CIAO DATE: 05/2013
December 2012
Center on International Cooperation
Climate, scarcity and sustainability are crucial issues for the future of development – and hence for the post-2015 agenda. But they are also among the most politically difficult. And while sustainability issues were not a big issue at the London meeting of the UN High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which was focused mainly on household level poverty, they are likely to figure more prominently at the Panel’s second meeting in Monrovia in February, and in particular its third meeting in Bali in March – which will focus on national and global level issues respectively. Before these meetings, sustainability advocates have some hard thinking to do: on both their policy objectives and their political tactics, in both the Panel and the post- 2015 agenda as a whole. Their strategy must be based as much on political judgement as on the policy outcomes they would prefer in an ideal world. They need answers to questions such as: what political space, if any, can the Panel and the post-2015 agenda help to unlock? What would be supposed to happen as a result of getting any particular goal? What are the risks with any given approach, and how could it backfire? Above all, what is their theory of influence ?
Resource link: Climate, Scarcity and Sustainability in the Post-2015 Development Agenda [PDF]