TIGblogs TIG | TIGblogs GROUP TIGBLOGS LOGIN SIGNUP
IYPF
IYPF
« previous 5


IYPS 2008 Day One Report - 19 August 2008
About this event: International Young Professionals Summit 2008
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

[ Don't forget to join the Virtual Summit in the morning for Jeffrey Sachs and our panel on environmental sustainability in the afternoon. See the posted items on the event page on Facebook to download a guide on how to join. ]

Opening Session - Tuesday 19th August

Sarah-Jo Dawson - IYPF and IYPS organisaing committee

• Delegates from over 25 countries, including Engineers, IT professionals, Journalists, Educationalists etc.
• Idea of conference is to be really interactive - use all the keys skills and experience of delegates, develop peer-to-peer culture
• Having a more specific topic for the conference was considered but was decided to keep it more open to include all the varies skill of professionals in the network
• The teams feels that the geographical and skill breadth of young professionals involved means we can offer much to help

Professor Tony Ridley - Commonwealth Engineers Council, Patron of IYPF

• The Commonwealth Engineers Council has held meetings at the same time as CHOGM since 1997, when 25 young commonwealth engineers met hosted by CEC so that young engineers had an outlet to decision makers of the world - send a declaration to the heads of government
• Important to find potential political outlets in order to achieve what you wish to achieve
• CEC continued the tradtion of hosting young enginners every years in the same city as the CHOGM, and in 2001 young commonwealth professionals met. In 2001 IYPF was created from this Brisbane meeting
• 25 engineers has morphed into a network of young professional from over 100 countries and diverse backgrounds, but retains a focus on poverty, sustainability and advocacy
• 'Never be afraid to demand to be heard'

Cameron Neil - IYPF CEO

• IYPF was launched in 2001 to carry forward the dreams, ambitions and goals of the young professionals involved in the Summits
• Aims to keep people involved in making the world a better place after they leave university and join the real world of employment and families. Realise as you get older you colleagues and peers are doing increasingly amazing things - aims to tap into these skills and resources
• Together have impact to make significant impact on the world
• Theories of change, need Awareness, Action and Association - more powerful when working in a group
• The IYPS Dream. Signed by 120 delegates in 2001 to represent the world we want to live in
• The Summit outcomes - some documents - primarily about delegates getting what they want from the summit
• The Summit is kept intimate to give everyone a chance to interact and connect - get involved

--
Compiled by Susan Long, IYPS 08 Volunteer

Edited and published by Cameron Neil

August 19, 2008 | 5:55 PM Comments  0 comments
Tags:


Indian entrepreneur named 2008 Energy Champion in "Green Oscars"
Related to country: India
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Here's further proof that the simplest tools often make the greenest sense. For making woodstoves that save 43,000 tons of wood each year, the CEO of a green business in India won the top honors at the Ashden Awards held in London recently. Svati Bhogle helms TIDE, which makes efficient woodstoves and kilns especially for small industries, stoves renowned for conserving 30 percent of fuel. TIDE and its 10,000 products are also directly credited for having improved working conditions for 110,000 workers.

The Ashden Awards iis known as the "Green Energy Oscars" and recognizes and rewards local communities for utilizing sustainable energy. For her win, Bhogle received £40,000.

For more details of the story check out:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/080619/world/britain_india_energy_climate_environment_1

July 1, 2008 | 11:05 AM Comments  0 comments
Tags:


Say NO to Violence against Women
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

"Say NO to Violence against Women" is a global Internet-driven advocacy effort, organized by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). It invites people to sign their names to a virtual book as an expression of public support and a call to decision-makers worldwide to make ending violence against women a top priority. As a partner in the campaign, the International Young Professionals Foundation is urging more people everywhere to click and be counted. Over 225,000 people from around the world have signed on. We ask that you please help UNIFEM reach its goal of at least 1,000,000 signatures by November 2008.

How to help:

1) Visit www.saynotoviolence.org and sign the campaign’s ‘virtual’ book.


2) Add your group as a ‘Supporting Organization’ and be included on the global campaign website, receive updates and stay informed.

3) Utilize the Campaign Toolkit, which provides press releases, videos and more—most are provided in English, French and Spanish.

4) Add the campaign’s application to your Facebook profile: Log in to Facebook, click on applications, search for UNIFEM, and add “campaign” to your profile … and invite friends and colleagues to sign and pass on.

5) Send the campaign link and message to colleagues and friends.

Sign your name, spread the word, Say NO to Violence against Women.

Suggestions? Questions? Go to saynotoviolence@unifem.org.

June 10, 2008 | 3:01 PM Comments  0 comments
Tags:


World Food Policy - 22 May UN Special Session
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Association of World Citizens - documentation of the Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council
22 May, 2008

Citizens of the World welcome the Special Session of the Human Rights Council devoted to the Right to Food and the current world food crisis.

Today, cooperation is needed among the UN family of agencies, national governments, non-governmental organizations, and the millions of food producers to respond to the food crisis which has already led to destabilizing food riots. There is a need for swift, short-term measures to help people now suffering from lack of food and malnutrition due to high food prices, inadequate distribution, and situations of violence.

Such short-term action requires additional funding for the UN World Food Programme and the release of national food stocks. However, it is the longer-range and structural issues on which we must focus our attention.

The world requires a World Food Policy and a At the Rome World Food Conference in November 1974, the then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared that the bold objective of the conference was that "within a decade, no child will go hungry, no family will fear for its next day´s bread, and no human being´s future and capacity will be stunted by malnutrition."

Yet in 1996, then UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali could write, "There has been little progress in reducing malnutrition. In sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the number of malnourished children is actually rising. Almost a third of all children under five in developing countries are malnourished, and malnutrition still contributes to more than half the deaths of young children in these countries." Even the modest Millennium Development goal of halving hunger by 2015 is not being met. Thus, we must agree with a World Bank evaluation that, "The development community, and the world as a whole, has consistently failed to address malnutrition over the past decades."

A central theme which citizens of the world have long stressed is that there needs to be a world food policy and that a world food policy is more than the sum of national food security programs. Food security has too often been treated as a collection of national problems. Typical of this approach is the General Comment 12 on The Right to Adequate Food of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights "The Covenant clearly requires that each State party take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that everyone is free from hunger and as soon as possible can enjoy the right to adequate food. This will require the adoption of a national strategy to ensure food and nutrition security for all, based on human rights principles that define the objectives, and the formulation of policies and corresponding benchmarks."

Yet the focus on the formulation of national plans is clearly inadequate.

There is a need for a world plan of action with focused attention to the role that UN and regional institutions must play if hunger is to be sharply reduced. It is clear that certain regional bodies, such as the European Union, already play an important role in setting agricultural policy both in terms of production and export policy. There may be a time when the African Union also will play a crucial role in setting policy, monitoring and coordinating agriculture.

It is certain that attention must be given to the local and national level of food production, distribution, and food security. Attention needs to be given to cultural factors, the division of labor between women and men in agriculture and rural development, in marketing local food products, to the role of small farmers, to the role of landless agricultural labor, and land-holding patterns.

However, for the formulation of a dynamic world food policy, world economic trends and structures need to be analysed, and policy goals made clear. There are at least five areas that world citizens suggest as a focus for the Special Session: climate change, energy costs, ethanol, the food production and export policy of major agricultural production States, the role of speculation in commodities.

1) There is a need to intensify action on climate change. This year (2007-2008), there has been bad weather in key growing areas. Australia, normally the world´s second-largest wheat exporter, has been suffering from an epic drought. This may be a result of particular weather conditions this year or may be a sign of climate change. It is necessary to analyse the impact of climate change on long- term food production and see alternative strategies.

2) Higher prices for food are in part a reflection of the higher price of oil and energy costs. Much modern farming is energy-intensive for producing fertilizers, running tractors, and transporting farm products to consumers, often at long distances.
Oil prices are influenced by the violence and social breakdown in Iraq and heavy speculation on the oil markets. There is need both for short term measures to bring oil prices down to a reasonable level based on production costs and transportation as well as longer-range energy policies to free countries from oil dependence.

3) Higher prices for oil have encouraged a greater use of ethanol and other biofuels, often without consideration of the impact of the production of biofuels on land use and food production.
While biofuels are likely to be useful, their use should be limited at present so that the consequences of their use can be studied and biofuels developed from non-food sources.

4) Governmental food and agriculture policies need to be analysed and reviewed carefully. The agricultural policies of the European Union and the larger food-exporting countries - USA, Canada, Brazil, Australia - need to be reviewed along with the impact of agricultural subsidies and export encouragement.

5) There needs to be a detailed analysis ot the role of speculation in the rise of commodity prices. Banks and hedge funds, having lost money in the real estate mortgage packages, are now investing massively in commodities. For the moment, there is little governmental regulation of this speculation. There needs to be an analysis of these financial flows and their impact on the price of grains.

A world food policy for the welfare of all requires a close look at world institutions and patterns of production and trade. As Stringfellow Barr wrote in his 1952 book Citizens of the World "Since the hungry billion in the world community believe that we can all eat if we set our common house in order, they believe also that it is unjust that some men die because it is too much trouble to arrange for them to live."