The International Environment Forum organizes an annual conference somewhere in the world, contributes to events organized by its partners, and participates in conferences and forums organized by the United Nations and other organizations. Many of these are reported on the home page, and the annual conference reports have their own page. Some continuing activities are also described in more detail in the Activities part of the web site.

The Wilmette Institute organizes on-line learning courses every year on Sustainable Development and Human Prosperity, on Climate Change, and on Bahá’í Perspectives on Agriculture and Food, with IEF members as faculty.

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The IEF has started a lecture series online on topics of current interest.

The second lecture in the IEF Lecture series on Saturday 23 January 2021 featured Dr. Joachim Monkelbaan who talked about:

Exploring Barriers to Justice and Sustainability in Economic Systems:
Discussion on Root Causes and Potential Remedies

A video recording should soon be available.

Description

We are at a critical juncture as we face a growing number of global challenges that we can remedy if we act boldly and in unity. Many of those challenges, including climate change and inequality, have economic root causes. On this basis, the questions at the heart of this piece are the following:
Which challenges is the world facing?
What are the root causes of those challenges?
What could be some remedies for addressing the root causes (including concepts such as circular economy, doughnut economics, green deals, and indicators of success that go beyond GDP)?
What opportunities does the pandemic and its aftermath offer for making the economic systems more just, sustainable, and resilient?

Speaker Bio:

Joachim Monkelbaan is Representative for Sustainable and Just Economic Systems at the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva, Switzerland. He lectures on sustainability governance at International University in Geneva. Previously, Joachim has worked with organizations such as UN Environment (Economics and Trade Branch), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), WHO, and Climate-KIC. He was a team leader for several Sustainability Impact Assessments of trade agreements for the European Commission (DG Trade). He did postdoctoral research at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and at the Institute for Developing Economies (IDE) in Tokyo, Japan. His book on Governance for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is available now. He holds a Ph.D in governance for sustainable development from the University of Geneva and Master’s Degrees from the World Trade Institute and Maastricht University.

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The first IEF webinar was held on 6 December 2020, with IEF President Arthur Dahl speaking on Global Governance and Sustainability.

Many of today's existential threats including climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and mass population displacements are interrelated and can only be managed effectively at the global level. Yet, present mechanisms for global environmental governance are woefully inadequate to the need for urgent action all around the world. The good efforts of some are neutralized if not reversed by the contrary actions of others. We shall explore recent proposals for global governance for the 21st century that could finally manage the necessary transition to sustainability while embodying the principles of world federalism and the oneness of humanity.

The YouTube recording can be seen here. The full text of the paper is available here.

His powerpoint presentation with the main content can be downloaded here.

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IEF Annual Conferences

IEF events at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris in December 2015

16th IEF Annual Conference, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 16-19 June 2012, in association with the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20)

Planet Under Pressure 2012 scientific conference, London, England, 26-29 March 2012

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