Yale-NUS Sustainable Solutions Conference (20 Aug)

Ms Elizabeth Heng, Secretary of I'dECO: the Yale-NUS Sustainability Movement, wrote to Earth Society to invite us to attend their Sustainable Solutions Network (SSN) inaugural conference on 20 Aug (Sat) at Yale-NUS College. The conference was entitled: “"Synergisms from the Ground-Up: Building Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration for a more Sustainable Singapore".

The SSN conference website can be found at www.ssnsingapore.org

Earth Society supported the conference by sending a representative to attend the event from 9.30 am to 4 pm. About 300 people from various environmental organizations attended the event.

NUS-Yale SSN invited Dr. Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State of Environment and Water Resources, to give an opening address during the event. After the speech, Dr Amy Khor joined Mr. Wilson Ang, Director of Global Compact Network Singapore, Dr. Shawn Lum, President of Nature Society Singapore and Ms Anbarasi, Deputy Chief Executive of ACRES, as panellist to answer the questions posted by the participants.

                                                                                                   

After the panellist discussion, speakers from various Environment NGOs such as Food Bank Singapore, Nature Society, Zero Waste SG, PM Haze presented on environment topics ranging from food waste, biodiversity, organic farming to the Haze problem in Singapore.  

As a sign to support sustainability, Yale-NUS SSN provided vegetarian lunch for the 300 conference participants. The veggie meal was colourful, tasty and satisfied the palates of the participants.  

After lunch, conference participants attended small-group (20 people) discussions on different environmental issues in various classrooms. Earth Society member joined in the discussion on “Food and Agriculture”. We discussed on how to reduce food wastage from farm to supermarket and to reduce global demand for meat to conserve the food and water resources on the planet.

After a day of fruitful presentations and discussions, the conference ended at 4 pm.

We are happy to observe that Singapore youths are taking a more active role to promote environmental sustainability in their campus. There is also an increasing trend among youth environment groups to provide veggie meals during Green events. Bravo and may the message of sustainability spread far and wide to encourage all to adopt sustainable measures to protect the planet.