3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability
We are excited to share with you that Frances Westley, the J.W. McConnell Chair in Social Innovation at SiG@Waterloo, led a discussion at the 3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability in Stockholm, Sweden.
The discussions at the Symposium culminated in a memorandum signed by key Nobel Laureates. This memorandum was communicated and handed over to the High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability appointed by the UN Secretary General to reflect on and formulate a new vision for sustainable development and prosperity, along with the mechanisms for achieving this vision.
You can download the Stockholm Nobel Laureate Memorandum here (PDF)
The 3rd Symposium follows previous meetings in Potsdam and London, and focused on the need for integrated approaches that deal with the synergies, conflicts and trade-offs between the individual components of climate change.
Jury members discuss the verdict during the Noble Court Case: Planet Earth vs. Humanity. Jury members (from left): Nobel Laureates James Mirrlees, Werner Arber, Carlo Rubbia and Peter C. Doherty.“We are the first generation with the insight of the new global risks facing humanity, that people and societies are the biggest drivers of global change. The basic analysis is not in question: we cannot continue on our current path and need to take action quickly. Science can guide us in identifying the pathway to global sustainability, provided that it also engages in an open dialogue with society, ” says Professor Mario Molina, who acted as judge and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995.
Climate change, decreasing biodiversity, deteriorating ecosystems, poverty and a continuously growing population all contribute to reducing the planet’s resilience and may have catastrophic implications for humanity.
Each of these problems has attracted great attention from the international community, but they have invariably been considered in isolation, with little or no regard to the interactions between them.
It is time to change this approach.
Frances Westley, J.W. McConnell Chair of Social Innovation, presents at the 2011 Nobel Laureate Symposium in Stockholm, Sweden:
Tipping towards sustainability - emerging pathways of transformations
The Symposium was organized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, Stockholm Environment Institute, Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics and Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research.