In October 2021 ForUM launched the report «Partnership, politics and money» which maps the experiences of Norwegian civil society’s participation in international processes. The report finds that the partnership between civil society and the authorities can be improved in many areas, but that Norway also has the opportunity to establish the gold standard for participation.
The Agenda 2030-declaration highlights the importance of partnership to ensure implementation of the sustainable development goals. In many countries this partnership has been formalised in multi-stakeholder bodies. In a new policy brief, ForUM has reviewed experiences from Germany, Finland and Mexico to explore options for a Norwegian multi-stakeholder forum.
After the military coup in February 2021, Telenor announced the 8th of July that the company had decided to end the operations in Myanmar and sell the business to the Lebanese company M1 Group. This incited strong criticism from Myanmar’s civil society, and a complaint was submitted against Telenor at the Norwegian National Contact Point for OECD. This complaint is currently under review, and this article sums up the case.
The United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) was held virtually in September this year and incited new momentum as well as creating a shared understanding of the need for change. Last Friday, ForUM joined a round-table meeting to follow up, which was organised by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the participation of UN Special Representative to the UN Food Systems Summit, Dr Agnes Kalibata. This article summarises the input given.
Norway presented its second VNR at the High-Level Political Forum in 2021. The report shows that Norway is making good progress on many of the goals but is still struggling with others. In this article, some of the recent advances in the national work on the SDGs are summed up.
Nature's contribution is an important topic during the ongoing climate summit in Glasgow and will also be important in the negotiations on a new nature agreement in 2022. For nature-based solutions to be a tool in the fight against the climate crisis, they must not be at the expense of neither nature nor human rights, says nature advisor in the Forum for Development and the Environment (ForUM Norway), Ingrid Rostad.