When it came time to finalize the planning of our next educational forum, we were already teetering towards the idea of a general interest climate change update. We wanted to present this topic because last year at this time Sustainable Waterloo Region held a successful educational forum on the implications of the UN’s climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. Therefore, with the positive results coming out of Cancun this past December it only made dollars-and-cents to follow in the same path and present our audience with a year in-review from Copenhagen to Cancun.
Esteemed Sustainable Waterloo Region volunteer Sean Campbell first brought this topic to our attention; his enthusiasm to bring this to our members was hard to ignore. Working together, we started to develop this topic to present only the climate change science and policy updates from the past year. We hoped to get representatives from academia and government to present our members with the doom and gloom of the past year, but when I brought this topic forward to our Member Event Advisory Committee, it was Shane Paleshi from Quarry Integrated Communications that helped to further the idea by suggesting a three prong discussion that would include science, policy and their implications on business now and in the future.
The only way to make this event as interesting as the topic was to find a line up of appropriate speakers, and that’s where Mike stepped in. Mike was at a climate change adaption committee meeting in Toronto in December just as Cancun negotiations concluded and was able to connect with branches of both national and provincial members of government, different NGOs, and professors from many universities, and from those connections we were able to secure the solid line up of speakers that we’re extremely excited about.
For detailed information about our speakers and to register for this amazing event that should not be missed, go to www.sustainablewaterlooregion.ca/events.
Helena