Getting Ready for Rio: Business Education Events

With Rio+20 and the PRME Global Forum for Responsible Management Education right around the corner, here is a look at a range of other events taking place throughout the Summit focused on business education, as well as a range of platforms where participants and those who are not able to make it to Brazil can contribute to the discussions.

Before the event…

Rio+20 Sustainable Development Dialogues: Jointly implemented by UNDP and the Brazilian Government, these online dialogues aim to generate an open, democratic discussion around practical and innovative sustainability recommendations. These discussions will inform the live dialogues taking place in Rio. Dialogues online are focused on ten themes including food, poverty, economics, sustainable production and consumption, cities, employment, energy, water, oceans and forests.  www.riodialogues.org

PRME has been recommended as a discussion topic for the Rio Dialogues. In order to vote to keep PRME in the dialogues and to contribute, once you have registered, join the dialogue topic: “Sustainable Development as an Answer to the Economic and Financial Crises” and select “Support” the following recommendation: “Education as a Generator of Momentum Towards Sustainable Development – The PRME Initiative“. Please “support” PRME before 3 June.

Higher Education Sustainability Initiative, which calls upon the international academic community to sign a declaration of commitment to teach sustainable development concepts, encourage research on sustainable development issues, green their campuses, support sustainability efforts, engage with and share results through international frameworks and engage with and share results through international frameworks. The commitments of the institutions that sign will be part of the official Rio+20 outcomes document.

During the Event…

Corporate Sustainability Forum: The academic community will be involved in many events throughout the Corporate Forum but in particular during the session Foundations for Sustainability – Responsible Management and Leadership Education on the 16^th of June, 2pm to 5.30pm (2 segments of 1.5 hours each). This interaction session aims to strengthen collaborations between academia and business and will provide a hands-on opportunity to develop pragmatic solutions for companies and academia on how to work together on key issues of the UN Global Compact. The session will feature a range of speakers from academia and business focused on Anti-Corruption, Gender Equality and Poverty Reduction.

Business Day: Business Action for Sustainable Development (convened by a range of partners including the International Chamber of Commerce, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the UN Global Compact) will be organising Business Day on June 19th.  The day will provide an opportunity to for high-platform interaction between business leaders and policy makers and will feature CEOs, government leaders and experts from around the globe addressing. For a full list of events BASD2012.

The launch of the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative for Rio+20,  will take place on the 19th at P3-6 RioCentro. The event is co-organized by UNEP, UNESCO, UN Global Compact, UN PRME, UN University, and UN Academic Impact.

PRME Leaders+20 Presentation: On June 20th (time to be confirmed), the Danish Government, in the presence of the prime minister of Denmark, will be organising a side event at the Danish Pavilion at RioCentro to recognise the student teams that participated in the PRME Leaders+20 competition.

Educating for Sustainable Development: UNESCO will be leading this event for the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development from 19:00 to 20:30 at T-2 RioCentro on June 21st.

Following with social media: To follow what is happening during the Global Forum and other events at Rio on Tweeter or to contribute to the discussions please use the hashtags: #PRME and #rioplus20. For the overall event you can follow @UN_Rioplus20. I will also be tweeting throughout the Global Forum @gweybrecht as will Jonas Haertle, Head of the PRME Secretariat, @jonasny.