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Thierry Van Landegem
Chairman, GreenTouch
Vice President, Global Operations, Bell Labs
GreenTouch at the World Economic Forum
November 30, 2012
Recently I was invited to become a member of the WEF GAC, the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council, and more specifically the GAC on governance for sustainability. We all know the WEF as a forum where business, social and government leaders meet (the Davos meetings) and discuss about the world’s major challenges. The councils on the other hand are small groups of experts in a certain area.
As chairman of GreenTouch, I am now member of the sustainability council, a brand new council. We had our first face-to-face meeting in Dubai last week. The beauty of such a meeting is that all the different councils meet at the same time – since there are more than 80, this event brought almost 1,000 experts together. The event is structured in such a way that there is ample time to cross meet, both with experts and with other councils.
The GreenTouch initiative was extremely well received in our sustainability GAC and beyond – in fact it will now be incorporated as a best practice in terms of collaborative industry wide action. I am in the process of creating a two pager explaining the GT approach.
My overall take-aways from this meeting are fivefold: 1. Sustainable growth models require focus on environmental, social and economic aspects in a comprehensive manner, 2. Youth unemployment is at an all-time high, therefore growth need to be made more inclusive and we need to master better the talent issue, 3. The future will be networks of common interest, purpose and action, 4. There is a governance issue and therefore a need to reform the
institutional structures, 5. We need to enhance the multi stakeholder concept to include the voice of truth (science), the good (ethics) and the young.
Exactly what GreenTouch is doing.
Thierry Van Landegem
VP Global Operations Bell Labs
Chairman of the Board GreenTouch