Secretariat

The Secretariat is provided by the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainable Solution Services at Arizona State University. RMWSSS aims to initiate programs that will develop use-inspired knowledge to:
SOLVE sustainability problems.
EDUCATE leaders and implementers.
ENGAGE people globally to innovate and take risks to create a more sustainable world.

Our charge was to prove that a university that is the home to the nation’s first School of Sustainability can apply its knowledge to solve sustainability challenges locally and globally. Our goal was to accelerate pathways to solutions of these challenges. This required us to re-define the role of the university in society and to use entrepreneurial drive to build a new model linking knowledge to action.

Felix Dodds is an Adjunct Professor at the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is an Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute. He was the co-director of the 2014 and 2018 Nexus Conference on Water, Food, Energy and Climate.

Dodds was the Executive Director of Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future from 1992-2012. He played a significant role in promoting multi-stakeholder dialogues at the United Nations and prosed to the UN General Assembly the introduction of stakeholder dialogue sessions at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.

He has been active at the UN since 1990, attending and actively participating in UNFCCC, UNCBD, the World Summits of Rio Earth Summit, Habitat II, Rio+5, Beijing+5, Copenhagen+5, World Summit on Sustainable Development and Rio+20, while also attending the UN Commissions for Sustainable Development and UNEP Governing Councils.

In 2011, he chaired the United Nations DPI 64th NGO conference ‘Sustainable Societies Responsive Citizens’. From 1997-2001, he co-chaired the UN Commission on Sustainable Development NGO Steering Committee.

Dodds has written or edited, twenty-four books. The Vienna Cafe Trilogy covers sustainable development at the global level since the 1960’s. It starts with Only One Earth: The Long Road via Rio to Sustainable Development he wrote with Maurice Strong and Michael Strauss.  After Rio+20 with Jorge Laguna Celis and Elizabeth Thompson, he wrote From Rio+20 to a New Development Agenda Building a Bridge to a Sustainable Future and The Plain Language Guide to Rio+20. Like all good trilogies book, 4 is already out and is Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals: A transformational agenda for an insecure world with Ambassador David Donoghue and Jimena Leiva Roesch. His most recent book is Heroes in Environmental Diplomacy 

He is also an International Ambassador for the City of Bonn.

It is supported by Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future.

In consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council since 1996 and accredited with the United Nations Environment Programme since 2005, Stakeholder Forum (SF) is an international not-for-profit non-governmental organization, a European foundation, and a global network working to advance sustainable development and in particular the protection of the environment at all levels/ the three dimensions of sustainable development, social, economic, and environmental.
For more than 25 years, SF has been a bridge between stakeholders of all kinds and the international intergovernmental forums where sustainable development, and in particular the environment and issues related to its good governance are debated, global goals are established, and strategies mapped out. Its work aims to enhance open, accountable, and participatory decision-making and good governance for sustainable development through the continuous involvement and participation of stakeholders in these forums, and in the action that flows from their work.
SF has a particular focus on expanding the opportunities for effective stakeholder engagement in international sustainable development and environment processes, through communications, capacity building, and the establishment and maintenance of open and participatory governance arrangements in international assemblies and institutions. It also gives support to a variety of networks and partnerships to engage stakeholders at regional and national levels in the implementation of sustainable development policies and practices including in the environmental arena.