Keystones to foster inclusive knowledge societies: access to information and knowledge, freedom of expression, privacy, and ethics on a global internet

The transnational and multi-dimensional nature of Cyberspace and its growing importance presents new frontiers with unparalleled opportunities and challenges for access to information and knowledge, freedom of expression, privacy and ethics. The Internet Study being undertaken by UNESCO is seeking to provide the necessary clarity to support holistic approaches to addressing this broad range of interrelated issues as well as their short and long-term effects. The study was built on a year-long multistakeholder consultation process, which involved several rounds of consultation with member states and other actors, as well as almost 200 major responses to an online questionnaire. The Study includes the Options for future actions of UNESCO in the Internet related issues, which has served as a basis for the Outcome Document as adopted by the CONNECTing the Dots Conference on 3 and 4 March 2015. The Study also affirmed that the same rights that people have offline must be protected online, and good practices are shared between Member States and other stakeholders, in order to address security and privacy concerns on the Internet and in accordance with international human rights obligations. The Study also supports the Internet Universality principles (R.O.A.M) that promote a human rights-based approach, including freedom of expression, privacy, open Internet, accessible to all and characterized by multistakeholder participation

Encourage. Empowering People. Annual Report 2012

Peter Löscher, President of the Siemens Stiftung Board of Trustees, on behalf of the Board: Siemens Stiftung aims to contribute to positive changes in society with technical solutions, concrete concepts, and platforms for knowledge transfer. Cooperating with various stakeholders is a fundamental requirement for increasing the impact of its projects and anchoring them for the long term. For that reason, Siemens Stiftung seeks to cooperate with other foundations and non-governmental organizations as well as with government institutions, businesses, and the scientific community. Partnerships allow complementary approaches, skills, and resources to be bundled and sustainable programs to be developed. The previous fiscal year, in particular, delivers impressive examples of how such partnership models can increase the effectiveness of project work

Innovation brokers and their roles in value chain-network innovation: preliminary findings and a research agenda

Intervention approaches have been implemented in developing countries to enhance farmer's livelihoods through improving their linkages to markets and inclusiveness in agricultural value chains. Such interventions are aimed at facilitating the inclusion of small farmers not just in the vertical activities of the value chain (coordination of the chain) but also in the horizontal activities (cooperation in the chain). Therefore value addition is made by not just innovating products and services, but also by innovating social processes, which we define as Value Chain-Network Innovation. In Value Chain-Network Innovation, linkage formation among networks and optimisation is one of the main objectives of innovation enhancing interventions. Here some important roles for innovation brokers are envisaged as crucial to dynamise this process, connecting different actors of the innovation system, paying special attention to the weaker ones. However, little attention has been given to identify different innovation brokering roles in those approaches, and to the need that they facilitate innovation processes and open safe spaces for innovation and social learning at different organisational settings and levels, to have more effective and sustainable impacts. This paper offers some preliminary empirical evidence of the roles of innovation brokers in a developing country setting, recognising the context-sensitive nature of innovations. Two cases from work experience with intervention approaches are analysed in light of the theories of innovation brokering, presenting some empirical evidence of different types of arrangements made by innovation brokers. A third case was taken from the literature. Data from questionnaires, key informant interviews, participant observations of different types of activities and processes carried out in those approaches, SWOT analysis and project reports were used for the analysis of different types of brokering roles and to draw some lessons. One important outcome of this preliminary analysis was that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in integration with other media facilitate new ways of social organisation and interaction of innovation networks, which offer more possibilities for processes of innovation, aggregating value to the production and sharing of knowledge. There is already a transition of paradigm for approaching agricultural innovation to more participative and open approaches, which offers a promissory landscape for organising the value chain actors in a way that is more favourable for small farmers

City Funders: Case Studies on Philanthropic Engagement in Urban Contexts

That publication has been released by the FFSC (Funders' Forum on Sustainable Cities), a thematic network of the EFC (European Foundation Centre). It is a collection of short profiles presenting the different priorities, entry points and approaches of twenty foundations working in the urban landscape in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia. Despite the diversity of perspectives, there appears to be some similarities in the overall priorities and challenges that accompany them. This initial overview seeks to highlight the many opportunities for foundations to connect with one another in the urban context to share experiences in order to leverage knowledge and maximise their impact

Transforming innovation for sustainability

The urgency of charting pathways to sustainability that keep human societies within a "safe operating space" has now been clarified. Crises in climate, food, biodiversity, and energy are already playing out across local and global scales and are set to increase as we approach critical thresholds. Drawing together recent work from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Tellus Institute, and the STEPS Centre, this commentary article argues that ambitious Sustainable Development Goals are now required along with major transformation, not only in policies and technologies, but in modes of innovation themselves, to meet them. As examples of dryland agriculture in East Africa and rural energy in Latin America illustrate, such "transformative innovation" needs to give far greater recognition and power to grassroots innovation actors and processes, involving them within an inclusive, multi-scale innovation politics. The three dimensions of direction, diversity, and distribution along with new forms of "sustainability brokering" can help guide the kinds of analysis and decision making now needed to safeguard our planet for current and future generations

Scaling Up Climate Action to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UNDP released its first infographic report that presented the breadth and depth of our support on climate change over the past two decades. That report emphasized successes and noted the opportunities that climate action presents for countries as they transition their economies towards zero-carbon and climate-resilient sustainable development.This year, as countries begin to take concrete action to deliver on their national climate goals, we are pleased to release an updated report of UNDP's climate change work. New, in this report, is a special focus on the linkages between climate change and sustainable development. Specifically, the report highlights the importance of climate action in delivering on the SDGs and provides examples of UNDP's on-going work on the ground towards this end. The report also presents UNDP's commitment to scale up climate change action in order to deliver on the ambitious agenda that countries agreed to in 2015." – Magdy Martinez-Solima

Catalysts for regional development: putting territorial coordination in practice

Lack of coordination among agencies at project level and scarce promotion of contracts at micro-scale are critical gaps widely spread in many Latin American regions. We discuss some specific and feasible mechanisms, namely: (i) alliances for rural development and (ii) contract promoters; that may play a catalytic role to deal with the mentioned problems. Based on a continuous improving integral strategy and an effective operative framework, these alliances would be prone to unveil areas for interventions and to channel them into the pipelines of the ministries, financing agencies or private investor initiatives. These alliances can assist in solving tradeoffs between enough economies of scale for enhancing capabilities and sufficient local knowledge. Also, they might reduce capture problems. Contract promoters on the other hand, can be viewed as facilitators for startup businesses. They evolve as enterprise incubators, with expertise for rural areas, projects and marketing; combined with a vision for development. Both catalysts have a synergetic effect for coordinating regional development and should be prominent in rural modernization agendas.Rural development, Catalyst, Experimental, Promoter, Local Governance, Applied Political Economy

Partnerships for Sustainable Development Goals 2016

This present document is the fourth edition of a report that has been prepared by the Division for Sustainable Development of UN-DESA as a follow up the Rio+20 Conference in 2012, as an effort to provide status of progress multi-stakeholder partnerships and voluntary commitments have in realizing sustainable development. This current 2016 edition reviews a number of action networks and multi-stakeholder partnerships, with a particular focus on how they support the theme of the 2016 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) - "Ensuring that no one is left behind". Information in the report is largely based on submissions from the Partnerships for SDGs online platform, which was originally developed following the Rio+20 Conference in 201. The platform was recently redesigned ahead of the adoption of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015

Net Gains: A Handbook for Network Builders Seeking Social Change

This handbook provides the growing number of people who are developing networks for social change with practical advice based on the experiences of network builders, case studies of networks small and large, local and international, and emerging scientific knowledge about "connectivity." It is intended to join, complement, and spur other efforts to capture and make widely available what is being learned in the business, government, and civil sectors about why and how to use networks, rather than solitary organizations, to generate large-scale impact