Innovations for Sustainable Future

June 22–24 2016, Prague

The CESB2016 is currently underway in Prague. 300 delegates are in attendance representing 48 countries.

NSCES Australia member Jenny Faddy, reports from Prague where she is attending the conference:   In one of the keynote talks, Raymond Cole from Canada expressed his frustration that in the past 20 years there has only been slow and incremental progress, despite the fact that the climate change scenarios thought to be possible 20 years ago are now known to be certain. He notes we are in the middle of a crisis and recommends a rethink of the language of sustainability to reflect this – from terms such as ‘mitigation’ and ‘adaptation’ to more inspirational language such as ‘regeneration’ and ‘dematerialization’. He urged that sustainability professionals start working from the bottom up and engage the community in order to make more rapid progress.

This need for urgency was echoed by the Czech Deputy Minister for the Environment who emphasised that the government is dedicating funding to address how to get innovative research into the marketplace more quickly.

Axel Fohl gave a history of the rise of industrial heritage conservation in Europe and there are some papers focussed on specific heritage case studies, however for the most part the conference is focussed on new materials and technologies.