Future leaders from 11 countries gathered at Tongji to discuss about resource efficiency and sustainable development and celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Flagship Project

With the joint efforts of Tongji University, UN Environment, Hanns Seidel  Foundation and Key Laboratory of Cities' Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change in Shanghai (CMACCS) of China Meteorological Administration, the 15th Asia-Pacific Leadership Programme (APLP) on Environment for Sustainable Development under the theme of “Resource Efficiency and Sustainable Development” was successfully inaugurated on September 17th at the UN Environment-Tongji Institute of Environment for Sustainable Development (IESD). 32 participants from 11 countries including Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Vietnam, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, China, France, Mongolia, and Zimbabwe participated in the programme this year. Most of the participants are middle and above representatives of the government, international organizations, universities, NGO, and enterprises. The seminar was diversified and invited experts from the UN Environment, United Nations University, Asian Institute of Technology, Tongji University, and the Asian Sustainable Development Organization to give lectures.

At the opening ceremony, Prof. Wu Jiang, Executive Vice President of Tongji University delivered welcome remarks on behalf of Tongji University. At the 15th anniversary of the ceremony, he welcomed students and lecturers from afar, and introduced Tongji’s efforts in promoting sustainable development education. Mr. Mahesh Pradhan from International Environmental Technology Centre of UN Environment gave a welcome speech, and introduced the development course as well as the opportunities and challenges the programme is faced with over the past 15 years and shared the related work of UN Environment. Mr. Surendra Shrestha, former director of the Asia-Pacific Office of the United Nations Environment Programme explains the challenges facing during the promotion of sustainable production and consumption from a dream-goal-plan-action-result system and encourages future leaders to jump out of their comfort zone and explore a more exciting world outside. 

Professor Li Fengting, Executive Deputy Dean of IESD and Vice Dean of the College of Environmental Science and Engineering hosted the opening ceremony. In the afternoon, experts from UN Environment, University of New South Wales, University of Wollongong, Ministry of Environment of Japan, Tongji University, discussed over the topic of "Asia-pacific Leadership for Sustainable Development" and interacted with the students actively.

Since 2004, APLP was held at the Tongji University once a year, and it is the 15th year of the program. So far, more than 400 emerging leaders from 50 countries and regions have joined in the meeting and benefited from this annual leadership program at IESD, of which more than 30 countries are from the Asia-Pacific. The leadership program has also attracted participants from North America, Africa, Europe to share their experiences in the field of environment and sustainable development.

During the one-week course, experts will interact with participants around topics such as human, environmental, social, and economic dimensions, and make use of the Pyramid Sustainability model to make interaction and explain the concept of leadership about sustainable development. The instructional modes would be diversified with an integrated form of lectures, case study, group discussion, expert interactions, model practice, and field investigation to explain the ideas of sustainable development to the students.