‘Eco-preneurs’ Offers Solutions to Climate Crisis before Summit

In the lead-up to COP22, the Climate Change Summit in Marrakech next November, Birzeit University’s Center for Continuing Education is joining 15 countries from across the world and taking part in “Ecopreneurs for the Climate 2016,” the Global Week of Green Business and the Climate Movement.

The center, in collaboration with the Environment Quality Authority, held a one-day event bringing together “ecopreneurs,” small and medium enterprises, activists and non-governmental organizations, and experts to identify climate-related challenges faced by communities and outline green business opportunities to address them.

According to a press release published by the Ecopreneurs for the Climate press office, the Global Week of Green Business and the Climate movement aims at boosting the creation and scaling-up the impact of cooperative, sustainable and sound businesses solving the climate riddle.

The one-day event included two key parts: a Climate Innovation Lab where ecopreneurs, green companies, civil society organizations will come together to identify local climate challenges and outline inspiring sustainable business solutions to address them, and the Climate Champion Awards where pre-selected ecopreneurs will pitch their projects, products or services, to an expert jury and a diverse audience. The winner will be competing in the Marrakesh Summit next month.

Vice President for Community Outreach Assim Khalil in his inauguration speech underscored Birzeit University’s commitment to the issue of environment and climate change. Building on the event, Khalil said that the university will potentially evolve into a permanent climate innovation lab, where multi-stakeholder co-creation sessions, coupled with online crowdsourcing, will mainstream climate-championing sustainable businesses; and import, export, and replicate high-impact models from across this expanding global movement.

Several papers and discussions were presented throughout the day seeking to empower ecopreneurs to provide their communities with sound business solutions to strengthen green economy ecosystems and business networks around them.