THE long-awaited Sustainable Brands Kuala Lumpur Conference 2022 (SB’22KL) launched today with keynote speeches and lectures from industry experts worldwide.
The conference theme is “Build Back Better: Learning from Our Past in Designing a More Sustainable Future Future,” a clear nod to United States President Joe Biden’s ambitious policy framework.
In a press release, Sharmini Nagulan, the conference convenor and managing director of Acacia Blue said, “as we return to 'normalcy', it is critical to slow down and connect the dots again. We need to relearn from the stories that have shaped our current reality to write a better story for our future.
“This is why the theme for SB'22KL centres around the need to draw on all the wisdom that we can glean from our past, to remind ourselves what we have learned from both the successes and failures of history.”
A highlight of today’s conference was Sunway Centre for Planetary Health professor and director Tan Sri Dr Jemilah Mahmood’s keynote speech titled “Planetary Health: Towards A New Development Paradigm”. She put to task governments and private companies responsible for being the top polluters and emitters of greenhouse gases.
“Behind these companies [are] people – people who every day consciously make the decision to wilfully damage the longer-term prospects of the planet over short-term profits.
“The same people who profit from these planetary destructive decisions may not be the ones who are most impacted... [but] ordinary folks whose agencies [are] admittedly limited by the existing structure that profits these rent-seeking elites.”
Dr Jemilah calls for a paradigm shift in the way we approach our economic systems.
“Central to the planetary health concept is doughnut economics and [a] new economic model that operates within a safe and just space for humanity, in which there are no breaches of the ecological ceiling, nor shortfalls below the basic social foundation for humanity, or more simply the provision of life's essential services.”
She highlighted high-income countries within the Asia Pacific region such as Australia and Singapore that have met their citizen's essential needs but are responsible for “violating the ecological ceiling,” as well as middle-income countries like Philippines that have managed to preserve their ecosystem but are facing shortcomings in their social foundation.
In her closing remarks, she calls on audiences to consider their role in pushing for greater collective action.
“The reason I'm here today is to urge you all to consider what you can do because it all comes down to individual behavioural changes to trigger collective action,” she added.
Dr Jemilah served as the special advisor to the Prime Minister of Malaysia on Public Health during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The conference continues tomorrow with more lectures and panel discussions. To take part, visit https://sustainablebrandskl.com. – The Vibes, June 21, 2022
