September 20, 2021 – The second international conference of the Croatian Chamber of Economy on sustainability and socially responsible business “Podržimo održivo_2021” was held in Šibenik on 16 – 17 September, with Oikon as a proud program partner.
„Through a selection of world-class speakers and top topics, the conference focused on what is truly important, and that is a profound and comprehensive change in business, financing and management, as a joint package of investments in a sustainable future and changing the ‘lala’ approach and clichés in the communication of today’s serious problems,“ explained the program director of the conference Andreja Pavlović, also our head of Department of Nature Protection and Landscape Architecture and president of the HGK Corporate Social Responsibility Association, adding that: „Oikon is a program partner and a partner, meaning that it provides multiple contributions to the activities of the Corporate Social Responsibility Association, which initiated the collaborative platform HGK_COR AKCELERATOR, within which the conference was held for the second time.”
Prominent sustainability leaders, business, finance and sustainability experts, public policy and social change hacking experts, futurists, designers, communication and market research experts spoke at the conference, presenting the complex realities of the world and the ways in which the business community should and can respond to crises such as the climate, economic or pandemic of COVID-19, which can no longer be addressed individually, but only jointly.
A special block was dedicated to sustainability communication, understanding the origins and underpinnings of the Sustainable Development Goals communication system and its potential for shaping authentic, simple and accessible sustainability communication, context and emotional underpinnings driven by MillZ and Alpha generations, visual and textual clichés in communicating sustainability with recommendations for solutions as well as the potential for communicating change using different platforms. The block dedicated to education for sustainable development showed the importance of understanding how today’s generations learn and adopt knowledge and skills, strengthening their ability to influence decision-makers, connecting local communities and academia in creating future occupations.
Two keynote speakers at the conference were former Unilever CEO and sustainability leader Paul Polman, who pointed out that even before the pandemic it was clear that the system was not working and that we had failed to tackle two key issues during 2019 financial crisis – the climate crisis and inequality. World-renowned graphic designer Jakob Trollbäck showed the way to visually and communicatively simplify and refine the meaning of 17 Sustainable Development Goals that explain what we need to care about, while only 169 sub-goals tell us exactly what we need to do, and how he visually portrayed them as „the periodic table of the elements of the world“.
More information about the conference can be found at: https://corakcelerator.hgk.hr/podrzimo-odrzivo
