Local and subnational governments would like to put forward a target for a holistic and ecosystem-based approach for enhancing city-region food systems.

Why the city-region approach? We have heard along the day the need to connect urban and rural realities and challenges around the agriculture and food security topic. The city-region approach represents a tool for interconnecting urban-rural linkages as it allows to organise food systems in a whole territory beyond its administrative boundaries.

Why a holistic and ecosystem-based approach? We are also hearing today the multi-facet reality of the topic we are discussing. This is also true for food and agriculture systems in cities. However, we tend to think only about urban - or at most peri-urban – agriculture, underestimating that the potential for action is much wider. Actually cities working on food system are having to address topics ranging from lessening food crises for poverty alleviation or disaster management; to managing a rise in obesity, and promoting a sustainable diet; whilst also working on waste management and adapting to the changing climate to ensure the resilience of the food supply within their community.

1111_351_SDG-OWG-III_LAMG_reactions_foodsecurity.pdf

The Food and Agriculture Cluster was formed in New York to support messages from Major Groups and Civil Society before, during and following the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. The Cluster continues to coordinate messages for the Post Rio processes and Post 2015 Thematic Consultations on sustainable agriculture, food security and nutrition. As the first thematic discussion of the OWG will be on food security, nutrition, sustainable agriculture, land degradation, desertification, drought and water and sanitation during its third session on 22-24, the Cluster is helping to bring civil society voices into intergovernmental processes in New York at United Nations Headquarters. The Cluster looks forward to working with Member States, the UN System, Major Groups and other stakeholders to ensure that sustainable agriculture and food and nutrition security are prioritized and recognized as critical to achieving sustainable development.

1111_1198_Statement for OWG by Food and Agriculture Cluster.pdf

The objective of a High Level Representative for Future Generations (HLR) is to balance the short-term nature of policy making processes and act as the UN’s principal advocate for the interests and needs of future generations. They would evaluate policy proposals for their impact on the lives of future generations, inviting a common vision and responsibility. He or she would be an individual with the leadership skills, the moral authority and vision to set an agenda in which the needs of future generations are considered alongside present interests.

1111_427_Bringing added value to the HLPF.pdf

A brief report. The 10 presentations are linked from the blog post. Most are highly informative. Others raise grave concerns.

The apparent dominant view from the sustainability sciences from #1 still seems to be that "decoupling" is a realistic objective, if we just "innovate". If asking the hard questions suggested by #9 we'd acknowledge "decoupling" is an idea to have ever growing wealth and ever shrinking resource needs as our future plan. One of many unasked questions is whether ever larger and faster changes in how we live would become unmanageable anyway... whether we had the resources or not. http://www.synapse9.com/signals/2013/03/23/sci-for-un-sd-goals/

Review of Science for UN’s SDG’s « Reading Nature's Signals

Please see attached piece in the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature. It appropriately makes the case for integrating the current, three-pillar UN sustainable development governance structure into a nested arrangement, with the economy serving society, which itself lies within the Earth's systems. The piece correctly notes that we cannot reach critical social goals such as alleviating poverty without at the same time addressing environmental well-being. The nesting of economy under society, with both nested within care for the Earth's systems that support us all, is the structural approach we should take moving forward.

Linda Sheehan
Earth Law Center, California, USA

Policy: Sustainable development goals for people and planet : Nature : Nature Publishing Group
Planetary stability must be integrated with United Nations targets to fight poverty and secure human well-being, argue David Griggs and colleagues.

I think the great problem with the SDG's is that they are development goals, not sustainability goals.

We should reverse the priority, to have top priority go to measurable progress toward hard targets for achieving sustainability. It's quite possible scientifically, but we’d need to use “The Commons Approach” organizationally (1). The tragedy now occurring, with the effort having the wrong order of priorities is that the implicit "sustainability goal" naturally becomes to make an effort to slow the rate of growing unsustainabiliy of the economy.

That is being achieved but fails as a way for the economies to become sustainable. It may well be thought of as an important step, but if we face the truth, it’s a total failure as a plan. You see that unfortunate trade-off in most agreements and metrics, a plan to slow the rate of growing impacts…. but it's a disaster for the earth and for the future of our complex societies.

1) The UN is Urged to Adopt “The Commons Approach” at All Levels Of Government and Throughout Society, to Achieve Real Sustainable Development and MDG goals
nhttp://www.worldwewant2015.org/node/274168#comment-41782

CALL FOR DISCUSSION NOTES (Now closed): TOPICS FOR POST-2015 THEMATIC CONSULTATION ON ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY | World We Want 2015

Initiative for Equality and 18 partners in Asia, Africa and Europe conducted Equity and Sustainability Field Hearings in to gather voices from poor communities. We spoke with over 2700 people in 34 communities, using a questionnaire asking what they experience, want, and are willing to do regarding the transition towards greater equity and ecological sustainability. In June 2012 we published the preliminary results (see uploaded document). We are now expanding the project, seeking additional partners on every continent.

The preliminary results (summarized in chapter two in the report) are highly relevant to establishing goals for sustainable development. Most poor communities reported worsening inequality, income insecurity, social breakdown, environmental degradation, and corruption. They attributed these to the diversion of resources and development assistance to those with wealth and political connections. All expressed extremely modest and sustainable aspirations, hoping for a future in which their basic food, housing, health care, education, and job security needs could be met. Many were eager to work with partners towards these goals.

1111_593_Waiting to be Heard June 2012 IfE.pdf

Two large practical problems with the UN's SD Goals.
1) The SDG's focus on development with seemingly little or no focused attention to rebound effects.
2) Projects that are intended to be sustainable are also widely using ill-defined standard measures that give misleadingly low indications of both present and future impacts.

1- lack of attention to rebound effects
The UN's SDG targets have the effects all development plans have, which is to increase human pressures on natural resources. The big "rebound effect" is the usual one, that "wealth breeds demand" because people using economic success to further invest in greater economic success. It should be but doesn’t seem to be factored into any of the plans, as if "unseen impacts don't count". We know they DO count, though, and are a quite genuine threats to success.

The development stimulus in less developed countries is one of the causes of the food crisis, for example. It both adds to the globally growing demand for resources, pushing up food prices. It also connects productive small farmers with foreign markets so they no longer sell their products in their own regions. There are lots of "back fire" effects like that. They are occurring because the SDG's are framed as development plans first, rather than as sustainability plans first.

The right step for the UN is to adopt The Commons Approach. That focuses everyone's attention on their mutual and common interests, so development avoids adding to the intensity of economic competition over resources that only speculators benefit from. In the present business climate focusing primarily on development interests is leading to plans that tragically backfire.

2 – need for a large change in our measurement methods
People need better measures of the real total effects of their choices. Better measures doesn't guarantee success but protect against failure, steering you to solutions that are much more likely to work and to last.

An unusual flaw was recently found, exposing a major source of misinformation in the design of the most familiar measures of economic impacts, the LCA and Scope 3 GHG measurement methods. Those and many other common methods use "economic accounting" not "environmental systems accounting". The two approaches are *radically different* as ways of counting the same “end product” or “whole business” externalities. The familiar methods count only the “consumption for production” of technology, and ignore the “consumption for production” for the human services needed to operate the technology(!). It's just left out.

It’s a BIG omission and a major inaccuracy for the physical measure of attributable impacts on the environment. The present LCA and Scope 3 GHG metrics are commonly leaving out 80-90% of the real environmental impacts for delivering business products and GDP! Two levels of peer-reviewed analysis of the problem are available, simple & complex, plus some collected “Slides & notes”.
- simple “Shining a light on dark energy”
nhttp://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/new-metrics/measuring-total-impacts-business
- complex “System Energy Assessment (SEA)"
nhttp://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/3/10/1908/
- collected “Slides & notes”
nhttp://www.synapse9.com/SEA/

It will take a significant effort to understand this new information on how to accurately measure and attribute the impacts of business operations and products, and then integrate it into the various CSR and Sustainability Dashboard models. Given the scale of the error it would help correct it would also seem sure to have significant value, for redirecting our efforts toward more feasible solutions.

Shining Light on “Dark Energy”: Measuring the Total Impacts of Business | Sustainable Brands
The common practice of counting impacts as “zero” for lack of information, creating a very large blind spot in our perception of the world, can be hard to avoid. It can be hard to even think about what one is leaving uncounted. We found a way to define “uncounted” in relation to global totals that needed to be accounted for.

Stakeholder Forum and partners have launched the Sustainable Development Goals e-Inventory, a new online tool to crowdsource proposals on global goals for the post-2015 period.

The SDGs e-Inventory provides all stakeholders with a platform to outline their vision for post-2015 global goals.

It aims to help stakeholders (including governments and intergovernmental organisations) become better informed about the wide range of proposals, expectations and evidence-based arguments on SDGs and other global goals being proposed for the post-2015 development framework.

It will also provide capacity building resources to help stakeholders fill knowledge gaps around the intergovernmental process, develop their own proposals, build alliances, and develop advocacy strategies.

The e-Inventory will provide stakeholders with the data to undertake analysis to identify trends, commonalities and knowledge/evidence gaps. Stakeholder Forum will also conduct and disseminate regular analysis to inform the intergovernmental process on SDGs.

Overall, the e-Inventory hopes to improve the likelihood of achieving a SDGs framework which fully integrates the three dimensions of sustainable development.

To find out more visit http://www.SDGseInventory.org

1111_444_e-inventory announcement.pdf

It seems critical that we realize the need for a commons approach and address our true common interests. A profound tragedy of the commons is developing as every country's great desire for growth results in ever more intense competition over our many kinds of limited and shrinking resources. We're not caring for the earth but fighting over it. Already we see how it creates the world food crisis and keeps us from responding to climate change, among numerous other terrible consequences.

I represent the Commons Cluster, and the sub-group Commons Action for the UN http://www.commonsactionfortheunitednations.org. See our Jan 15 proposal
"Urging the UN adopt a “commons approach” at all levels of government and throughout society". http://www.worldwewant2015.org/node/274168#comment-41782

Commons Action » Commons Cluster for the United Nations