This past week has been full of days, literally, to celebrate the role of environmental professionals. The week proved a valuable opportunity to take time out from my daily work to celebrate, share and network with other environmental and sustainability professionals.
Firstly, Monday (5 June 2017) was World Environment Day, a global event organised by the United Nations with the theme of “Connecting People to Nature”. The event urged us to get outdoors and into nature, to appreciate its beauty and to think about how we are part of nature and how intimately we depend on it. It challenged us to find fun and exciting ways to experience and cherish this vital relationship.
My contribution to this global event was to celebrate the great people who I have worked with on exciting projects that have made a real and lasting environment change, both nationally and internationally.
My particular connection with nature is the Sussex shoreline in southern England, that I love so much & has been a part of my life from my earliest childhood days and has given me the privilege to work on a number of projects to improve the water environment.
As part of the celebration of the day, I attended to United Kingdom’s Society for the Environment (SocEnv) conference to hear how, we all can value our shared environment.
One particular issue was the challenge to communicate clear messages about environmental and sustainability issues outside of the profession and into the wider community.
This is an issue that we can all make renewed and greater efforts to ensure that there are clear messages on environmental issues especially in a post-Brexit world.
It was an honour that the Society featured my video on their webpage celebrating the Day’s events. A copy of my video can be viewed here
Second up was National Freelancers Day (Thursday, 8 June 2017) celebrating the most enterprising types of business: the United Kingdom’s 2 million independent professionals.
I attended the ipse (The Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed) conference and share networking with other professionals in masterclasses, seminars and workshops on how to win work, build relationships with my clients & working globally in a post-Brexit world.
Finally, Friday (9 June 2017) was World Accreditation Day, which focused on the theme of delivering confidence in construction and the built environment. I have closely worked within the accreditation and certification community to deliver Environmental Management Systems certification, Greenhouse Gas verification and Eco-Labelling as well as international support to International Standardization Organization (ISO), the European Co-operation for Accreditation (EA) and the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) to help communicate the clear benefits to the wider community.
After this hectic week of celebrations, it is, now, time to apply my newly found vigour from the networking events to reaffirm and reinvigorate my consultancy especially within the opportunities for clearer environmental and sustainability communication, which I have been working on over the past months.