The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals: Where Do We Stand? Where Are We Going? What Do We Need to Go Now? A Conversation with Paula Caballero and Shirin Malekpour

World leaders this week vowed to redouble their efforts on an ambitious plan to end poverty and protect the environment, which is woefully behind schedule.

36 of the 169 targets that accompany the overarching goals were analysed by researchers involved in the four-yearly Global sustainable Development Report. The scientists found that the world is on course to achieve two targets, one of increasing access to the Internet and the other of using mobile-phone networks.

The UN secretary-general declared at the opening of the summit that theSDGs need a global rescue plan. The UN’s Secretary-General has proposed that funding for sustainable development be increased by 500 billion dollars to help countries to achieve the goals and debt relief for the world’s poor.

The former diplomat who helped to create theSDG framework, Paula Caballero says that the world must take bold and transformational actions now to accomplish the agenda.

She says that the end of the deadline should not be seen as a final one. Caballero, who is responsible for The Nature Conservancy in Latin America, doesn’t think that 2030 is an end goal. “It’s a milestone.”

Sociologist Shirin Malekpour, one of the GSDR authors, agrees. It is not the targets or the goals that need to change according to Malekpour, he is at a university in Australia.

The Goals are focused minds on the integrated nature of challenges facing humanity, and that is what theSDG summit is proof of. She says that the UN system still treats sustainable development and climate as separate issues despite the fact that they are holding separate summits this week.

“The only way you’re going to deliver on climate mitigation and adaptation is through the SDGs, and you can’t meet the SDGs unless you deal with climate,” she says.

Brazilians talk a lot about Brazil, but there’s not much dialogue between them and Latin Americans. The political change has shifted the conversation quite a bit. The previous government’s agenda created a lot of security, while they did not focus on deforestation. Now, there is a little more security, at least in terms of taking the issue seriously. She states that it’s possible to talk about things and look into the future with more depth than ever before.

To understand the significance of this to Brazil we need to go back in time. Under former President Jair Bolsonaro, climate change agendas were not only left aside — but almost scrapped. The government cut 93 percent of investments on studies and projects to mitigate and adapt to climate change in its first three years of management, compared to the previous three years, according to BBC News Brazil.

The cutting and burning of the forest in the first two years of the former president’s term released 122 percent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than average, according to a survey done by researchers from INPE.

There are two examples where the destruction to the environment is much larger in Brazil between 2nd and 19th century. The mood grew more optimistic in the year 204 because Bolsonao is no longer in power.

Environmental conservation in Brazil: more investments, less stupid decisions (An interview with Lisa Phillips), the first Brazilian university university studying climate change in 30 years

As the conference started, I sat next to Lisa Phillips, head of institutional partnerships at the Columbia Climate School: the university’s first new school in 30 years, seeking to study climate change worldwide.

I emphasized the importance of programs like the climate school, especially in countries like the United States, and she confided that 40 percent of the students are international (including Brazilians). We ended the conversation sharing doubts about how Brazil will deal with climate issues after President Silva took office earlier this year.

Natalie Unterstell is the president of an organization that works with the government. There are some law projects, but there is something unique about this which unified several fronts and benches of parliamentarians. So, I think it will be good work for our Congress to, for the first time, adopt a market-based instrument for conduct policy,” she commented.

She ended her speech with a round of applause from the crowd, and she explained what she wanted: moreConservation jobs, more investment and less stupid policy decisions.

Catarina Vidotto, who is earning a master’s degree in sustainability from Columbia and is responsible for BCS content, says she feels that Brazil’s image has improved lately.

Source: Environmental conservation in Brazil: more investments, fewer ‘stupid decisions’

A new part of the Startup Challenge: Identifying the risk of disasters in a global network of environmental sensors and data processors (Forumgrauemeio)

There are about 50 volunteers who help bring the Brazil Climate Summit to New York. They told me that the turkey sandwiches and salmon were better this year, although I didn’t have many options. The online component of the summit was problematic, with someone having a problem with it, which alternated between screens, no screens, and an eternal vortex of them opening atop each other.

But it wasn’t enough to take the shine off a new part of the summit: the Startup Challenge, which honored projects related to green energy, waste management and recycling, sustainable constructions, and other climate-focused fields. Three Brazilians were in the top three of the project, and one of them is DeepESG, which is a firm for the management of carbon emissions.

I had the feeling that technology can change the world, even though I didn’t know it, when I spoke to Osmar Bambini, the co-founder and CIO of Umgrauemeio. The company was responsible for the rapid identification of fires in the project, which was one of the largest in the world in environmental preservation. For this, the startup has a platform called Pantera.

Prevention, detection, and response are pillars of the platform. This is the beginning of any risk-mitigation plan. We have prevention modules in which we offer daily risk alerts (analyze whether in an area, for example, it is okay starting a tractor or not, as a spark can be fatal),” concluded Bambini.