Blog day 4 – I am slightly losing track of days now, but this is Thursday so I think that means Day 4.
It was a pretty early start this morning as I wanted to get in for the Powerful Women panel session at the UK Presidency pavilion at 8am, and that proved to be worthwhile as it was a good discussion between the panellists, and you can see the write up of this here so no need for me to elaborate more, but just to say that it was good to hear that one of the recommendations that came out from the session was the need for collecting and monitoring diversity data. This is close to my heart because it is something I have been pushing the Professional Engineering Institutions to commit to doing for a while now, so that we can get a good global benchmark of gender disaggregated data from around the world. This recommendation is repeated constantly in reports, and is something that I have been asking for on behalf of WFEO for some time, but for some unknown reason it is consistently ignored. Maybe it's time to take this request to the next level, and indeed it is the subject of the 'Women Count' event on Tuesday at COP26 next week, so I am going to be looking for some allies there to progress this further.
This was followed by the WFEO (World Federation of Engineering Organisations – the organisation that I am representing here at COP26) – Younger Members/Future Leaders committee, who were basically launching their Climate Declaration, which can be seen here. A great panel, including Immediate Past President Rachel Skinner as moderator, and some of the fabulous younger members led by WFEO member Milda Pladaite. Congratulations to this group for a successful launch.
One of the really interesting things I attended today was the panel session on hydropower, which included panellists Malcolm Turnbull, former PM of Australia, who spoke about their Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, and a minister from Iceland who spoke of Iceland’s energy mix and their plans to stop using fossil fuel by 2030. It was facilitated by the CEO of the International Hydropower Association, and the group were discussing the San Jose Declaration on Sustainable Hydropower. It was interesting later to see the SSE plans, in the Green Zone, for a hydropower station at the Coire Glas development in the Great Glen, which would become the largest hydro project ever to be built in Scotland.
I also spent a couple of hours in a workshop run by Climate Fresk, who are basically storytellers / educationalists who use a series of information cards to get people to understand more about the how events related to climate change are inter-related, and how they connect with all areas of Sustainable Development. I think that this could be a really useful tool for us to use in education, and the workshop prompted great discussion amongst the group taking the workshop. From the facilitator I also learned about EAUC, a programme for sustainability leadership around carbon emissions measurement in education, which looks worth following up.
For the first time today I went over to see the exhibits in the Green (public) Zone of COP26, and have to say that it is not quite as impressive as I thought it would be, and not a patch on the Blue Zone, where there is so much going on, and so many informative panel sessions. The level of engagement was basic, and it’s a shame that some of the themes of the conference – such as Adaptation and resilience; Nature based solutions; Energy transitions; Clean transport; and Finance were not explored more.
Anyway, another good day, finished off with one the famous Glasgow Paesano pizzas.
You may be relieved to see that I am not going in tomorrow, so I will have a break from the blog. See you Saturday.
It was a pretty early start this morning as I wanted to get in for the Powerful Women panel session at the UK Presidency pavilion at 8am, and that proved to be worthwhile as it was a good discussion between the panellists, and you can see the write up of this here so no need for me to elaborate more, but just to say that it was good to hear that one of the recommendations that came out from the session was the need for collecting and monitoring diversity data. This is close to my heart because it is something I have been pushing the Professional Engineering Institutions to commit to doing for a while now, so that we can get a good global benchmark of gender disaggregated data from around the world. This recommendation is repeated constantly in reports, and is something that I have been asking for on behalf of WFEO for some time, but for some unknown reason it is consistently ignored. Maybe it's time to take this request to the next level, and indeed it is the subject of the 'Women Count' event on Tuesday at COP26 next week, so I am going to be looking for some allies there to progress this further.
This was followed by the WFEO (World Federation of Engineering Organisations – the organisation that I am representing here at COP26) – Younger Members/Future Leaders committee, who were basically launching their Climate Declaration, which can be seen here. A great panel, including Immediate Past President Rachel Skinner as moderator, and some of the fabulous younger members led by WFEO member Milda Pladaite. Congratulations to this group for a successful launch.
One of the really interesting things I attended today was the panel session on hydropower, which included panellists Malcolm Turnbull, former PM of Australia, who spoke about their Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, and a minister from Iceland who spoke of Iceland’s energy mix and their plans to stop using fossil fuel by 2030. It was facilitated by the CEO of the International Hydropower Association, and the group were discussing the San Jose Declaration on Sustainable Hydropower. It was interesting later to see the SSE plans, in the Green Zone, for a hydropower station at the Coire Glas development in the Great Glen, which would become the largest hydro project ever to be built in Scotland.
I also spent a couple of hours in a workshop run by Climate Fresk, who are basically storytellers / educationalists who use a series of information cards to get people to understand more about the how events related to climate change are inter-related, and how they connect with all areas of Sustainable Development. I think that this could be a really useful tool for us to use in education, and the workshop prompted great discussion amongst the group taking the workshop. From the facilitator I also learned about EAUC, a programme for sustainability leadership around carbon emissions measurement in education, which looks worth following up.
For the first time today I went over to see the exhibits in the Green (public) Zone of COP26, and have to say that it is not quite as impressive as I thought it would be, and not a patch on the Blue Zone, where there is so much going on, and so many informative panel sessions. The level of engagement was basic, and it’s a shame that some of the themes of the conference – such as Adaptation and resilience; Nature based solutions; Energy transitions; Clean transport; and Finance were not explored more.
Anyway, another good day, finished off with one the famous Glasgow Paesano pizzas.
You may be relieved to see that I am not going in tomorrow, so I will have a break from the blog. See you Saturday.
RSS Feed