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Check out Model Mama to be-Emma's article about her second trimester on www.sincerelyskin.ca! 👶💙 #emmahansen #mamatobe #simcerelyskin

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Q&A: Ambassador Caleb Otto talks climate change, justice and development

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Media for citizen-led development: A conversation with Raza Rumi

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Avoiding resource and human exploitation: Indigenous contributions to sustainability

Participants listened to panelists from Tribal Link Foundation, International Indian Treaty Council, and Tebtebba Foundation.

I found this appreciation codified in some of the core sustainable development documents from the UN. These documents recognize that indigenous peoples’ ability to fully engage in sustainable development practices, even on their own lands, has been limited by economic, social, and historical factors; likewise, they call for development practices to “recognize, accommodate, promote and strengthen” the role played by indigenous peoples in the development process. Similarly, the Conference Declaration from the 2012 Rio+20 Summit affirms the importance of indigenous peoples’ voices in sustainable development, referencing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. 

By the time I left Alberta, I felt very frustrated that indigenous peoples' traditional methods of sustaining the health of Mother Earth had been discarded in favor of exploitative management practices. Canadian mining corporations are also responsible for deplorable practices in the Global South that exploit people as well as the environment. This is regression, and it is not compatible with the promotion of sustainable development.

Two workshops took place today at UNHQ, entitled “Indigenous Peoples and the Post-2015 Development Agenda: Toward Full and Effective Participation,” and “A Dialogue on Foundational Values and Principles for the Sustainable Development Goals: Learning from the Peoples’ Sustainability Treaties.” Panelists called for a land and resource rights-based approach to sustainable development, the protection of traditional knowledge and livelihoods, and full participation and partnership in all relevant decisions. The development process is forfeiting a tremendously rich resource if it does not pay attention to the wisdom and ecological care embodied by indigenous populations. It is also essential that indigenous populations become increasingly less marginalized, and that the Sustainable Development Goals include and promote their interests.

Ghazali Ohrella, a panelist representing Tribal Link, said something that has stuck with me all day: indigenous peoples are “the mercury in the barometer of the successes and failures of the United Nations.” As we craft our Action Agenda at this conference, we must keep an eye on the temperature.

-- Emma Hansen (@emmatghansen)

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Protecting our collective future: security threats to development

Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute, spoke about nuclear disarmament to an audience that overflowed into the hallway at the Church Center for the United Nations.

An afternoon workshop yesterday questioned the compatibility of weapons of mass destruction and sustainable development in an event titled "Sustainability and Nuclear Weapons?" The existence of societies – indeed, even of civilization – is held at gunpoint by immense stockpiles of high-alert nuclear weapons. In this context, is it even meaningful to undertake development activities without also channeling significant energy into nuclear disarmament?

Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute and a prolific writer about nuclear issues, delivered a clear, stirring address about the importance of sustainable practices in both managing our climate and mitigating the threat of nuclear weapons that still haunts humanity. “Pursuing security without reference to human security as if the security of states should be our primary point of reference,” he emphasized, “will marginalize the very necessary requirements of a healthy environment and the security of people.”

Granoff highlighted the incoherence and instability present in the current nuclear order. He asked the audience to "imagine if the Biological Weapons Convention said, ‘No one can use smallpox or polio as a weapon, but we’ll entrust international peace and security to nine countries who will be permitted to use and threaten to use the plague as a weapon.’” Granoff lamented the enormous amount of money poured into modernizing nuclear arsenals-an allocation of funding that actually subverts security.

I had the pleasure of reconnecting with some of my colleagues from Pax Christi International, the organization with which I interned this summer. Marie Dennis, co-president of Pax Christi International, was one of the panelists at the event. Dismissing our anthropomorphic worldview, Marie spoke of “the false dichotomy between human well-being and ecological integrity,” and called for sound environmental management. Other panelists represented the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, Soka Gakkai International, the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic, and the Congregation of Notre Dame. A Hiroshima survivor who had been present in the audience stood up during the Q & A session to deliver a meaningful testimony to the personal importance of forgiveness and the global imperative for disarmament.

By the way, the answer to the question posed in the workshop’s title, “Sustainability and Nuclear Weapons?" was a resounding no.

-- Emma Hansen (@emmatghansen)

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Youth breakfast with Ambassador Elizabeth Cousens

Ambassador Elizabeth Cousens, US Representative on the UN Economic and Social Council, spoke to youth gathered at the US Mission to the UN

"I'm pretty convinced already that it will be the highlight of my day," Ambassador Elizabeth Cousens said at Thursday morning’s youth breakfast as she began her remarks to the youth NGO representatives gathered at the U.S. Mission to the UN.

Ambassador Cousens has worked extensively on the post-2015 development agenda, and she led U.S. involvement in the recently concluded Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals. It was a real privilege to meet her this morning and to hear her speak on sustainable development.

Ambassador Cousens acknowledged the difficulties and significant opportunities inherent in the quest to mobilize citizens, stakeholders from every sector, and 193 countries to agree on a shared development agenda in an ever-changing world. She urged attendees to seize the unique chance to set a transformative post-2015 development agenda.

Throughout the event, the importance of civil society input was emphasized. The MyWorld 2015 survey was popular among my friends from the Model UN club at my university. The interactive platform facilitates a democratic engagement with development goals, but it requires an Internet connection, which prohibits vast numbers of people from contributing. Building on such successes as the MyWorld platform and the Global Youth Call, Cousens called for still greater amplification of ordinary citizens’ voices.

Ambassador Cousens explained, "At the end of the day, this agenda will stand or fall on building global momentum around priorities that reflect the deepest needs and deepest aspirations of individuals and communities around the world, particularly the most vulnerable. And that by doing so we’ll be able to galvanize sustained actions at all levels of the kind we need to drive solutions.”

 "We need your voice, your ideas, and your insistence about what matters," Cousens concluded. "You need to hold our feet to the fire in making sure that we count it."

-- Emma Hansen (@emmatghansen)

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Workshop at a Glance: Justice for development

In her keynote address this morning, Ambassador Samantha Power spoke about the importance of conflict prevention in promoting development, and I saw this demonstrated at an afternoon workshop convened by Lawyers Without Borders.

One key idea that I took away from this workshop is that conflicts, no matter their scale or their cause, hinder development activities. Whether the conflict is a quarrel over access to resources in a rural village, or a dispute between North and South Vietnam over the shape of the table at the 1968 Paris peace talks, creative solutions are required if the goals of sustainable development and poverty eradication are to be realized. Lawyers Without Borders teaches conflict resolution strategies to promote access to justice on the grassroots level, which is beneficial for any kind of social progress.

While student representatives led an interactive conflict resolution game, I had the pleasure of speaking with Christina Storm, founder and Executive Director of Lawyers Without Borders. “Access to justice is critical to economic development and alleviation of poverty,” she explained.

“At the village and rural level, where they don’t have the kind of access to courts and lawyers that they might have in the more highly populated areas, [conflict prevention] might be the only kind of justice they’re going to be able to get," Storm said. "In the more sophisticated societies, conflict resolution is used – the exact same principles – in very sophisticated negotiations, but certainly vis-à-vis the MDGs and the development agenda. This is one thing that can be used in the rural areas, has a very low economic impact, and can empower people and give them the kind of access to justice that’s very real and meaningful to them.”

Although the word “development” was not actually used in the first hour of the workshop, the session ended with the following quote from Desmond Tutu, which tied everything together: “Wherever we live, however we look, regardless of ethnicity, gender, geographic location or class – strengthening the rule of law is an essential ingredient to enhance justice, peace, and economic and social progress.”

-- Emma Hansen (@emmatghansen)

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Conference Opening Session: Ambassador Samantha Power on crafting an effective development agenda

Photo credit: UN DPI/NGO

Ambassador Samantha Power, Permanent Representative of United States of America to the United Nations, delivered the keynote speech at this morning’s opening ceremony. Her address was punctuated with enthusiastic applause as NGO representatives listened from the Trusteeship Council Chamber and two overflow rooms.

“What cause could be more worth joining than eradicating the world’s worst suffering and empowering people to live with dignity?” she asked.

The former Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist emphasized our responsibility to ensure that the noble post-2015 development goals being crafted are actually met. Power offered words of encouragement to this end by citing groundbreaking progress in recent years: hunger reduction in Brazil, decreasing HIV rates in Malawi and Botswana, and ever-shrinking child mortality rates in Rwanda. Tempering this positive message, Power considered the difficult balance that civil society organizations must strike between addressing a broad range of important issues and avoiding this dilution of resources by allocating resources more narrowly.

Widespread threats necessitate universal goals

Such widespread threats as climate change demand universal solutions. Ambassador Power placed special emphasis on climate change, which was absent from the Millennium Development Goals. She explained, “Today, thankfully, we understand that if we don’t aggressively reign in climate change, its negative consequences could wipe out any progress we stand to make on other fronts.” Given these and other global threats, Power was clear about the need for a truly universal agenda, stressing that “we can’t meet global development goals if we only set targets for one part of the world.”

Conflict prevention as development

Power offered her recommendations to the leaders of the NGO community as they seek to work more effectively with governments. She emphasized the importance of development goals that promote peace and good governance. Far from being peripheral to poverty reduction, Power explained, passing just laws and building credible institutions ensure that societies are sufficiently cohesive to allow for effective development activities. Citing evidence that severe violence and extreme poverty go hand in hand, Power encouraged the NGO community to fight the inclusion of peace and good governance goals in the development agenda.

Ambassador Power closed her compelling address with an injunction to communicate widely and effectively about post-2015 development goals, since marginalized and poverty-stricken groups and regions are those with the most at stake in the development agenda.

 “All of our destinies are interwoven with one another,” Power explained poetically. “More than ever before, inequality and poverty in any part of the world not only goes against our values but also undermines our shared security and our shared prosperity.”

-- Emma Hansen (@emmatghansen)