Since literally ten hours after leaving my job, I've been grateful (really, not in the #humblebrag kind of way) to be doing consulting work for the UN office of the Sisters of Mercy/Mercy International and the Mining Working Group at the UN (MWG).
As part of their ongoing work around the UN's Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (OWG on SDGs), the MWG has focused on promoting a human- and environmental-rights-based approach to sustainable development, including natural resource management and particularly extractive industries. In other words, the MWG is trying to convince governments and other players at the UN that sustainable development means focusing on people, and on communities affected by mining and other "development" efforts that prioritize making money over any (health, environmental, security) cost. During the process of figuring out the global "post-2015 sustainable development agenda," the MWG wants to remind the UN of this opportunity to prioritize the lives and realities of people whose involuntary sacrifices allowed a lot of (Northern, corporate, stock-owning) people to get rich... and to inform the UN that no, this is not "development."
The first project I've done for the MWG is an advocacy brief, which I drafted based on a longer report by a key MWG member and which was professionally laid out by a graphic designer (!). It outlines a rights-based approach to resource extraction and highlights some important pieces of the MWG's recent sustainable development-focused work. It's here: http://miningwg.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/advocacy-brief.pdf
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| Maria Gunnoe, organizer on Kayford Mountain stripped of coal from top-down. Credit: OVEC (via Mining Working Group) |
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