Monday, February 8, 2016

The SDC Has a Key Role to Play in the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda Worldwide

Article, 22.01.2016

Ambassador Michael Gerber is the special representative of the Federal Council for global sustainable development and represented Switzerland during the intergovernmental negotiations on the 2030 Agenda at the UN. In this interview he explains what the next steps are in terms of implementation and what role the SDC has to play in this.

In this interview Michael Gerber explains how the implementation of the 2030 Agenda will be set out in detail over the next few months. © Keystone

Mr Gerber, the focus of this year's Swiss development cooperation annual conference in Zurich was the 2030 Agenda. In December 2015 the Federal Council requested that the SDC coordinate the next steps in implementing the agenda in Switzerland together with the Federal Office for Spatial Development. What will these steps be?

In the next few months an analysis will be carried out by an interdepartmental working group made up of all the federal offices involved which is coordinated by the SDC and the Federal Office for Spatial Development. The aim of this review is to determine where Switzerland needs to take action and to formulate the measures for this in order to implement the 2030 Agenda. It will also establish how this will be coordinated, who will be responsible for what, and which instruments will be used.

It is already clear that the Dispatch on International Cooperation 2017-2020 and the Federal Office for Spatial Development's Sustainable Development Strategy 2016–2019 determine the general course of action for Switzerland's implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

What role will the SDC have in this?

When it comes to implementation within Switzerland, the SDC's role will be to coordinate how these global objectives can be translated at national level.

In the international context, the main strategic instrument guiding Switzerland's efforts in this field is the international cooperation dispatch for 2017-2020 mentioned earlier. Naturally the SDC will have a key role to play here.

Harmonisation between the global and domestic context is crucial in order to ensure that Switzerland's efforts are consistent. All of Switzerland's contributions – both national and international – will be put together in the report for the UN.

How will the individual objectives of the 2030 Agenda impact concretely on the SDC's work over the next few years? Can you give us an example?

First I'd like to make it clear that the 17 goals and 168 targets set out in the agenda go far beyond the limitations of international development cooperation. International development cooperation can also only cover a small percentage of the funds that are needed.

Nevertheless the new goals provide strategic guidance for the SDC's work. The 2030 Agenda includes many areas and measures that are important for the SDC.

For example the goals on poverty, health, food security, education, gender equality, water, climate, economic development, employment, peace and the rule of law are all important thematic areas for the SDC. There are also concrete targets on migration and disaster risk reduction, two additional areas of activity anchored in the SDGs – in part by Swiss efforts – where the SDC has a leading role to play internationally.

Source: http://sci.fo/192

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Swiss Development Cooperation: Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter Calls for Immediate Implementation of 2030 Agenda

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was the key focus area at this year's annual conference of the Swiss Agency forDevelopment and Cooperation (SDC) and the State Secretariat for EconomicAffairs (SECO). The 17 goals of the global 2030 Agenda will play a decisive role in Swiss development policy over the coming years. The speakers and experts dealt with different aspects of the Agenda: the negotiations, the implementation and financing, and what it means for Switzerland. Federal Councillor DidierBurkhalter spoke specifically of how it relates to Swiss policy. The opening speech was made by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

©FDFA

The foundations were laid last September, when the 193 UN member states adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in New York. The Agenda replaces the Millennium Development Goals but goes even further, setting out new goals that form a common approach for industrialised and developing countries to overcome poverty and promote a sustainable economy. During the three-year negotiating process, Switzerland was a driving force behind the new Agenda. So where does it go from here? What does the Agenda mean for Switzerland in terms of national and international policy? These were the questions that were addressed at the Annual Swiss Development Cooperation Conference.

Last year was marked by many crises, conflicts and challenges. In his opening address, the head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter, underscored Switzerland's desire to take an active role in shaping its environment by adopting a bridge-building style of foreign policy. He said that 'with perseverance and political will we can find joint solutions to common challenges'. He referred among other things to the successful UN conferences of the past year, which were important milestones in global development: the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on the implementation and financing of sustainable development, the 2030 Agenda at the UN's headquarters in New York, and then the Paris Agreement on climate change. 'And so we have been able to celebrate the United Nations' 70th birthday with important achievements which will shape world politics for the years and decades to come,' said Mr Burkhalter. “We have agreed on the 2030 Agenda – it is now time to start implementing it without delay.”

Mr Burkhalter explained that Switzerland will implement the 2030 Agenda at two levels: at the national level as part of the Sustainable Development Strategy 2016-2019, and at the international level based on the Federal Council Dispatch on International Cooperation 2017-2020, which will be debated in Parliament this year. 'In order to be able to deal effectively with global challenges such as poverty, climate change, violent extremism and health crises, we need a global response,' he said, adding: 'We are all in the same boat.'

He welcomed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who had been invited as guest speaker to the annual conference. Just before the conference, Mr Burkhalter and Mr Ban had met for talks. They had both just arrived from the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. In his speech, Mr. Ban said that the 2030 Agenda required that no one be left behind – and to make the world’s poorest the top priority. He called on each and every government to show strong ownership by aligning policies, legislation and resources in support of the Sustainable Development Goals. ‘I pay tribute to Switzerland,’ he said, ‘for having already begun to implement the 2030 Agenda at both the national and international levels’.

The success of the 2030 Agenda will be measured by its implementation. 'It has started already – and that goes for Swiss Development Cooperation too.' This was the emphasis of SDC Director Manuel Sager's speech, in which he explained why he is optimistic about the implementation stage. His confidence is based on the universality of the Agenda, that brings together not only the countries of the South but also those of the North, East and West. An additional decisive factor is the integration of the three dimensions of sustainable development, namely social, economic and environmental. He went on to cite the participatory nature of the Agenda, which will give all people a say in global issues, and the fact that it will be subjected to regular review. 'By setting our sights on the long-term and overarching goals, joint solutions will be possible.' Switzerland's development cooperation is well placed and prepared to play its part, he said. Mr Sager also raised the issue of funding. The funding is available, but it needs to be increasingly directed towards sustainable development. At the same time, the illicit financial outflows from developing countries must be stopped.

The head of the Economic Cooperation and Development Division at SECO, Ambassador Raymund Furrer, also spoke about the financing of the 2030 Agenda in his closing speech, calling for more innovative and targeted approaches to the financing of development cooperation. In addition, the states, many of whom are better off now than they were 20 years ago, should better exploit their own financial capacities, make their administrative structures more competent and transparent, and show greater accountability towards their respective populations. And finally, the environment for the private sector must be improved so that it can create more and better jobs and take on more responsibility in the social and environmental domains. 'The 2030 Agenda cannot be fully realised with financial resources alone,' he said. Science, technology and innovation are also key for sustainable development to work. In addition, one essential condition is that we have a rule-based, open, non-discriminatory and fair multilateral trading system.

At the accompanying events of the annual conference, the approximately 2,300 participants were able to hear numerous positions on the 2030 Agenda. Talking about their experiences in the development of the new goals and their international significance were Thomas Gass (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and Ambassador Michael Gerber (Special Representative of the Federal Council for global sustainable development). In two panel discussions, specialists from the SDC, SECO partner organisations, aid organisations and the public sector discussed the practical aspects of sustainable management based on examples concerning water management (Switzerland, Chad) and cocoa production (Indonesia).

Source: http://sci.fo/18w

Photo Gallery Annual Conference of the SDC and the SECO.

©ArtBaselGallery

Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter and UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon ©ArtBaselGallery

Introduction ©ArtBaselGallery

Swiss development cooperation: Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter calls for immediate implementation of 2030 Agenda ©ArtBaselGallery

Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter at the WEF Davos. ©ArtBaselGallery

UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon ©ArtBaselGallery

Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter and UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon heading for the press conference ©ArtBaselGallery

Wrong desk! ©ArtBaselGallery

Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter and UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon during the press conference ©ArtBaselGallery

UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon leaving Messe Zürich ©ArtBaselGallery

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How Climate Change Is Making Mountaineering More Dangerous

Rising temperatures are increasing rockfall danger, and alpinists are already starting to see the new risks

By: Devon O'Neil

Feb 5, 2016

In July 2011, Arnaud Temme and three friends were climbing the Rottalgrat, a tough route on the west side of the Jungfrau in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland, when rocks began to rain down from above. Temme, an experienced alpine climber, took a rock to the shoulder and a handful more hit his helmet, but the team eventually completed the route unharmed.

That night, the climbers evaluated their experience in the warm comfort of the Mönchsjoch Hut. Their guidebook, which was a decade old, described the route as relatively safe with only minor rockfall danger. “But the more recent guidebook, which we didn’t have, said to stay away from this route because of very high rockfall danger,” Temme says.

The disparity struck Temme, a 37-year-old assistant professor at the Netherlands’ Wageningen University who is also an affiliate of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. How could two guidebooks describe the same route in such different ways when they were written less than a decade apart? That question served as the impetus for Temme’s three-year study into the effects of climate change on alpine climbing danger, the results of which were recently published in the international scientific journal Geografiska Annaler. Temme says the two are “very probably related.”

Rising temperatures and higher freezing elevations on the mountains are prime factors of rockfall danger, as is the changing permafrost, or below-ground layer that has remained frozen for years but is now melting at lower altitudes. More permafrost melted last year in Switzerland than in any other year in recorded history, according to an article recently published by the Swiss Alpine Club. That phenomenon, like rising freezing levels and even an upward migration of alpine plants in the area, is a result of climate change, which is why Temme believes the rockfall danger will continue to grow.

“It’s going to get worse,” Temme says. “Ice and snow are melting, and the rocks are waiting to fall. I don’t see a mechanism that would stop this and reduce levels again.”

Temme employed a unique strategy to undertake his study, something he refers to half-jokingly as “fossil crowd sourcing:” He went to a library in Zurich that archives old guidebooks and pored over 17 editions that cover alpine routes in the Bernese Oberland. From the guidebooks, which dated as far back as 1864, he extracted detailed information related to 63 routes on five mountains—the Jungfrau, Eiger, Moench, Finsteraarhorn, and Schreckhorn. He chose the most popular routes—thousands of people climb in those spots each year—because their descriptions included more details and regular updates than routes that were less frequently climbed.

“I selected any kind of information that said something about rockfall danger,” Temme explains. “That could be simply, ‘It’s dangerous here,’ or, ‘The rock here is weak,’ or, ‘Don’t go here anymore.’ I brought all of that together and I looked at development over time.”

Temme found that warnings of danger began to appear in guidebooks around 1960 and became much more pronounced in the 1990s and 2000s. About half of the 63 routes have changed for the worse. “You really see that progression,” Temme says. “Seven of the 63 are now completely removed from any guidebooks, as if they never existed, because they’re too dangerous."

Temme is not the first to study this—Ludovic Ravanel of the University Savoie Mont Blanc, in France, has studied rockfall by comparing old photographs in the French Alps—but his findings have resonated with climbers and guides in the Oberland. Freddy Grossniklaus, an international mountain guide who was born and raised in Beatenberg, a village that stares up at the Eiger, Moench, and Jungfrau, says the increased rockfall danger has changed the way he guides.

“It’s not just the snow disappearing, it’s the rocks; some standard routes or north faces, you just can’t do safely anymore in the summer,” says Grossniklaus, who owns Swiss Guides LLC and has climbed in the area since 1975. “Because the freezing level is too high.” Today, it's often above 13,000 feet, or higher than the area’s highest summits. “You can’t even beat it by starting really early in the morning.”

That phenomenon was hammered home one day last August. Grossniklaus was leading a trek on the Aletsch Glacier. He stopped to share information with his seven guests when a chunk of ice broke free from the Moench high above them. Just a few minutes later, a massive section of cornice calved from a nearby ridgeline. “I’d never seen a cornice break off there,” Grossniklaus says.

He and his group hiked down, where they found a pile of boulders that had tumbled a mile and a half down the south face of the Trugberg that morning. “It was something incredible,” Grossniklaus says. “That glue [the permafrost] is gone.”

Whereas Grossniklaus once guided the Eiger’s north face in summer, he says he never will again. He has also nixed a once-standard rappel off the Gruenhorn saddle due to rockfall danger.

Temme points out that plenty of the routes he studied did not change significantly over time. “I’m not advocating a stop to climbing or anything like that,” he says. But he does foresee more real-time information sharing online as a way to combat the increased rockfall danger. “That’s going to be much more powerful in the years to come,” he says. “Perhaps even more powerful than these guidebooks, which will maybe get less relevant.”

Source: http://www.outsideonline.com/

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