The VIU partnership with Alcantara aims to promote inter-disciplinary and inter-stakeholder debate on sustainability, in order to meet some of the greatest challenges faced by society nowadays.
The initiatives for sustainable challenges and opportunities involve major experts from Academia, Industry and the Media, to foster the debate among them and open it up to the public. The different stakeholders are called to bring experiences, empirical evidences and institutional positions on challenges and opportunities for sustainable development, such as climate change.
The International Symposium
These intentions culminate in the organization of an annual International Symposium, where top‐level international speakers coming from prestigious companies and institutions discuss the subject from different angles, bringing in the experience in their own specific fields and growing their mutual understanding.
To date, five editions have been realized:
5th Edition: Climate "How": How to Engage Society and Deploy Decarbonization (2019);
4th Edition: Coping with Changes: Global Warming and Decarbonization (2018);
3rd Edition: Sustainability and Corporate Value (2016, held in Tokyo, with the collaboration of Nikkei, VIU and Waseda University);
2nd Edition: The automotive ecosystem on the global road to sustainability, the Asian perspective (2015);
1st Edition: Sustainability and automotive value chain (2014).
The initiative focuses on three main focus areas, by investigating, through different activities, some of their key issues:
- Policy Makers, Citizens and Consumers
- Corporations
- Finance
