations (which manage 26,090,000 dwellings = 11% of the total EU housing stock)

Read more about the total contribution and local projects of Housing Europe Members at http://www.housingeurope.eu/resource-997/housing-and-the-sustainable-development-goals

More than SDG implementation

How to examine the implementation of the Agenda 2030? This issue was discussed at and in cooperation with the University of Roma Tre in Rome during a workshop with academics and experts organized by Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) Italy on 25 September. It is not an easy question, if the full ‘transformative’ potential of the SDGs is to be tapped. The risk we face is to become simply ‘implementers’ of the SDG’s framework. It is a powerful tool with many useful elements to push ahead policy dialogue at all levels, but we must acknowledge some omissions, tensions and contradictions, inherent in how the framework and the objectives are formulated.

As Stefano Prato, GCAP Italy coordination board member and Director of the Society for International Development, pointed out in his keynote speech, we must avoid that important issues are overshadowed by a narrowly conceived understanding of ‘objective by objective’ monitoring. This includes the issue of rights often (regressively) understood and represented in term of ‘needs’; the discourse on inequality that risks becoming a complete substitute for ‘poverty’ thus losing its capacity of looking at society – and the planet! – as a whole through the lens of an ‘economic justice’ dimension; the transformation of the role of the state in a context of blurring distinctions between public and private interests; and finally also wider issues related to unjust global governance.

We should avoid ‘repacking the world’ so that it fits into the SDGs framework. Rather, we must directly confront the big challenges we see on the planet!

Such complexities include, among many other examples, the case of the Italy-Libya agreements on migrants flows management – a complex issue where the sole objective of the proposed solution was to limit migrants landing on Italy’s shores, which put human rights at risk and had little understanding of the long-term issues at stake. How ‘sustainable’ are these policies? Shouldn’t the notion of ‘policy coherence’ be applied in a very concrete way to this and in many other cases? The Agenda 2030 needs to be made useful when facing the big challenges of our times and not used as a tool to divert our attention from them.

We’ve blown the candle out, now make our wish come true!

The #BlowTheCandle campaign walked around Brussels asking random citizens what they wished for a better world. This exercise testified that the content of the 2030 Agenda echoes in many peoples’ ears: tackling climate change, ensuring gender equality, redistributing wealth… all of these were among their concerns. However, when asked ‘Do you know who this person is?’ they did not recognise Frans Timmermans on the picture. But he is the one in charge for the 2030 Agenda at the EU level! And he should make citizens’ wishes come true!

The campaign coincided with the second anniversary of the Sustainable Development Goals. “By adopting an ambitious overarching strategy for sustainable development and guiding European policies towards transformation, the EU and its Member States can make a real difference, for people in Europe and around the world,” says Jussi Kanner, CONCORD expert on sustainable development. But we still have a long way before we turn it into reality and a lot has still to be done at European level!

Climate change, food insecurity, gender inequality, resource constraints, forced migration, financial and economic crises…. these are the complex and interrelated challenges the world is facing today. We cannot wait any longer: we need to act NOW!

The #BlowTheCandle campaign is led by CONCORD Europe with the support of the European project LADDER. The idea is to push the European Commission, and in particular Frans Timmermans, Vice President of the EU Commission, to act and set-up a strategy to implement this global action plan. To do so, CONCORD has put together a short list of the key areas on which the institution can and should act to put the Union on the right path.

Links

Campaign webpage: https://concordeurope.org/what-we-do/sustainable-development/eu-reaching-goals/

Youtube video: https://youtu.be/7M6PXGv17ZI

Facebook video: https://www.facebook.com/CONCORDEurope/

European campaign to make the future EU budget sustainability proof

Investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and fighting climate change at the same time is not an efficient way of using EU tax money. Exacerbating social inequalities through the provision of roughly 80% of the agricultural subsidies to about 20% of the farmers, and then promoting social inclusion in rural areas through rural development funding is another prime example of taxes from European citizens supporting short viewed and contradictory policies.

In 2015 the EU adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which should provide a coherent framework to tackle those incoherencies. Therefore, SDG Watch Europe calls for sustainability proofing the future EU budget in its People’s Budget campaign based on an indivisible set of sustainability principles.

Further inconsistencies range from disregarding health impacts of tobacco and red meat production subsidies to forgetting the social inclusion aspects of energy efficiency investments. Also the narrow focus on measuring added value in the EU through generating economic growth is flawed and disregards the Treaty objective about sustainable development in three dimensions. We want to see new and fresh approaches in defining the EU’s added value, where all dimensions of sustainability are taken into account. We want to see a future budget that measures performance against progress towards sustainability and incentivises the implementation of the SDGs by Member States.

We call for European and national decision makers to involve civil society on the basis of the partnership principle into the full negotiation process and implementation, in order to improve the transparency of the EU budget. We call for increased accountability of the beneficiaries, for instance through innovative digital solutions accessible to each European citizen. Of course there are many other possible solutions to mainstream sustainability and the SDGs into EU spending and lending, and SDG Watch Europe is elaborating suggestions on how to best use them.

Implementing SDG 1 requires tackling the growing old-age poverty

By Luise Steinwachs, Brot für die Welt and Ragnar Hoenig, AWO Bundesverband

The first of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals demands UN member states to end poverty in all dimensions and everywhere. (1) Furthermore, social human rights guarantee a humane standard of living and reliable social security. However, a growing part of the elder population is structurally disadvantaged and permanently excluded from society. This trend is observed globally. A considerable factor is precarious or informal employment – in particular of women – and weak public social security systems that often fail at providing provisions for the elderly. Life expectancy of women is significantly higher than of men – globally up to 11 years. Demographic factors show a growing life expectancy as well as a growing world population. Therefore, the group of persons older than 60 years will grow on a global scale. (2)

Globally, 80 % of humans live without protection in difficult situations such as sickness, accident or catastrophe. Provision for one’s old age or retirement can only be accomplished by investing a fair share of  income in retirement, health or nursing insurances. When existing, these social security schemes are depending on formal employment. Women are significantly less formally employed than men (3), a circumstance that results in a larger proportion of women being poor at older age. Besides, social security systems linked to formal employment do not work in many societies and a vast majority in the Global South is informally or self-employed. Therefore, more than 100 countries have introduced tax-funded social pensions that are not depending on previous deposits. (4) Those must become a political priority

Whilst specific statements regarding old-age poverty in Germany can hardly be determined, experts claim three causes for its rise in the future: Firstly, growing gaps in career biographies caused by structural changes in the labor market. Pension payments reflect the financial compensation of a working life and are depending on the sum of retirement deposits. Women are especially affected by these gaps. Secondly, pension benefit cuts and a long term decline of pension levels contribute to an increase of old-age poverty. Pension levels declined from 53 % (of the average work-life earnings) before the 2001 pension reform to present day 48 % and is expected to fall below 42 % by 2040. Finally, both factors combine and amplify: While insured persons receive less due to reduced deposits, pension benefits decouple from pay trends. Only a preventive social policy strategy can combat those complex and interdependent factors that contribute to old-age poverty.

Regarding those developments in the employment sector with mainly informal employment across the Global South and insecure and interrupted career biographies in industrialized countries, preventive social policies and income-independent old-age provision systems (such as social pensions in poor countries) must be developed to avoid poverty in old age. Regarding pressing global aging processes, Germany’s federal government must pay more attention to age-related challenges while implementing the global 2030 Agenda, especially when developing and implementing social security systems. In development cooperation, donor countries must live up to their human rights based responsibility to secure an adequate standard of living on a global scale.

This article was published in the shadow report “Großbaustelle Nachhaltigkeit” which features comments of 42 authors from German and European civil society. The report focuses on Germany’s federal sustainability strategy released earlier in 2017, current implementation gaps and necessary strategies after the 2017 federal election.

Link to Shadow Report (English): https://www.2030spotlight.org/en

Link to original and full article (German): https://www.2030report.de/de/bericht/1400/kapitel/1-die-bedeutung-der-un-nachhaltigkeitsagenda-fuer-die-bekaempfung-von

Summary and Translation: Roman Fleißner, AWO International
Originally published in “Deutschland und die globale Nachhaltigkeitsagenda 2017 – Großbaustelle Nachhaltigkeit“

(1)    UN General Assembly (2015), p. 15

(2)    From 11% in 2010 to 28 % in 2011, compare UN-DESA (2011).

(3)  Compare to www.wiego.org/informal-economy/sttistical-picture.

(4)  Compare to ILO (2014b).

SDG-Watch Austria: A vibrant CSO platform challenging an inactive political system

Austria’s former federal president Heinz Fischer assured “Austria’s full commitment to the seventeen specific goals” (1), at a speech to the UN’s general Assembly on September the 27th in 2015. It could have been a historic moment – day 1 of an active Austrian role in the global sustainability transition.

But the Austrian government has done little to walk the talk since then, and a first report to the UN’s High Level Political Forum (HLPF) is only announced for 2020. It doesn’t surprise that CSOs don’t stand aside while they see a hopeful chance for a better future pass by, but take action in their hands. Exactly two years later, on September the 27th in 2017, around 100 organisations from all parts of civil society launched SDG Watch Austria  – a broad CSO platform to stand up for an ambitious and consequent implementation. You can tell their passion for the SDGs from these pictures.

Austria’s government by now only delegated the responsibility for the implementation to the administration level. The „mainstreaming approach“ might sound good at the first moment, but it’s an approach on an administration level, and it has turned out to be quickly stretched to it’s limits. High level political commitment to boost SDG implementation is lacking.

The organisations of SDG Watch Austria consider the 17 goals integrated and indivisible, and an important chance for a better future, which needs an approach that is really meeting the „unprecedented scope and significance“ (2) of the 2030 Agenda. Founding the platform is a consequent step towards progress with the national contributions to the SDGs. It is a strong and positive sign as well as an offer to the government, to take this chance to work with this coalition and make a better future possible.

Learn more on http://www.sdgwatch.at or by following #SDGsumsetzen on facebook and twitter.

(1) https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/20803austria.pdf

(2) http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/70/1&Lang=E

Latvian NGO network uses the SDGs to reach out to new people

In 18 places all over Latvia almost 500 volunteers of all ages and occupations came together to talk about the local implementation of the SDGs. The actions were part of a global day of action on the SDGs, to mark their second anniversary. Latvian NGOs gathered in the Latvian Platform for Development Cooperation (LAPAS) have noted a boost in regional partners and supporters through its work on the SDGs. By working in SDG implementation we’ve clearly expanded our network beyond our members and into new communities that are eager to help with creating a better world.

The engagement came from various angles: community activists from schools, CSOs, local libraries and youth centres were some of the more involved actors – as well as the local decision makers and public officials that need to implement the SDGs.

To support these initiatives and provide more information, LAPAS produced a special SDGs section on its website with stories, methodologies and videos, and well as publishing and distributing 2,500 newspapers on the SDGs at the local, national and global levels.

The Latvian part of the global 25 September #Act4SDGs actions were only the first phase of LAPAS’ ongoing activities on the SDGs. These actions paved the way towards monitoring and reviewing Latvia’s national Voluntary Review in 2018. This campaign will be continued during the Global Education Week from 20 – 27 November all around Latvia.

Find more about LAPAS: www.lapas.lv