The Sustainability Year in Stories: September 2024

December 31, 2024

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Sustainability LIVE: Climate Week NYC - Women in Sustainability Panel

We look at the articles that made the news in 2024. Today, it is September's turn, featuring a focus on two Sustainability LIVE events - London & NYC

Highlights: Sustainability LIVE London Global Summit 2024

After two incredible days, Sustainability LIVE London Global Summit has concluded for another year.

Over the two days, those who attended the event were able to hear discussions from internationally acclaimed business leaders, participate in executive workshops and network with influential figures in the industry.

The event connected the world’s sustainability leaders and equipped attendees with the knowledge they need to create a better tomorrow.

The highlights included five keynotes:

Why having a sustainability strategy is not enough? with Daniel Schmid, Chief Sustainability Officer at SAP
Creating the Most Sustainable and Resilient Supply Chain with James Gowen, SVP Global Supply Chain & Sourcing and Chief Sustainability Officer at Verizon
Who moves first on sustainability: consumer or company? with Deb Caldow, Marketing Sustainability Director and Dave Lütkenhaus, Global Sustainability & Innovation Director at Diageo
Sust-AI-nability with Steven Brown, Vice President of Digital Energy Solutions at Schneider Electric
Sustainable transformation, striving toward net zero with Smruti Naik- Jones, Chief Sustainability Officer for North and South Europe at Deloitte LLP.

Glen White, CEO of BizClik

Glen White Opens Sustainability LIVE Climate Week NYC 2024

“We must have a plan.”

That was the main message from Glen White, CEO of BizClik and Sustainability Magazine as he took to the stage to open the inaugural Sustainability LIVE Climate Week NYC held on 24 September 2024.

“We must have a plan,” he said. “Global sustainability is the priority. There are global actors. It's not the countries, it's the businesses. The businesses can make the difference.”

As a Climate Week NYC accredited event, Sustainability LIVE Climate Week NYC is one of the many events taking place throughout New York this week as part of the world’s largest climate week of its kind.

“I went to the Climate Week NYC opening ceremony on Sunday,” Glen told the audience of invited CSOs. “I listened to the CEO of Climate Week, Helen Clarkson, and she was fabulous. I then sat through some of the sessions that weren’t quite so fabulous and all I heard from them was it's time.

“But I've been hearing people talk to me about ‘its time’ since about 2007 – 17 years ago. That's a long time for it to be time.”

Prioritising sustainability at global events

Climate Week NYC is one of many events throughout the year around the world that bring leaders together to bring meaningful change to reduce the impacts of climate change. Glen believes that sustainability needs to start at home, and highlights hypocrisy at COP29 later this year:

“I'm not going because I wasn't impressed with the fact that they decided there would be 28 men and no women until they have to be forced into doing it,” he said.

“As a man, I get quite inspired by the fact we have 22 different portfolios at BizClik. Sustainability is obviously one of those signature portfolios, but it is actually the only portfolio that has more women than men. So we are getting there, but you can go to some of our communities and it's majority men and we need to find that equal balance.”