Waterloo expert will chair Nobel Laureates talk on global sustainability
A University of Waterloo social innovation expert will join more than 50 leading thinkers, including 17 Nobel Laureates, next week for a high-level meeting to draft an action plan to save a world under siege from climate change, deteriorating ecosystems and poverty
WATERLOO, Ont. (Wednesday, May 11, 2011) - A University of Waterloo social innovation expert will join more than 50 leading thinkers, including 17 Nobel Laureates, next week for a high-level meeting to draft an action plan to save a world under siege from climate change, deteriorating ecosystems and poverty.
Frances Westley, the JW McConnell Chair in Social Innovation at Waterloo, will chair a session on sustainable development at the third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability, which will take place May 16 to 19 at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden.
"The 3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium will provide the evidence that a great transformation in societies is needed to achieve global sustainability and thereby a prosperous future for humanity,” said Johan Rockström, chair of the symposium. “Frances Westley, with her international academic standing on social innovations research, provides a critical part of the solution of how to transform societies towards sustainable development.”
Discussions at the symposium will focus on how economic, political and social systems can be governed within the boundaries of the planet. They will explore three themes:
• Tipping Towards Sustainability: The Great Transformation Towards Sustainable Development. The theme, chaired by Westley, explores the links between crisis, opportunity and innovation for creating radical shifts and large-scale transformations towards sustainability.
• Ecosystems and Human Development. The theme focuses on the role of ecosystems and the services they provide as the basis for societal development and human well-being.
• The Human Dominated Planet: Where are the Boundaries? The theme looks at the great acceleration of human enterprise and recent scientific attempts to identify the safe operating space for the ability of planet Earth to support human development.
"What excites me about the symposium is that it brings together brilliant thinkers from different sectors and disciplines,” said Westley, the symposium’s only participant from Canada. “Innovative responses to crises - from global financial recession to climate change - need not only our best minds but also new forms of integrative thinking. These challenges are dynamically interconnected and our response must be also; it is time to move beyond solutions drawn from single disciplines or perspectives, no matter how brilliant, and towards new modes of knowledge creation and action."
The symposium will conclude with a memorandum signed by key Nobel Laureates. It will be sent to the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability appointed by the UN Secretary General. The conclusions of the panel will feed into the preparations for the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro and into the ongoing climate negotiations.
The symposium is part of a series of meetings initiated in 2007 at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research hosted by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, followed by a second meeting at St. James Palace under the auspices of the Prince of Wales. The event next week will be held in the presence and with the support of HM King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.
