Laventille (CANARI) 14 March 2013 – A new international alliance of research institutes has identified eight major shifts that must take place for humanity to achieve sustainable development.

The recommendations come in a paper published today by the Independent Research Forum (IRF) on a Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda, whose members include the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) and other think tanks in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, North America and South America.

The research institutes joined forces to provide expert analysis to inform the on-going international policy processes that will shape both the Sustainable Development Goals (which nations agreed to create at the Rio+20 Summit last year) and the ‘post-2015’ development agenda, which is set to replace the Millennium Development Goals.

The new paper says that sustainable development can only be achieved if four foundations exist:

•          Economic progress

•          Equitable prosperity and opportunity

•          Healthy and productive ecosystems

•          Stakeholder engagement and collaboration

But first, says the Independent Research Forum, eight shifts will be essential.

•          From ‘development assistance’ to a universal global compact.

•          From top-down to multi-stakeholder decision-making processes.

•          From economic models that increase inequalities and risks to ones that reduce them.

•          From business models based on shareholder value to those based on stakeholder value.

•          From meeting ‘easy’ development targets to tackling systemic barriers to progress.

•          From damage control to investing in resilience.

•          From concepts and testing to scaled up interventions.

•          From multiple discrete actions to cross-scale coordination.

The paper describes each of these shifts in more detail and then outlines the Independent Research Forum’s recommendation for how policymakers should set the goals and targets that will make up the post-2015 development agenda.

Future papers will focus on specific sectors – such as water, agriculture, energy and urbanisation.

The paper is available at:

http://www.canari.org/documents/IRFFrameworkPaper_000.pdf

The Independent Research Forum current members are:

Caribbean Natural Resources Institute

Trinidad, West Indies www.canari.org

Centro Latinoamericanopara el Desarrollo Rural

Santiago, Chile

www.rimisp.org

Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa

Dakar, Senegal

www.codesria.org

Development Alternatives New Delhi, India www.devalt.org

Institute for Global Environmental Strategies

Tokyo, Japan

www.iges.or.jp

International Institute for Environment and Development} London, UK

www.iied.org

Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa

Johannesburg, South Africa

www.osisa.org

Overseas Development Institute

London, UK

www.odi.org.uk

Research Centre for Sustainable Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Beijing, China www.rcsd.org.cn

SMERU Research Institute Jakarta, Indonesia www.smeru.or.id/

Stockholm Environment Institute

Stockholm, Sweden

www.sei-international.org

World Resources Institute

Washington DC, USA

www.wri.org

About CANARI

The Caribbean Natural Resources Institute is a regional technical non-profit organisation which has been

working in the islands of the Caribbean for more than 20 years. Our mission is to promote equitable participation and effective collaboration in managing natural resources critical to development. Our programmes focus on research, sharing and dissemination of lessons learned, capacity building and fostering regional partnerships.

For further information, please contact:

Nicole Leotaud, Caribbean Natural Resources Institute at [email protected] / +1 868-626-6062

Peter Hazlewood, World Resources Institute (WRI) at [email protected] / +1 2027297887

Tom Bigg, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) at [email protected] / +44 (0)2034637399