From July 11 to 13, 2011 high dignitaries from various international organizations and companies met in Tel Aviv for a special conference organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and under the patronage of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Executive Secretary of UNECE, Mr. Ján Kubiš, as well as Gilad Erdan, Minister of Environmental Protection of Israel, Brice Lalonde, Executive Coordinator for the UN Conference for Sustainable Development, and other professionals in the area of Eco-Innovation met to find a solution on how to "do more with less". Indeed, in today's world, it is fundamental to find innovative and creative solutions to efficiently use our scarce resources in a world in which expectations and demands are increasingly high. Eco-Innovations are therefore "product, process or organizational innovations that contribute to the economic, environmental and social pillars of sustainability."
As explained by senior representatives during the conference, we now have the resources and capabilities to find common solutions to the issue of resource constraints. In fact, thanks to an improved cooperation between countries, including the sharing of information, research & development, technologies and workforce, eco-innovations will be more efficient and easily implemented across Europe and the world.
The conference to promote such technologies was divided in three main parts:
- "Eco-Innovation: What role for public policies," which included such subjects as how to overcome barriers and difficulties in the implementation of eco-innovation technologies, as well the links between innovation, environmental and energy policies.
- "Fostering collaboration for successful eco-innovation," which focused on how the private and public sectors as well as the different stakeholders could collaborate to benefit the society.
- "Financing eco-innovation," which raised questions such as who would be responsible for what and how could the private sectors contribute to such important projects.
The conference was highly successful and the main conclusion of this event will be used for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in June 2012, marking the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), in Rio de Janeiro, and the 10th anniversary of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg.