Episode 1. Circular Economics and Sustainability Week Geneva

In this joint episode with Collaborate for Social Innovation, Olivier interviews Lorenzo Niola, the Head of Ecosystem Development at Hatch CoLab. Hatch CoLab accelerates the development and scaling up of technologies to solve sustainability issues. It helps startups work with international organisations to develop their technologies and make real change possible. The student contributor for this episode was Matthieu Guillier, a master student at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, and codirector of Collaborate for Social Innovation, a contest bringing together young professionals, students and international organizations to create solutions to current challenges. He added his insight on the pros and cons of applying social innovation to environmental issues, citing his favorite previous entries by contestants.

In this episode, Anna and Olivier interviewed Chris Jones, a landscape architect who is opening urban farms in countries throughout the world. He hopes to place circularity and sustainable food systems at the heart of these areas, while also providing quality produce for all. The student contributor for this episode was Jarrod Suda, a Master’s student in International Affairs at IHEID, who added his personal insight on the topic after having done a summer of farming with four families and entrepreneurs across Switzerland.

To commemorate the release of 170 Actions to combat climate change brochure produced by the Perception Change Project in partnership with the EC, Anna and Olivier interviewed Tatiana Valovaya, the Director General of the UNOG, about the foreseen environmental impacts of Covid-19. They discussed the role of the UN in implementing policies to reduce global emissions and the important lessons that have come out of this pandemic that may lead to more sustainable environmental solutions.

Dans ce nouvel épisode de The Ecologist, Anna et Olivier discutent avec leurs invités de l'économie verte et de ses limites comme alternative pour protéger notre environnement. On explore ses liens avec la RSE et l'industrie du lithium, en plus de discuter de modèles d'entrepreunariat durable en Amérique Latine.

In this episode, Anna and Olivier discuss the impacts of tourism and how sustainable tourism can be a less impactful way to travel. To explore the subject, we host Ben Gill, who has been working on sustainable tourism projects for more than 15 years with a charity named Bioregional. Pablo, a Graduate Institute’s student from Indonesia, talks about the effects of tourism on his home country.

This first episode explores the broad theme of sustainability by addressing a transformative idea: the circular economy. Later on, Anna and Olivier discuss with two students from the Université de Genève about the upcoming Sustainability Week in Geneva.