September 8, 2020
UNFSS 4th Flagship Report is now available at http://www.unfss.org @ITC_Sustainable @ITCnews @UNCTAD @UNCTADTrade @UNIDO_QI @UNIDO @ LeuvenGGS @UNEP @10YFP
September 3, 2020
July 6, 2020
Can academic professionals contribute to society outside the classrooms? One of the ways to heighten political dialogue exchanges on the growing array of global challenges including global warming, resource depletion and social inequality is to bring together policy makers and academic experts from different disciplines and perspectives. In this way, knowledge can be co-created to pursue global public goods such as sustainable development.
May 27, 2020
Globalization has brought profound changes in international trade over the last 50 years. In this period, not only has the volume of trade nearly tripled, it has also changed in its form and complexity. Today, Global Value Chains (GVCs) are a pervasive feature of global trade, accounting for nearly 70% of the total share of global trade.
April 30, 2020
Photo Credit: A general view of Long Street, usually one of the busiest and most popular entertainment areas in Cape Town, South Africa, under a billboard reading ‘Stay Home’ amid a coronavirus lockdown, on April 3, 2020. (Rodger Bosch/AFP) The United Nations have expressed concerns through its Secretary-General report regarding the reversal tendency of COVID-19 on the decade long progress in the fight against poverty. In the report, a declaration that, ‘This is much more than a
April 8, 2020
The spread of the novel COVID-19 pandemic has changed the interaction between people and the food system at a drastic speed. At present, some 820 million people around the world are experiencing chronic hunger and of these, 113 million are coping with acute severe food insecurity where any further ‘access to food’ disruptions may pose an immediate threat to their lives or livelihoods. With border closures, quarantines and market, supply chain and trade disruptions, the global economy is being challenged
March 23, 2020
Governments’ pledges for sustainable development are flourishing, most notably as they signed up to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. But how can they translate such pledges into practice? Voluntary Sustainability Standards, or VSS, have been recognised as potentially transformative tools for sustainable trade, and they offer great potential for governments to realise their sustainability commitments through two main avenues. First, public procurement represents, on average, 12 percent of GDP in OECD countries, and up to 30 percent of GDP in
February 10, 2020
Reflecting to the UNFSS research element cornerstone, the Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) Academic Advisory Council (AAC) (hereinafter “AAC”), composed of renowned academic experts from across the globe, has been established to function as a think-tank that brings together a wide variety of academic backgrounds, ranging from public international law, global governance, international political economy, economics and public management, to human rights and sustainability studies. This type of multidisciplinary approach not only reflects the implicit acknowledgement of the
January 23, 2020
In the interest of facilitating the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM)’s goal to strengthen trade-related quality infrastructure, the validation workshop held in Saint Lucia in 21-23 January 2020 aims to improve capacity in Standards and technical regulations development and implementation in CARICOM and to conduct a feasibility study for developing trade capacity enabling Sustainability Standards and associated conformity assessment modalities by the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ), modelling the success of African Organisation for Standardisation (ARSO). Part
October 14, 2019
The increasing attention towards bio-based economy is partly due to the existing production practices that are contributing significantly to environmental and climate problems. Global challenges like climate change, land and ecosystem degradation, coupled with a growing population is a turning point towards producing and consuming that respect the ecological boundaries of our planet. ‘Bioeconomy’ in this sense has become an important agenda in political and technological interests internationally and nationally as it is considered to have strong links with the
