Keynote

Dr. Sarah Burch (she/her)

Professor, Canada Research Chair in Sustainability Governance and Innovation
Executive Director, Waterloo Climate Institute 

Imagination, connectedness, and experimentation: Triggering and accelerating sustainability transformations in a rapidly changing climate

Societies around the globe are faced with an urgent and intensifying challenge: how do we rapidly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels while simultaneously preparing communities to thrive amidst escalating impacts of climate change like floods, fires and extreme heat?
Two critical ingredients are required to generate breakthroughs: strategies that amplify and mobilize the incredible range of climate change solutions that we’ve already developed; and a deeper understanding of the interventions that deliver help us solve multiple sustainability challenges at the same time.
This talk will explore imaginative, transdisciplinary approaches to sustainability experimentation that uncover the deeper leverage points of change, and the crucial relationships among diverse stakeholders.  Ultimately, our goal is to respond directly to the urgency of intersecting crises, while meaningfully engaging with emerging understandings of how individual and collective behaviour actually shift. 

 

photo provided Sarah Burch, PhD