As part of the launch year of the University's societal challenge theme on sustainability, we held a series of events to mirror the process of the Rio+20 Earth Summit in late 2011. Using the themes of the roundtable events being held in the run-up to the Earth Summit, we held three preparatory events in November, culminating in a large, two-day event on 15 and 16 December 2011.
These events were open to staff and students across campus, school groups from secondary schools and colleges across the region and the general public.
The Planet Earth Institute endorsed these events, and we were fortunate enough to secure generous sponsorship from Northumbrian Water Limited and Port of Tyne.
The outcomes from each of the preparatory events can be found on our blogsite via the links below.
In parallel with the events, we also ran a competition for one Newcastle University student to win a place to attend the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 in person and to report back live on developments at the Summit, thanks to the generosity of Northumbrian Water. The standard of the competition was exceptionally high, and it took the judging panel several hours to be able to come to a final decision.
We are delighted to be able to announce that Ed Byers, a PhD student from the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, won the competition and that we have also been successful in securing funding for the students who finished second and third in the competition (James Robinson, an MEng student from School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences and Claire Chisholm, a student on the BA Combined Honours programme respectively) to join Ed in Rio. You can read the selected and shortlisted entries from the competition, and follow Ed, James and Claire's progress towards and at the Earth Summit, by visiting our blog site at http://sustainabilityncl.wordpress.com/ or by visiting this page.