Our conference on 4 September was full of nuggets of great ideas, sound advice and inspiring contributions. Foremost, of course, were the uplifting contributions from Favour, Rita and Mirysht who reminded us that young people are geniuses full of innovative ideas that should be listened to, always and everywhere. We were challenged to prepare the planet for the future in a caring and thoughtful way.
There were many great moments during the day and the importance of joined up policy shone through. If you didn’t attend, please do select some of the highpoints on our events video and if you did attend, I can recommend another look as a spur to action.
There were many key threads: from Lord McConnell reminding us that we can all play a part to implement the SDGs and pointing out how much we can learn from others (his examples of South Korea reducing food waste by 98% and Uganda’s fight against TB are the ones that struck me) to the final panel where we were challenged to take a new look at food security from a climate and human rights point of view.
Water flowed throughout the day from the potential of the Blue Economy to the fundamentals of water to sustainable development, to the need for joined up long term planning on the quality of water supplies. No theme stood in isolation; we talked about the need to join up healthcare with rights in the community and learnt about inspiring examples of integrating wider community perspectives into healthcare provision (from Denis in Uganda and Amon in Zambia during his fascinating conversation with Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer). We were reminded of the need to let people everywhere tell their own stories in their own words, and to constantly consider the language we are using when talking about ‘development’.
We also talked about democracy, not only about listening to young voices but also the value of participatory democracy in local communities across the world, including in Scotland. Politicians everywhere were asked to stop grandstanding and move to implementation. The gap between words and action was aptly demonstrated when Craig from Common Weal, whilst lauding the importance of the Scottish Government’s stance on Loss and Damage, likened the disparity between the call for action and Scotland’s own implementation as like: “I ask you for £250, you promise me £1 but you end up only giving me 20p”. Later in the day we were also reminded that good intentions sit too often in strategies that sit on shelves and are never revisited.
At the same time we also heard about the value of getting civil society voices to international tables, and that should start with the Summit of the Future next week.
We were all challenged to consider where global sustainable development should be in 10 years time, where you think the world is likely to be, and the actions that you and the organisations you work for can take to make a difference.
If you’d like to catch up on the livestream, you can watch here: