In the post-2015 landscape universal food security and zero hunger can be achieved. To do this we must both better govern the balance between plant-based and animal-based foods and distribute food more equitably between and within countries. In addition, the drive for more efficient food
production must include recognition that animals are more than a simple commodity, and that high welfare standards in farming enhance overall productivity without the negative side effects delivered by low-welfare intensive livestock production systems.

To achieve this, the United Nations and its Member States must:
• include farm animal welfare in agriculture and food security assessments and policies
• recognise that the industrialisation of livestock farming is a major challenge to food security
• reduce the quantity of arable crops fed to livestock, especially cereals, and seek a sustainable balance between animal andcrop production
• promote sustainable diets and address food losses and wastein the supply chain
• protect food security in times of crisis by including animals in emergency response and recovery planning and policies at a national, regional and operational level
• consider how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), their targets and indicators can support specific and regionally-sensitive measures to ensure that global food production and consumption is sustainable and incorporates respect for animal welfare principles

1111_574_Animals and Food Security OWG SDG.pdf

I am contributing the following as an individual, though I have participated actively in the Commission on Sustainable Development and other UN processes for 15 years. I represent the Global Ecovillage Network, Association of World Citizens and Commons Action for the UN.

Rob Wheeler
robwheeler22@gmail.com


A process needs to be established to include all interested people in a collaborative process to ensure that the SDGs, Targets and Indicators are sufficient, address the right priorities, and are fully met. This means that civil society must be included much more proactively in the negotiations and decision making processes when the Goals, Targets and Indicators are actually determined and set.

The SDGs, Targets and Indicators should be based on the Rio Declaration and thus include a Rights Based Approach, the Precautionary Principle, Differentiated Responsibilities, Access to Information and Participation in Decision Making Processes, etc.

The SDGs, Targets and Indicators should be comprehensive in nature and sufficient to ensure that we fully meet and achieve all goals that have been made to date and in an urgent and timely manner. In addition, they should focus on transitioning as rapidly as possible to full sustainability; and should thus ensure that all people's basic human rights and needs can and will be fully met - thus going well beyond the MDG goals of reducing problems by half.

The UN should adopt a commons based approach and set up a High Level Panel to ensure that all of the above can and will be done and that it will lead to fulfilling all of the agreements that have been made to date

It would be a mistake to try to select a limited number of priority areas for the SDGs. All areas and sectors have to be seen as priorities and a solid case can probably be made as to why they are all essential. The SDGs must instead be comprehensive in nature and should focus on achieving all of the goals, agreements, and commitments on sustainable development that have been made to date.

Certainly all of the topic areas that have already been mentioned by governments are essential (as in the Stakeholder Forums' review of government input); and there are probably a number of additional topic areas that ought to be emphasized and mentioned as well, including adopting an integrated, multi-sectoral community based approach to sustainable rural and impoverished urban development; ecological building practices; elimination of toxic substances; and restoration of the natural environment.

While all countries and the UN ought to agree to focus on achieving all of the Goals and Targets that have been made to date, and thus a comprehensive universal listing of SDGs, Targets and Indicators, they can then be flexible in determining what each of them will set as immediate goals and put the most effort into achieving first or next. But all countries, communities and peoples should strive, and reflect periodically on their success in achieving, all of the SDGs, Targets and Indicators.

In regards to ensuring the participation of stakeholders in the process, certainly all of the various approaches that have already been mentioned by governments are essential; however in addition it is crucially important that the establishment AND achievement of the SDGs, Targets, and Indicators be fully integrated with all of the efforts to implement sustainable development. This should thus include in particular the Local and National Sustainability Strategies; 10YFPs and Local, Regional and National Action Plans on SCP; initiatives focusing on Education for Sustainable Development; Poverty Reduction Strategy Programs; Development Plans; and all other national and multi-lateral sustainable development agreements and processes. Civil society must then be involved in a participatory process to ensure that all of these efforts are integrated into one comprehensive framework that is sufficient to fully implement and achieve all of the agreements and commitments that have been made to date through the new SDGs, Targets and Indicators.

All of the principles that the UN Member States have already mentioned are essential; however it is just as essential that the Rio Declaration and Principles be accepted as a foundational basis upon which the new SDGs, Targets and Indicators must be based and achieved.

The Major Groups need to do everything possible to ensure that an adequate and ongoing Review Process is established and put in place, going will beyond what has been done to date.

The role of the new HLPF needs to be determined in regards to establishing, developing, overseeing, monitoring, assessing, and then continually improving the SDGs, Targets and Indicators process and implementation.

Again, it is essential that a Framework is adopted so that the SDGs, Targets and Indicators provide a basis for integrating, assessing, and improving everything that is being done in regards to sustainable development, at all levels and across the board, in a comprehensive manner and ensuring that all of the goals and commitments that have been made will finally be fully met.

The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature fully supports the positions taken by the Earth Law Center for inclusion in the Major Groups’ input on the development of the SDGs:
 Support for Earth-based SDGs, specifically through inclusion of commitments to recognize in
law the rights of ecosystems and species to exist, thrive and evolve.
 Endorsement, and promotion for adoption and implementation, of the Universal Declaration of
the Rights of Mother Earth, and active support for its implementation globally.
 Re-characterization of “sustainable development” as “sustainable communities,” a term that
includes both human communities and the wider communities of the natural world. Adoption of
SDGs with a focus on sustainable communities is necessary to ensure that all elements of
well-being are considered.

The current, neoliberal economics-based development approach
distorts communities to serve the economy. Elements of sustainable human communities
include not just the economy, but also culture, societal/familial relations, healthy food, clean drinking water, sanitation, housing, necessary medical care, democratic governance, education, meaningful and appropriately rewarded labor, spirituality, civic duty, volunteerism, etc. Sustainable environmental communities similarly require healthy nutrients, clean water, biodiversity, restoration in the face of destruction, and thriving, connected habitats. The economy must be viewed as serving human and environmental communities, not the reverse.

The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature is a worldwide network of individuals and organizations who support the recognition and implementation of Rights of Nature. http://therightsofnature.org

Robin Milam
Administrative Director
The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature

1111_715_SDG Inputs ELC.pdf

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

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.

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