International Confex Keynote: Delivering COP26

In this Day 1 session, Kathleen Warden, director of conference sales at SEC and David Zolkwer, project director of COP26, at Identity agency, discuss the challenges of delivery, the significance of the event itself and its impact and legacy for Glasgow, the host destination, as well as for the UK as a whole. “Sustainability has gone from a soft subject, to a hard subject,” Warden commented. Before the pandemic, SEC employed a sustainability and waste manager and is continuing to advance its sustainability strategy, which Warden states will be “a great legacy for COP26”. As a high profile event, the world is watching COP26. “It is going to be held accountable,” says Zolkwer. “Sustainability is quite a challenge because it makes good business sense, but it increasingly becomes a moral and ethical issue. There is no end to the sustainability journey,” he added. Warden noted conferences were enablers of social and economic change. “COP26 is all about the purpose and the purpose of the event is to take the agreement set out in Paris and turn it into a reality. It’s a perfect event that enables social, economic and environmental progress,” she said.