Sustainable Silicon Valley is hosting the 3rd annual conference on May 24, 2012 at the Locatelli Conference Center at Santa Clara University.
The theme of the conference is Global Trade and Regional Resiliency and is centered on discussion of the Problems, Solutions and Implementation.
We are examining the current impact of climate change on global trade:
- What are the increased costs and risks due to more severe weather events and trade route interruption?
- How does increased climate volatility effect just in time trade arrangements that have relied on relatively low costs of transportation?
- We will explore how to monetize the risks associated with catastrophic loss or business interruption
We will also examine the solutions for regional resilience and prosperity in an era of uncertainty and risk, and how to implement these solutions:
- Tools, technology, smart resource management: water, energy and transportation
- What can global companies and networked regions do to build a global economy that can respond to climate shocks and can increase prosperity without diminishing the resilience of human and planetary life-support systems (agriculture, water, energy, transportation, etc)?
- Perhaps the goal should be to increase regional production and use of energy, water and materials, using local labor and distributed know-how
- Perhaps the competitive advantage of the future will be to those companies who have the least movement of components and finished goods, and distribution systems that optimize local sourcing, production and reuse rather than those with far flung and vulnerable supply chains