Making the Sustainable Development Goals Really Sustainable: Human Rights Strategies to Improve Land Tenure Rights and Wages for the Poor

The Millennium Development Goals created incentives for donors and governments to favor quick impact over addressing complex social systems. As a result, the MDG period saw little sustained effort to open up access to those productive assets, and that presents a challenge for the SDGs. This paper argues (1) that this failing of the MDGs weakened their impact; (2) that the SDGs significantly improve on this record by including goals and targets that focus on these productive assets, in both land and labor; (3) that human rights approaches have driven important efforts in some societies to improve land and labor rights; and (4) that human rights organizations and human rights methods are shaping the SDGs and their monitoring and implementation. Examining national experiences with land reform, women’s property and inheritance rights, and improved labor rights and opportunities, the paper shows that these measures have important, long-term impacts on poverty and that they are driven by effective advocacy and long-term government commitments to human rights principles. Sustainable success will also require that poor people have access to the productive assets — land, credit, work at living wages and training, and energy — that give them opportunities to prosper. Human rights approaches tend to call for attention to the causes and multiple dimensions of poverty and to the linkages between poverty and civil and political freedoms, both in principle and in practice. The paper’s final section examines human rights advocates’ expanded involvement in shaping and monitoring the SDGs

Making the Sustainable Development Goals Really Sustainable: Human Rights Strategies to Improve Land Tenure Rights and Wages for the Poor

The Millennium Development Goals created incentives for donors and governments to favor quick impact over addressing complex social systems. As a result, the MDG period saw little sustained effort to open up access to those productive assets, and that presents a challenge for the SDGs. This paper argues (1) that this failing of the MDGs weakened their impact; (2) that the SDGs significantly improve on this record by including goals and targets that focus on these productive assets, in both land and labor; (3) that human rights approaches have driven important efforts in some societies to improve land and labor rights; and (4) that human rights organizations and human rights methods are shaping the SDGs and their monitoring and implementation. Examining national experiences with land reform, women’s property and inheritance rights, and improved labor rights and opportunities, the paper shows that these measures have important, long-term impacts on poverty and that they are driven by effective advocacy and long-term government commitments to human rights principles. Sustainable success will also require that poor people have access to the productive assets — land, credit, work at living wages and training, and energy — that give them opportunities to prosper. Human rights approaches tend to call for attention to the causes and multiple dimensions of poverty and to the linkages between poverty and civil and political freedoms, both in principle and in practice. The paper’s final section examines human rights advocates’ expanded involvement in shaping and monitoring the SDGs

Ending Poverty in Our Generation: Save the Children's Vision for a Post-2015 Framework

The Millennium development Goals -- one of the most resonant and unifying agreements in political history -- reach a turning point in 2015, the deadline for their realisation. We must do everything in our power to achieve them. But we also need to find an agreed way forward on work that will remain to be accomplished. This report sets out save the Children's vision for a new development framework -- consisting of ten goals, plus targets and indicators -- that will support the creation of a world where all people everywhere realise their human rights within a generation.Recognising that the global consultation is ongoing, and many voices are still to be heard, we do not present this as a final position. Rather, it as an indicator of our priorities and -- we hope -- a contribution to the process of crystallising the eventual solution

Ecosystem properties and principles of living systems as foundation for sustainable agriculture – Critical reviews of environmental assessment tools, key findings and questions from a course process

With increasing demands on limited resources worldwide, there is a growing interest in sustainable patterns of utilisation and production. Ecological agriculture is a response to these concerns. To assess progress and compliance, standard and comprehensive measures of resource requirements, impacts and agro-ecological health are needed. Assessment tools should also be rapid, standardized, userfriendly, meaningful to public policy and applicable to management. Fully considering these requirements confounds the development of integrated methods. Currently, there are many methodologies for monitoring performance, each with its own foundations, assumptions, goals, and outcomes, dependent upon agency agenda or academic orientation. Clearly, a concept of sustainability must address biophysical, ecological, economic, and sociocultural foundations. Assessment indicators and criteria, however, are generally limited, lacking integration, and at times in conflict with one another. A result is that certification criteria, indicators, and assessment methods are not based on a consistent, underlying conceptual framework and often lack a management focus. Ecosystem properties and principles of living systems, including self-organisation, renewal, embeddedness, emergence and commensurate response provide foundation for sustainability assessments and may be appropriate focal points for critical thinking in an evaluation of current methods and standards. A systems framework may also help facilitate a comprehensive approach and promote a context for meaningful discourse. Without holistic accounts, sustainable progress remains an illdefined concept and an elusive goal. Our intent, in the work with this report, was to use systems ecology as a pedagogic basis for learning and discussion to: - Articulate general and common characteristics of living systems. - Identify principles, properties and patterns inherent in natural ecosystems. - Use these findings as foci in a dialogue about attributes of sustainability to: a. develop a model for communicating scientific rationale. b. critically evaluate environmental assessment tools for application in land-use. c. propose appropriate criteria for a comprehensive assessment and expanded definition of ecological land use

Sun Devils Together: Breaking Stigmas on Student Homelessness

abstract: In universities, such as Arizona State, students are becoming homeless at an alarming rate. These homeless ASU students are often invisible, as seen through the lack of information on who they are and what resources the university has developed to help them. Typically, students arrive at university campuses with most of the resources required for them to pursue a degree. However, several economic factors such as unemployment or financial instability can impact these resources which influence students ability to stay enrolled in classes. This feature is reflected in the well understood concept of the starving student. Despite this paradigm, the fact remains that students under this stress are attending classes and are under financial stress to do so while being unable to meet their basic needs. These intertwined elements result in ASU students becoming exposed to cyclical needs-insecurities including homelessness. Therefore, the team decided to develop a project called Sun Devils Together which addresses the needs of ASUs students facing homelessness and overall aims to help increase the accessibility of available resources through reducing the silo effect that occurs due to lack of communication between different departments and increases faculty, staff, and student awareness regarding the issue. In order to achieve this, the team has collaborated with the Assistant Dean of Students to produce a training module for ASU faculty, professional staff, and students. The team is contributing information to the creation of a new website that will have all the resources available to students in one place. In addition, the team will create a coded pamphlet with a map of resources that will be given out to different departments around campus that students may potentially reach out to for help while informing those departments regarding the existence of other departments that work towards the same cause

Protect My Future: The Links Between Child Protection and Equity

The lack of care and protection facing children is a global crisis with billions of children experiencing abuse, neglect or exploitation, and many millions growing up outside of families, on the streets or in harmful institutional care. This lack of adequate care and protection is commonly the result of inequalities.Gender norms make girls especially vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation, early marriage and domestic work, and boys to hazardous child labour and detention. Children with disabilities, from ethnic minorities or living with or affected by HIV are more likely than their peers to suffer from a loss of care and protection, and income inequalities increase exposure to child labour and institutionalisation.Children without adequate care and protection are commonly stigmatised, and have inequitable access to education, health, social protection and justice. Combined with the long lasting impacts of neglect, abuse and institutionalisation, this lack of access to basic services severely diminishes life chances, creating a spiral of disadvantage.In order to break this spiral, a three-pronged strategy is required which sees: reductions in social and economic inequalities that have a major impact on children's care and protection; increased investments in strong and equitable national child protection systems and efforts to address the stigma and discrimination faced by children without adequate care and protection

View from the Top: How Corporate Boards Can Engage on Sustainability Performance

Corporate boards are responsible for overseeing the interests of shareholders in the long term and have a critical role to play in championing sustainability across the enterprise. Over the years, Wall Street research, academic papers, corporate reports and trends from major investors have all underscored the same message: Companies that adopt sustainable practices deliver superior financial results and can face the future with more resilience.Based on interviews conducted with dozens of corporate directors, senior corporate leaders and governance experts, this Ceres report identifies key strategies for effective board engagement that can produce tangible environmental and social impacts. Specifically, the report recommends two inter-related approaches for weaving sustainability more deeply across board functions:Integrating sustainability into board governance systems, andIntegrating sustainability into board actions.By combining robust systems and meaningful actions, boards will have a far better chance of encouraging substantive performance improvements

Making the Case and Getting Underway: A Funder Toolkit to Support Healthy People in Healthy Places

This toolkit was created as part of the Health Eating Active Living Convergence Partnership (www.convergencepartnership.org) to help funders create multi-field environmental change strategies to enhance healthy eating and active living

Promoting the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE) [CFDA 84.418P]

Over the past two decades, New York State (NYS) has been actively and collaboratively engaged in systems change across three primary domains: 1) to develop a comprehensive employment system to reduce barriers to work and improve employment outcomes of individuals with disabilities; 2) to enhance the post-school adult outcomes of youth with disabilities, by collaboratively advancing evidence-based secondary transition practices at the regional, school district and individual student levels; and, 3) to support the return-to-work efforts of individuals with disabilities who receive Social Security Administration (SSA) disability benefits under the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). These domains have been supported by numerous federal and state initiatives including: the US Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (OSERS)-sponsored Transition Systems Change grant; the SSA-sponsored State Partnership Initiative (NYWORKS); two Youth Transition Demonstrations (YTD); the Benefits Offset National Demonstration (BOND); and, three cycles of funding for the National Work Incentives Support Center (WISC); the US Department of Labor (DOL)-sponsored Work Incentive Grant, Disability Program Navigator Initiative, and Disability Employment Initiative; three rounds of funding from the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) for Medicaid Infrastructure Grants (MIG, NY Makes Work Pay); the NYS Education Department (NYSED) sponsored Model Transition Program (MTP); and three multi-year cycles of the statewide Transition Coordination Site network. Most recently, NYS has sponsored the Statewide Transition Services Professional Development Support Center (PDSC); the NYS Developmental Disability Planning Council (DDPC)-sponsored Transition Technical Assistance Support Program (T-TASP), NYS Work Incentives Support Center (NYS WISC), and NYS Partners in Policy Making (PIP); the NYS Office of Mental Health (OMH)-sponsored Career Development Initiative; and others. The growing statewide and gubernatorial emphasis on employment for New Yorkers with disabilities developed over the past two decades stemming from these initiatives, supported by service innovations and shared vision across state agencies and employment stakeholders, establishes a strong foundation for implementing and sustaining a research demonstration to “Promote the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income” (PROMISE). The NYS PROMISE will build upon NYS’ past successes and significantly support NYS in removing systems, policy and practice barriers for transition-age youth who receive SSI and their families. The NYS OMH through the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene (RFMH), with their management partners the New York Employment Support System (NYESS) Statewide Coordinating Council (SCC) and Cornell University Employment and Disability Institute, along with the proposed research demonstration site community, join the NYS Governor’s Office in designing and implementing a series of statewide strategic service interventions to support the transition and employment preparation of youth ages 14-16 who receive SSI