Understanding the role of cities in sustainability

The role of cities in unravelling the intricacies to enable the world to understand sustainable development will be discussed in Melbourne on Tuesday night by Aromar Revi.

Aromar Revi speaking on TEDx.

The Co-chair of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements will speak in the Swanston Room, Melbourne Town Hall for 90 minutes from 6:00pm.

Those unable to be at the Tuesday night session can hear a discussion between Mr Revi and Monash University’s Professor John Thwaites, who is the Chair of ClimateWorks Australia and the Monash Sustainability Institute, on Radio National about 2:00pm that day.

Mr Revi has served as a senior advisor to various ministries of the Government of India, consulted with a wide range of UN, multilateral, bilateral development and private sector institutions and works on economic, environmental and social change at global, regional and urban scales.

He was responsible for the development of housing and urban development plans for two-thirds of India’s states in the 1990s and worked on three of the world’s ten largest cities, with communities across twenty-five of India’s twenty-eight states.

Mr Revi is a global expert on Sustainable Urban development; has helped mobilise a successful international campaign for an urban SDG as part of the UN’s post-2015 development agenda, which brought major global urban institutions (UN-Habitat, UCLG, C-40, ICLEI, Metropolis, WUC, SDI and WEIGO) and over 200 cities and organisations together.

He is considered a leading expert on Global Environmental Change, especially on Climate Change adaptation and mitigation having coordinated the Urban Areas section of the IPCC 5th Assessment report (2014).

This event is presented by Sustainable Development Solutions Network Australia/Pacific and Monash Sustainability Institute.

Mr Revi appeared at a TEDx event last year where he talked about how much of the world's population will soon live in mega-cities.

He suggests these are often seen as a problem when in fact they hold the key to a sustainable future if their resources are adequately managed and their energy harnessed for the common good.

 

Watch his TEDx talk – “Cities can save us”.

Sustainability and poverty linked and explained

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs.

A fellow who understands sustainability and world poverty more than most spoke recently in Melbourne.

Professor Jeffery D. Sachs talked about the intricacies and responsibilities of sustainability, and our failure to recognize the implications that result in poverty, to more than 1100 people at a function in the Melbourne Town Hall.

A video of the near 90 minute address is now available.

The talk was presented by Monash Sustainability Institute as the Australia/Pacific Regional Centre of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network with the Australia Council for International Development, supported by the City of Melbourne.

Professor to talk about Australia in an age of sustainable development

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs.

Those of us interested in how or future should/could/might evolve would do well to get themselves to the Melbourne Town Hall on Wednesday night by six o’clock to hear Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs.

The professor is known to many because of best-selling books, “The End of Poverty”, “Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet,” and “The Price of Civilization”.

His free lecture at the town hall is presented by the Monash Sustainability Institute as the Australia/Pacific Regional Centre of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network working with the Australian Council for International Development.

Wednesday night’s event also has the support from the City of Melbourne.

The professor will discuss “Australia in the Age of Sustainable Development” in which he will consider the fact that humanity is now pushing against planetary boundaries.

He will expand on that idea and discuss the achievement of economic growth that is both environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive?

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs serves as the Director of The Earth Institute, is a Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University.

He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, and held the same position under former Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Professor Sachs is a Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, as well as co-founder and director of the Millennium Villages Project. Sachs is also one of the Secretary-General’s MDG Advocates, and a Commissioner of the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Development.