Felix Dodds - Quotes

Quotes

• "The United Nations offers us a place to be touched by the better angles of our nature. Rio, Beijing+20, the SIDs review, the MDG review and Habitat 3 offer a coherent opportunity for the development of a new global narrative on how we might live together on this small planet - after all its 'Only One Earth' we have." Speech to the UN General Assembly 22nd May 2012
• "The environment movement is a civil society volunteer movement at its heart. Volunteerism has been one of the driving forces behind the birth of the modern environment movement. The success of environmental activism in conveying the importance of a healthy environment for both development objectives and overall well-being of local communities has progressively contributed to affirm a new way of looking at our relationship with the planet." Speech to final plenary of UN DPI NGO 2011 Conference
• "The foundation for a green economy and a strong institutional framework for sustainable development is people. As people are consumers, activists, volunteers, and (responsive) citizens. People actively engaged in their communities and societies will ensure action to effectively tackle pressing sustainable development issues." Speech to the UN DPI NGO 2011 Conference
• "The current economic model, which has brought unprecedented prosperity to the more developed countries and to particular people in those countries, has only deepened the disparity between them and most developing countries. The parallels of the ecological problems with the financial crisis are clear. The banks and financial institutions privatised the gains and socialised the losses. We are doing the same with the planet’s natural capital. Our present lifestyles are drawing down the ecological capital from other parts of the world and from future generations. We are increasingly becoming the most irresponsible generation our planet has seen. The past 30 years have been characterised by irresponsible capitalism, pursuing limitless economic growth at the expense of both society and environment, with little or no regard for the natural resource base upon which such wealth is built." Speech to UN General Assembly November 2010
• "Our present lifestyles are drawing down the ecological capital from other parts of the world and from future generations. We are increasingly becoming the most irresponsible generation our planet has seen." Speech to Rio+20 Conference May 2010
• “The future is in our hands rather than those of the party leaders, and the crisis of peace versus war, development versus despair, sustainability versus annihilation, are ours to solve.”
• “These changes demand an opening up, not a closing down, of our societies. The creation of a strong democracy is one that needs an ever vigilant and vibrant civil society. The world will always have different visions of the societies we want to create, as the human imagination has immense capability. The involvement of all stakeholders is one way of harnessing this capability.”
• “The work of NGOs around the UN Commission on Sustainable Development over the last decade has become a beacon of hope for changing the intergovernmental negotiating process from a talking shop approach to a democratic space for global problem solving.”
• “He (Dr. Hunter Thompson) represented a set of political writers who captured a generation with Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal who felt they had lost their heroes Bobby and John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. and were left with Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew and now President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The contrast for Thompson was huge on Nixon he said: 'America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the werewolf in us.'”
• “We are now seeing the emergence of this new paradigm because developed governments have not delivered on their Rio and Johannesburg commitments. Not because the conversation was wrong about what needed to be done - it just wasn't delivered. By 2012, 20 years from Rio, we need another Earth Summit this time on human and environmental security. If we don't, then the agenda of sustainable development will be dictated by the security concerns bringing major impacts on our lives and our democracies.”
• “The next generation need not become a generation of crisis, it need not be a generation of fear - it could be a generation of hope and solidarity.”