UWTSD hosts its second Harmony Conference in Lampeter

Entitled What is the Relationship Between Harmony and Sustainability?, students are being given the opportunity to hear the thoughts of four leading activists and environmental commentators – David Cadman, John Sauven, Tony Juniper and Peter Davies  – all of whom are Harmony Professors of Practice at UWTSD.

The four Professors will open the event by giving a short statement on the theme of Harmony before discussing their views in a series of Question and Answer sessions with students from disciplines across the University.

Students will also present papers on a range of Harmony themes and discuss a variety of perspectives with the eminent Professors of Practice.  Lecturers from a range of subject areas will also be presenting case studies linked to Harmony.

The event will take place on UWTSD’s Lampeter campus, on Thursday, March 2nd and Friday, March 3rd with Thursday’s activities taking place in the Arts Hall and Friday’s events taking place in the Founders’ Library.  The conference has been organised in partnership with the University’s Institute of Sustainable Practice, Innovation and Resource Effectiveness (INSPIRE), the Sophia Centre for the study of Cosmology in Culture, and Schumacher College.

The conference is open to all staff and students and members of the public are also welcome to attend. During the Thursday afternoon, the conference will have an added international flavour too with staff and students from St Michael’s College, Vermont, participating in the event through Skype.

Dr Nicholas Campion, Director of UWTSD’s Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture and Conference Chair said: “The University is proud to host another day in its series on Harmony with the University’s Harmony Professors of Practice. The University has been developing policies and teaching related to sustainability in recent years – we are now interested in developing the philosophical notion of Harmony within the curriculum and in connection with the wider community.”

Dr Jane Davidson, Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor at UWTSD and the Director of INSPIRE added: “We have been developing Sustainability at UWTSD through the ‘Four C’s’ – Culture, Curriculum, Campus and Community. We now propose to explore how we can extend these ideas to Harmony.

“It’s important that we work out solutions between us and the essence of the Harmony Conference is to debate, to discuss and to make decisions on action.”

About the speakers:

David Cadman

David Cadman is a Quaker writer. He has held a number of professorial chairs and is now a Visiting Professor at University College London and the University of Maryland. He is a Professor of Practice at the University of Wales Trinity St. David. He is a Trustee of The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts and a Fellow of The Temenos Academy, of which His Royal Highness is Patron.

David Cadman’s recent publications include Speeches and Articles 1968-2012, of which he was co-editor.

This is a collection of speeches and articles of The Prince of Wales, published by the University of Wales, Love Matters, published by Zig Publishing, 2014, Finding Elsewhere, a collection of stories for our time, published by Zig Publishing, 2015 and Why Love Matters, of which he was co-editor, published by Peter Land, 2016. His work can be found at www.lovematters.uk.com .

Tony Juniper

Tony Juniper is an independent sustainability and environment adviser, including as Special Advisor with the Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit , Fellow with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and as co-founder of sustainability consultancy group Robertsbridge. He is President of the Wildlife Trusts, President of the Society for the Environment and a trustee of Fauna and Flora International and Resurgence-Ecologist.

Juniper speaks and writes widely on conservation and sustainability themes and is the author of many books, including the multi-award winning best-seller What has Nature ever done for us? published in 2013. He began his career as an ornithologist, working with Birdlife International. From 1990 he worked at Friends of the Earth, initially leading the campaign for the tropical rainforests, and from 2003-2008 was the organisation’s executive director. From 2000-2008 he was Vice Chair of Friends of the Earth International. Juniper was the first recipient of the Charles and Miriam Rothschild medal (2009) and was awarded honorary Doctor of Science degrees from the Universities of Bristol and Plymouth (2013). His latest book, What is really happening to our planet?: the facts simply explained, will be published in June 2016.

John Sauven

John Sauven is the Executive Director of Greenpeace UK. With a background in forests he was instrumental in getting protection for the Great Bear temperate rainforest in Canada. It was an epic battle between logging companies, timber traders and their retail customers in Europe and North America.

John Sauven co-ordinated the international campaign to secure a moratoria on further destruction of the Amazon by soya producers and later similar tactics were used to get a cattle moratorium. Similar tactics were used elsewhere to tackle the drivers of deforestation including for paper and palm oil in Indonesia. Ultimately it changed the supply chains of many of the world’s biggest corporations. It was one of Greenpeace’s most successful campaigns to protect large areas of the world’s last intact rainforests providing both climate and biodiversity protection as well as local peoples livelihoods. In 2010 John Sauven started the campaign to protect the Arctic from oil exploration. It turned into a heroic battle first with Russia’s Gazprom and then Shell. In 2015 Shell pulled out of the Arctic.

Peter Davies

Peter’s career background is in the field of corporate responsibility working for the Confederation of British Industry, Department of Trade and Industry and Business in the Community.

Awarded the OBE in 1995 for work in establishing links between business and education under the DTI’s Enterprise Initiative Peter was Managing Director at Business in the Community UK from 1995 to 2005 . He returned home to Wales in 2005 and was appointed Commissioner for Wales and Vice Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, providing independent advice to the Welsh and UK Governments.

Following the closure of the UK Commission Welsh Government appointed him as Wales’ first Sustainable Futures Commissioner in April 2011. He played a lead role in the development of the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act, particularly through leading the national conversation on the Wales we Want. He stepped down from this role in February 2016 with the appointment of the Future Generations Commissioner as established by the Act.

He was also appointed to be the first independent chair of the Climate Change Commission for Wales in 2011 and carrying out this role through to March 2016.

Peter has undertaken a range of consultancy projects since 2005 including as consultant to the Prince’s Charities in Wales and St James Ethics Centre corporate responsibility research programme in Australia. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Institute for Sustainability and Resource Effectiveness (INSPIRE) at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in 2011.

His project portfolio focused on working in support of communities, citizens and consumers and includes chairing the Wales Council for Voluntary Action, Welsh Water’s Customer Challenge Group and the Size of Wales charity, being a Director of Pembrokeshire Community Energy and a member of the BT Wales Advisory Board.

The Harmony Conference will take place at UWTSD Lampeter on Thursday, March 2nd and Friday, March 3rd and is open to members of the public as well as the University community.

For further information, please visit http://www.harmonyinitiative.net/event-harmony-inspire-2-3-march-2017.php ,

Further Information

For further information, please contact Sian-Elin Davies by emailing sian-elin.davies@uwtsd.ac.uk / 01267 676908 / 07449 998476