What is Summit 21?

This free online event explores how we collaborate to connect government and industry to tackle our biggest global challenges while creating resilience and wellbeing.
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Watch and find out how the circular economy gives us the tools to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss, with the power to grow prosperity.

This year is about transformation

Transformation: noun. a complete change in someone or something
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What will it take to transform our throwaway economy into one where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated?
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The circular economy is a transformation of the system, one that gives us tools to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss together, while addressing important social needs. It gives us the power to grow prosperity, jobs, and resilience while cutting greenhouse gas emissions, waste, and pollution.
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This Summit will explore the changes this transformation will take, and how we can work together to create them.

Fix the economy, fix the climate

Join us to hear Dame Ellen MacArthur in conversation with former Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC Christiana Figueres on how the circular economy can tackle climate change. Chile’s Minister of the Environment Carolina Schmidt Zaldivar will also take the mic to share her experience leading Chile’s circular economy roadmap to address environmental challenges while creating opportunities for economic growth.
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We’ll also be joined by Felipe Villela, founder and COO of regenerative agriculture accelerator ReNature, to explore why tackling climate change and biodiversity loss relies on connecting smallholder farms to industrial supply chains. And we'll see firsthand how regenerative farming practices are being used in Kenya, to benefit people and the environment, in one of two short films of the session.
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Nestlé CEO Mark Schneider, Unilever President of Foods & Refreshment Hanneke Faber, and Walmart Executive VP and Chief Sustainability Officer Charles Redfield will make up a panel of experts to reflect on the role of big business in driving fundamental change in the food system.

Growth in a circular economy

Join us to hear from Erin Billman, Executive Director of the Science Based Targets Network, on the importance of using data to measure the impact we are having on the environment today and how this can be used as a baseline from which fundamental change can be made.
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We’ll also be joined by Wolfgang Blau, former Global COO at Condé Nast and now Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University, in conversation with Dame Ellen MacArthur to answer the question ‘what if we optimised to grow ecosystem value?’ Financial Times Consumer Industries Correspondent Judith Evans will host a panel on investment in the circular economy with Audrey Choi, Chief Sustainability Officer at Morgan Stanley, and Paul Bodnar, Global Head of Sustainable Investing at BlackRock. And, PVH Chief Supply Chain Officer Bill McRaith, IKEA Global Supply Chain Operations Manager Susanne Waidzunas, and H&M Head of Supply Chain David Savman will discuss how global supply chains can be redesigned to facilitate growth that not only generates profit but creates more inclusive and equal societies while tackling environmental issues.

Shifting the system

Join us to hear from Lucy Parker, Senior Partner at Brunswick Group, Mariana Mazzucato, Professor and Founding Director at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, and James Quincey, CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, as they discuss how we actually ‘do’ systems-level change.
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They will be followed by Jyrki Katainen, former Prime Minister of Finland and now President of Finnish Innovation Fund SITRA, who will highlight systems change that is already happening and what happens when the market starts to transform itself. And, MIT Technology Review Editor at Large David Rotman will be joined by Alan Aspuru-Guzik, Professor of Chemistry and Computer Science at the University of Toronto, and Sheila Kennedy, Professor of Architecture at MIT, to look to the future and discuss the role of AI and advanced manufacturing technologies in designing ecosystem destruction out of all systems entirely.

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