is the international forum...

• for innovators and pioneers, designers and planners, policy makers and administrators, professionals and business people, environmentalists and developers, teachers and students;
• of sustainable cities, towns and villages of the future;
• from theory to the application of all things related to the ecological city 

5 themes 

 

A partner of ECOCITY, LEGO will bring 1  million Lego blocks for children to build their sustainable city during 5 days. For the occasion, ECOCITY will leave La Cité to occupy the Nefs, next to the Great Elephant and the «Galerie des Machines ». From schools and high schools to leisure centres and families, 3,500 to 4,000 children will take part in this gigantic construction work!

 

Janez Potočnik serves as European Commissioner for Environment. He was formerly Slovenia's Minister for European Affairs. Potočnik believes in the development of an information society to create prosperity. He aims to develop the European Research Area (ERA), a system of scientific research programmes integrating the scientific resources of the European Union. Since its inception in 2000, the structure has been concentrated on multinational cooperation in the fields of medical, environmental, industrial, and socioeconomic research.

Delphine Batho is France's Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development, and Energy. The Ministry is responsible for State Environmental Policy (Preservation of Biodiversity, Climate Kyoto Protocol Application, Environmental Control of industries, etc.), Transportation (air, road, railway and sea regulation departments), Sea, and Housing Policy.

Cynthia Rosenzweig is a Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where she heads the Climate Impacts Group. She is Co-Director of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) and Co-Editor of the First UCCRN Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities (ARC3), the first-ever global, interdisciplinary, cross-regional, science-based assessment to address climate risks, adaptation, mitigation, and policy mechanisms relevant to cities. She is the founder of AgMIP, a major international collaborative effort to assess the state of global agricultural modeling, understand climate impacts on the agricultural sector, and enhance adaptation capacity, as it pertains to food security, in developing and developed countries. She was named as one of "Nature's 10: Ten People Who Mattered in 2012" by the science journal Nature.

Ecocity theoretician, author, hands-on and policy project instigator, international lecturer and consultant, Richard Register is considered to be the pioneer of the ecocity movement, with 40 years of experience advocating for cities that facilitate humanity's creative and compassionate evolution while contributing to the health of the planet. His book, "Ecocities - Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature," is course material in design, planning and architecture schools. Richard is the founder of International Ecocity Conference Series, also known as Ecocity World Summit, the world's premiere and longest running conference series on the subject of ecological cities, towns and villages. He argues that "cities are the largest systems that humans build, and we can build them to contribute to humanity's creative and compassionate evolution on a healthy planet, in exciting and rewarding built communities from the village scale to the city scale."

Rob Hopkins is the founder of the Transition movement, a radically hopeful and community-driven approach to creating societies independent of fossil fuel. Transition communities have started up projects in areas of food, transport, energy, education, housing, waste, arts etc. as small-scale local responses to the global challenges of climate change, economic hardship and shrinking supplies of cheap energy. Together, these small-scale responses make up something much bigger, and help show the way forward for governments, business and the rest of us. Hopkins is the author of The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience (2008), and The Transition Companion (2011). He was the winner of the 2008 Schumacher Award, is an Ashoka Fellow, served 3 years as a Trustee of the Soil Association, and was named by the Independent as one of the UK's top 100 environmentalists.

Ronan Dantec is Senator of Loire-Atlantique. He is former Vice President of Nantes Metropole and Deputy Mayor at the city of Nantes for Environment and Sustainable Development. Dantec is the chair of the EUROCITIES Working Group on Climate Change. In that position he initiated the EUROCITIES declaration. Dantec advocates for a territorial (regional) approach for cities in developing countries, with coherent actions in transport policies, water and waste management and urban planning. "A consistent territorial approach is the condition of efficient actions against climate change. As such, cities will tomorrow have the possibility to find new incomes for their climate actions through CDM and the Green Fund for Climate."

Mayor Nawandish was appointed Mayor of Kabul by the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in January, 2010, and governs a City of an estimated five million. Since taking office, the Mayor has initiated an aggressive program of municipal improvements in streets, parks, greenery, revenue collection, environmental control, and solid waste management.

Joesph Roig is Secretary General of UCLG (United Cities and Local Governments), an umbrella organisation for cities, local governments and municipal associations throughout the world. United Cities and Local Governments was founded in 2004, when the existing local government organisations - the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA), the United Towns Organisations (UTO) and Metropolis - united their respective global networks of cities and national associations of local governments in a single organisation (FCMU). United Cities and Local Governments' headquarters, the World Secretariat, is based in Barcelona, Spain. UCLG is the largest local government organisation in the world and understands itself as the united voice and world advocate of democratic local self-government, de facto representing over half the world's population. The cities and association members of UCLG are present in over 120 UN Member States across seven world regions.

David Cadman is President of the international organization 'ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability' an international organization of nearly 1000 local governments who have made a commitment to sustainability. In this function he heads the ICLEI Executive Committee, representing the organization to other international bodies. He has been serving as a Councillor at the City of Vancouver BC, Canada since 2004, and has been awarded the UN Peace Medal and UN 50th Anniversary Medal. A social and environmental activist, Cadman is a member of Coalition of Progressive Electors.

Cécile Duflot is Minister of Territorial Equality and Housing in the Ayrault Cabinet. Until June 2012, she was Party Secretary of Europe Ecology - The Greens, a position she held from November 2006 and was, with Jean-Luc Bennahmias, the only Green leader to have served two consecutive terms. During her first term, she worked to establish Europe Écologie for the European Elections of 2009. In 2010, she was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers, for taking Green mainstream.

Fabrice Bonnifet is the Sustainability Director & QSE (Quality, Safety and Environment) of the Bouygues Group. He leads and coordinates the sustainable development strategy of the Group and participates in support of responsible purchasing, eco-design, and implementation of collaborative information systems. Bonnifet is also Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sustainable Development (C3D) and Director of The Shift Project.

Philippe de FONTAINE VIVE CURTAZ is Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB). On the EIB's Management Committee, his responsibilities include borrowing and treasury policies, the Bank's capital market activities, and financing operations in France and under the Facility for Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership (FEMIP). Before arriving at the EIB, Mr de Fontaine Vive pursued his career at the French Treasury, most recently as Director of the State and Economy Financing Department.

Valérie David,

Director of Sustainable Development Department, Group Eiffage

 
Jean Jouzel is a French glaciologist and climatologist. He is a world renowned specialist in major climatic shifts based on his analysis of Antarctic and Greenland ice. He received with Claude Lorius the CNRS gold medal, the highest French scientific award. A devoted laboratory scientist, Jouzel belongs to that community of scientists who are convinced - and concerned - by the extent of the problem posed by the rising concentrations of green-house gases associated with human activities and the urgent need to analyze all its facets. Acutely aware of the "extreme complexity" of "the thermal machine that is our planet, a system controlled by a large number of interactions between various reservoirs (the atmosphere, oceans, hydrosphere, biosphere, etc.) that have an impact over a very wide range of time scales (from one day to thousands of years) and spaces (from local and regional to a global scale)", Jouzel nevertheless takes pains to stress "the advances and discoveries that have been achieved" in his field over the last ten years, as well as "the contributions of paleo-data" to the debate on the evolution of the future climate: "an understanding of past climates will enable us to essentially situate current variations in a broader context."

Kirstin Miller, Executive Director, Ecocity Builders

Kirstin leads California based NGO Ecocity Builders' program development, global initiatives and activities. She works internationally to establish access to ecocity knowledge, integrating experiences from a diverse range of perspectives. She helps link separate knowledge pools through joint research, consulting services, and partnerships, develops mutual understanding of ecocity goals, and helps implement knowledge in new settings, including coordinating joint partnerships, projects and work plans. Kirstin is an international speaker and presenter on ecocity design, technology, development and citizen participation.

 

 

ECOCITIES ARE RESILIENT CITIES 

British Columbia Institute of Technology School of Construction and the Environment is Lead Sponsor of the International Ecocity Framework and Standards Initiative