I spent the last three days at the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Summit hosted by Mayor Jackson. For us sustainability nerds, it was a high to spend half of the week with like-minded cohorts, working together to design the most sustainable future Cleveland that we can collectively imagine.
We heard from Mayor Jackson, Van Jones (author of Green Collar Economy), David Cooperrider, Dr. Peter Senge of MIT, Marc Lautenback of IBM, Ray Anderson of Interface, and Holden Shannon of Continental. But perhaps most importantly, our group of leaders (from government, non-profits, for-profits, sister cities, NGOs, etc) followed the Appreciative Inquiry process to build from Cleveland’s strengths to develop prototypes and strategies for creating the sustainable Cleveland of tomorrow.
Some of the prototypes that we came up with can be implemented right now. And the resounding message from the Summit was that people are willing and devoted to starting the projects that they created in their groups as soon as they can. We realized that the momentum gained at this unique gathering could not be lost with the passage of time. This is too important. The health and prosperity of our people, our environment, our economy and our city is too important to deprioritize.
