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On Tuesday 9th of February, the Future Economy Network hosted an event entitled ‘Adapting to a Warmer Climate’ sponsored by Stantec. The event welcomed speakers from Sustainable(ish), Cala Sustain and Stantec to discuss how we can adapt to ongoing warming of global climate. The event was well attended by a wide range of delegates who enjoyed some pre-seminar networking before the presentations began.
Katherine Piper, Director of the Future Economy Network, welcomed attendees to the event and highlighted the benefits of joining the Network. Katherine also shared updates about their carbon neutral Hub in Bristol, Future Leap, as well as briefly running through plans for the Festival of Sustainable Business.
Jen Gale, Founder of Sustainable(ish), kicked off the presentations by reviewing the role of collaboration between businesses and the individual in fighting the climate crisis and reducing carbon footprints. Jen spoke about the ‘ish’ in Sustainable(ish) debunking the existing narrative that sustainable and green behaviour has to be perfect to prove effective. She urged attendees to question businesses about their sustainable practices and reinforced the potential large-scale impacts of small imperfect changes and movements towards eco action.
Next up, we welcomed Mark Hedges, Founder of Cala Sustain, who presented on how to understand primary climate issues from a business perspective. As an advocate for responsible business, Mark tackled questions such as:
How can businesses prepare for climate change?
What links exist between climate change and business resilience?
How can businesses act as a force for good?
Finally, Rachel Manning, a Senior Associate Ecologist at Stantec, explained the link between the current climate emergency and emerging biodiversity crisis. Rachel touched on how we are now witnessing unprecedented biodiversity declines that have been deemed the ‘6th extinction event’. She outlined multiple nature-based solutions such as urban greening as a means to deliver biodiversity net gain and highlighted the importance of using services provided by the natural world to tackle climate change.
The audience were encouraged to ask questions and engage with the speakers throughout the event leading to interesting discussion on the role of businesses and nature-based solutions for combatting climate change. Multiple attendees including, Claric Legal Services, YNOTNOW Ltd and Precious Plastic Bristol made use of the 60 second pitch opportunity.
A final networking session allowed for further discussion in smaller groups before the event finished. Thank you again to sponsors Stantec, the speakers and the attendees who made this event possible.
Write up completed by Laura O’Brien, MSc Climate Change Science and Policy, University of Bristol
