My inaugural blog for an inaugural event: a story of a Ukrainian who went to the World Economic Forum Sustainable Development Impact Summit in New York
About this time a week ago I was on the subway crossing all Manhattan from Columbia University campus and heading down to John F. Kennedy International Airport, trying to reflect on my week-long stay in NYC.
Without any exaggeration, it turned to be a mind-blowing week:
WEF Sustainable Development Impact Summit on Monday-Tuesday ✔️
MakeSense Talks on Disruptive Tech x Social Business x Global Goals with keynote from professor Yunus, Peace Nobel Laureate on Wednesday ✔️
UN General Assembly on Thursday ✔️
WEF Breakfast with professor Schwab, Founder of WEF on Friday ✔️
Taking the time and walking around in NYC during the week ❌
My first-ever World Economic Forum event turned to be the first-ever Summit (still unclear what stands behind this powerful word) for me and the first-ever Sustainable Development Impact Summit aimed to address the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to over 700 leaders from government, business, international organizations, research centres and not-for-profits, from over 70 countries, including:
➡ 9 heads of state and governments;
➡ 70+ senior government leaders;
➡ heads of international organizations (IMF, WBG, ILO);
➡ 40% from global business community;
➡ more than 250 women leaders engaged in the discussions;
❇️ 1 Ukrainian (I sincerely hope more fellow Ukrainian bright minds will be highlighted by WEF in the future).
Kicked-off by Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and followed by speeches of the President of UN General Assembly Miroslav Lajcák, Christine Lagarde from the IMF and many other global top decision-makers, the WEF Summit turned to be NOT only panel-oriented, or other words — discussion-oriented.
“I hope all of you here know what SDGs are. But if you go just outside on the streets in NYC and ask people about SDGs, in return you’ll hear: “SD-Whaaat?” — Feike Sybesma, CEO of Royal DSM, on awareness about Sustainable Development Goals.
Action-oriented
In return, the inaugural SDIS 2017 brought together over 60 significant global initiatives, projects and collaborations.
Indeed, a substantial amount of a 2-day convention was dedicated specifically to action — about 30 working meetings took place and were facilitated by acting CEOs of global corporations as well as industry and academia experts. This included discussing the challenging bottlenecks that hold back impact, renewing the commitments to mobilization, and co-creating new solutions and new impact initiatives.
Circular Economy & Outcomes
Some of you may wonder what really comes out of that, right? What impact has this Summit created? After all, these are the right questions to be asked 🤓
Along with many well-designed panels, I really enjoyed joining a session on something that I’ve been curious about for a while — a circular economy.
After the session “Mainstreaming the Circular Economy Model” was wrapped up, we were split to brainstorm ideas for the circular economy by themes. I joined one on e-waste — a topic I’ve recently worked on during a 10-day Social Innovation Lab UNLEASH in Denmark (hope my blog on it will be published soon).
For sure, it was not my first-ever workshop in my life, nor it was the first one on sustainable development. However, it turned to be the foremost one — sitting shoulder to shoulder with many business world top-decision makers and leading academia experts, and brainstorming together ideas on how to accelerate the circular economy, and more specifically — scale up the Electronic Waste Alliance.
Another outcome of this workshop is a multistakeholder agreement on creating e-waste systems in Africa, with an initial pilot in Nigeria — partners include Philips, Dell, HP, Microsoft Mobile, the Ministry of Environment of Nigeria, UN Environment, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Furthermore, this project is placed on the global Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy, which the World Economic Forum is building in collaboration with UN Environment, GEF and Royal Dutch Phillips.
Connecting the Dots & Postscriptum
By the way, my interest in a circular economy dates back to November, 2015 when I attended a Global Shapers Community event — an open lecture delivered by a British professor David Peck from TU Delft in the Netherlands. Along with many interesting facts provided by the professor about the circular economy, I paid attention to an example of Royal Dutch Philips, a technology company, that has produced light bulbs for more than a century. Recently, the company has decided to switch from a traditional business model of selling the bulbs to a brand new concept — selling the light! This should create an incentive for business to increase the product life cycle and, therefore, embed sustainability in a traditional (linear) business model.
P.S. What particularly blew my mind was the fact that an e-waste workshop held during the WEF Summit was facilitated by a CEO of a company through an example of which I firstly became acquainted with the concept of a circular economy. Indeed, just less than in 2 years since I attended an open lecture in Lviv, I’ve got a chance not only to meet but participate in the same workshop with Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Dutch Philips.
P.P.S. Of course, this Summit also counts for reunions — didn’t expect at all to bump into Kristalina Georgieva, CEO of World Bank, in the elevator. I met her at the European Forum Alpbach 2 yrs ago when she was still in charge of the Budget and Human Resources at the European Commission. By the way, unlike myself and being an extremely busy person, she found a time slot and made her way to the Forum Alpbach Financial Symposium this summer.
In short, this was a week full of cutting-edge discussions and more importantly — a week of extraordinary and action-oriented ppl that are fighting for a better tomorrow already now. These ppl reassured me — achieving Global Goals for Sustainable Development (or SDGs) is doable!
