CES - Celebrating 20 years

Glancing Back & Looking Forward, 26 June 2012

In 1992 the Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES) was established by Professor Roland Clift in a portakabin in the University of Surrey’s grounds, with just three staff. In 2012 CES celebrated it first twenty years with an event: Glancing Back & Looking Forward.

Glancing Back & Looking Forward gave around 250 Alumni, leading figures from industry and government and ex staff, together with members of CES and the University, an opportunity to reflect on the progress the Centre has made in its first twenty years and how it can help to shape responses to the major sustainability challenges that lie ahead.  Central in the day’s events were twelve workshops, each chaired by a leading expert, where practitioners and researchers identified the key challenges for important industrial and economic sectors and defined the research and training needs for a ‘sustainable’ future.

Highlights from these workshops including key challenges and future research needs, and other outcomes from the event, can be seen on the workshop page, as progress is made in these areas this site will be updated to reflect these developments.

The evening’s events started with Keynote talks by Sara Parkin, Founding Director of Forum for the Future, and CES’ Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development.  A lively and interesting question and answer panel discussion followed, within the overall theme: “How a research and training organisation can help to shape responses to the major sustainability challenges that lie ahead”. The panel was chaired by Surrey’s Professor Jim Al-Khalili, with panel members drawn from the University, public and private sectors, research organisations and NGOs.