Update: International Resource Panel

What Mark Swilling has been up toDuring May 2011 Mark Swilling participated in several events related to the International Resource Panel. These included the launch in New York on 11 & 12 May 2011 of a Report for the Panel entitled Decoupling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts from Economic Growth – he was the lead co-author with Prof. Marina Fischer-Kowalski from the Institute for Social Ecology in Vienna, Austria. One of the New York events included a well attended briefing for policy-makers at a side event of proceedings of the Commission on Sustainable Development. By the end of May nearly 250 media reports on the report in 11 languages in over 30 countries had been published.

On 24-27 May 2011 Mark Swilling also attended Green Week in Brussels – an annual event convened and hosted by the European Commission. The theme for 2011 was Resource Efficiency and the co-chair of the International Resource Panel, Ernst von Weiszaecher, was a keynote speaker at the opening ceremony. Mark Swilling delivered a talk on the findings and implications of the Decoupling Report in the session that followed.

On 27 and 28 May Mark Swilling chaired a two-day meeting that took place in Helsinki of the Cities Working Group of the International Resource Panel. This Working Group was established at the 7th meeting of the Panel that took place at the Sustainability Institute in Stellenbosch in November 2010. This meeting was attended by a group of 20 specialists from all continents. The purpose was to discuss a ‘scoping report’ that forms the basis for a more detailed longer report due to be presented to next meeting of the International Resource Panel in November in Delhi.

For an interview with Mark Swilling about his perception of the Panel, see http://www.markuslintu.com/UPR/mark/mark.html.