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TEDxPedition Beijing Conference was held in Kempinski Hotel on September 5th. The speaker addressed their speeches within 18 minutes each.
Before the sessions began, Leon Chen and Michael Naylor delivered their opening remarks.

President of TedxPedition, Founder of Suchen   Leon Chen

Leon was born in Sichuan province, China. He is currently working on a Masters in Engineering Science and is a Man-Oxford Institute of Quantitative Finance scholar afte rachieving the top Mathematics grade in the UK in national exams. Leon represented the UK at the 18th EU Contest for Young Scientist in Stockholm and has been a member of the BA National Science Fair judging panel for the past three years. He is a fellow and organizer of Starting Bloc’s London Institute of Social Innovation Conference and is also a Windsor Leadership Fellow. He developed his understanding of enterprise by working with Oxbridge Applications then establishing Gateways newspaper and finally going on to work for Peter Jones of Dragons’ Den. Leon represented the GB Triathlon team in two World Championships, achieving 5th for his Under 20 age group in 2006, Lausanne. In the summer of 2008, he returned amidst the aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake and worked to set up a library and youth club. Since then Leon has participated on an expedition to Antarctica with BP and was a panelist at the Tallberg Forum in Sweden. Recently he has also been appointed as “Climate Advocate” for the British Council.

Leon Chen kept stressing that different people from different cultural backgrounds have got different understanding of the environment protection. The expeditioners could get deeper understanding about the environmental situation now in China and lay the foundation of finding the solution in the future.


Michael Naylor      Advisory Board Chair
Michael Naylor is a Non-Executive Director of Jupiter Green Investment Trust Plc (www.jupiteronline.co.uk) and founder and director of Canopy Capital Ltd (www.canopycapital.co.uk). He is an Advisory Board member of the Toronto based private equity fund XPV Capital (www.xpvcapital.com). He is co-founder of Forrester Partners, an international consultancy and advisory business focused on the environmental and clean energy investment sectors (www.forresterpartners.com).
Mr. Naylor is an advisory board member of the American Council of Renewable Energy (www.acore.org), a not for profit (501.3c) organization based in Washington DC, where he is Chairman of the CEO Council.  Additionally Mr. Naylor is a member of the International Advisory Board of SOAS at The University London; and chairman of the Advisory Council of the Princes’ Rainforest Project (www.rainforestsos.com). Mr. Naylor was an early stage investor in Aquamarine Power; today, he owns a successful marine renewable business based in Scotland, and was a board member from 2005 – 2007.  Mr. Naylor is a trusted adviser to some of the world's leading Chief Executives and Chairmen in the renewable energy and sustainability sectors, and consults widely in Europe, North America, South Africa, Asia and Africa.

Michael Naylor is the co-founder of Canopy Capital, and is the main sponsor也of the TEDxPedition. He said that we can improve our environment situation by holding such conferences and want this idea to be known by all the leaders in the world.

Session I: Climate Change: Global Challenge
John Dennis Liu
Mr. John Liu is an American who has lived in China since 1979. Mr. Liu helped to open the CBS News Beijing Bureau, at the time of normalization of relations between the U.S and China. Since the mid-1990's, Mr. Liu has concentrated on ecological film making and has written, produced and directed films on grasslands, deserts, wetlands, oceans, rivers, urban development, atmosphere, forests, endangered animals and other topics primarily for Earth Report and LIFE on the BBC World. In 2003, Mr. Liu wrote, produced and directed Jane Good all - China Diary for National Geographic. Since 1997, Mr. Liu has directed the Environmental Education Media Project (EEMP) which uses television to deliver ecological, sustainable development and public health messages in China and other countries. In recent years "Earth's Hope" has become a large part of Mr. Liu's work. The "Earth's Hope” project is communicating knowledge being gained through restoration of degraded ecosystems in China. In recognition of his efforts to communicate the science of rehabilitation, Mr. Liu was named the Rothamsted International Fellow for the Communication of Science by the Rothamsted Research Institute of the UK.

Topic: Earth's Hope: The Loess Plateau case study and Ecosystem regeneration

Key points:
I was looking at China’s Loess Plateau. - The birthplace of the Chinese (the mother river). Han tribe dominates. Its name was because of the soil type. Of the south-west of the plateau, there’s a fully functionally ecosystem. North-east: fully functional grassland.  But when we got there in 1995, the area is fundementally destroyed ecologically. Civilisation buliding destroys the ecosystem. It was very hard to believe that the largest population in the world – Chinese, came from here. Trees were cut down. Plantations were destroyed. Poverty was passed on generations by generations. This is typical of not simply the Loess Plateau. They were eroding away the functionality. Sediments rise in air – sand storms. Global implications of this kind of degradation. This kind of poverty only goes to one place. This is what causes civilisation to fail ultimately.

We were send there to document the rehabilitation. The Chin govt began to map the entire Plateau. Any investment will be reflected from the management chain. They engaged the local people in to the discussion of what is happening. The Chin Govt decided to make some econometric evaluations. The value of ecosystem function is higher than productivity. “They want us to plant tress, everywhere, even the good lands. But the next generation can’t eat trees!” They have engaged the whole community. They are going to own the outcome of the field, learn the new ecological way of farming. But it’s approx the size of Belgium – ecosystem function that’s we are talking about. Trees are part of functional ecosystems. But them alone are not. It’s all integrated. It’s about transforming the people and the way they think. When you go back 10 years later, it’s a different situation – it’s possible to rehabilitate large-scale destroyed ecosystems. Everything is completely dynamic. If you consider this on a planetary scale... We know no other planets that can sustain life in this way. Human beings emerge here. Eventually we became the dominant species. We became good at hunting that we drove some species to extinction. When we began agriculture, we began to change the face of the Earth. This reduces biodiversity, ends up with serious degeradation. Floods followed by droughts, it’s a continuous trend. every civilisation that follows this trajectory ultimately collapsed. We are affecting the global system.

Direct the rainfall by putting straws into sand – examples of things we can do to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems.

Sir John Houghton      Advisor
Sir John Houghton is currently Honorary Scientist of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at the Meteorological Office, Honorary Scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and a Trustee of the Shell Foundation; and Chairman of the John Ray Initiative. Previously, Sir John was a Member of the UK Government Panel on Sustainable Development (1994-2000); Chairman, Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (1992-98); Chairman or Co-Chairman, Scientific Assessment Working Group, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1988-2002); Director General (later Chief Executive), UK Meteorological Office (1983-91); Director Appleton, Science and Engineering Research Council (also Deputy Director, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory), (1979-83); and Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Oxford University (1976-83). During the 1970s, Sir John was also Principal Investigator for Space Experiments on NASA spacecrafts.
Key Points:
Sir John Houghton thinks that China plays a significant role in improving global environment. We will have to find out solution to this as soon as possible, for environmental problem appears quite severe nowadays. Obviously, when it comes to those with little knowledge about environmental problem, we do not urge them to make much contribution to protecting the environment. TEDxPedition serves as a good chance for us all to combine various cultures & subjects, and to learn about how we can change the world by reducing damage to the environment. He also believes if we cannot begin improving the environment in the next 100 months, it is certain that our earth will face environmental crisis in the coming future.（video）

Session II: Climate Change: Global Solution
Andrew Jones
Sustainability Institute
Andrew Jones, works with Asheville’s Sustainability Institute, a U.S. not-for-profit organization founded by Donella Meadows. Trained in System Dynamics modeling at Dartmouth College and MIT, Drew worked on the 1993 “Greening of the Whitehouse” as part of Rocky Mountain Institute and in 2008, as part of the CDC System Dynamics team, accepted the "ASysT Prize". Currently his primary focus is helping improve the strength of international climate change treaties through the sharing of open-architecture, policymaker-oriented climate simulations. The primary simulator, C-ROADS, is being used by the U.S. State Department to improve negotiation strategy. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in systems thinking and modeling in the schools of business and economics at the University of North Carolina.

Key Points:
John Liu’s pictures of the valley – transition, restoration, creating the world that we really want to see.
We build simulation models on climate change for climate negotiation. Three years ago we created this model but everybody ignored it. But now the US are using the model. At Tsinghua university a group of students are learning about the model. In November, President Obama is coming here and hopefully something can come together. In December, at COP 15, hopefully the  countries can work together to combat  climate change. Something is emerging in the climate deal: the negotiators need to know that we want a great deal. Secondly we need a scientific based story of what needs/is going to happen.

50% of the world population is really getting the change happening.
The Doom and Gloom story: the world despite the problem and continues to grow.
30% of the world: most vulnerable to climate change.
20% of the world population: US, Canada, EU etc. The MDCs. Per capita emission = 5 X the others.
950ppm – Doom and Gloom (graph)
350ppm – our aim.
C-Roads – “what if”…given different conditions, the graphs are rapidly updated. First step…things get better. Then…( Graphs)  Different countries have different aims to cut CO2 by 2050. Things are changing and improving really fast now. 740ppm – the global deal today.
2weeks ago – China announced that it will not continue growing without limit on CO2 emission. What if there’s a cap on 2035? It’s getting better as we get stronger commitment around the world. What if there’s an earlier cap? And reduce deforestation too? 600ppm!
At this point, there’s going to be another step. The MDCs need to reduce their own emission, but also reduce the emission of the rest of the world: technology transfer, financing etc.. If we do that, we will get 370ppm! Who wins? Life on earth. Everybody on Earth. A problem that takes everybody to solve.
I am not saying that it’s going to look exactly like this. I am not saying that it will be easy for leaders to make negotiations like this. But let’s hold on to the hope and possibilities.  Let’s hold on to the story and believe in it. We can pull this off if we work together. Imagine 20years in the future, what will those people say about what we’ve done?

Andrea Krause,
Key Points:
I’m from Germany. Our speakers today are all talking about  what can be done in Asia, what development can be done etc. We do not have any Asian speaker, nor young speaker today. But what’s the voice of the young people? Generation Xbox: this generation grew up with the Internet, all well-educated. No other generations had the chance before, in that big scale. This generation often says that I want to make a difference, but I just don’t know how.
100 young entrepreneurs are selected in the Asian area.
They go on conferences, care about climate change, but Why young people do not go out there and risk something?
1.    Scale. Climate change is so big. How can I make a big impact? That’s a big challenge. You have to think big. Better Place – ShaiAgassi.  Isreal, US, Denmark, Japan, Australia. He had a lot of experience, very well connections etc. that’s not what young people have normally. This year we have Denise Matias, from Philippines, working on waste management. She started to think about how to recycle paper and design bookmarks to sell.
2.    Self-interest: we are used to the comfort and luxury. But we have to change, to restrict ourselves. A lot of young people in Indonesia, Pakistan, Nepal etc, see so much poverty that climate change is probably not the most immediate need. They focus on other issues, such as education. 
3.    Entrepreneurial environment: teach children about climate change as an opportunity rather than a pure threat. 54% of Chinese young people want to become an entrepreneur, according to a recent research, but  only a few want to start straight away. Most of them want to get a job first and gain experience & finance first.
Call for action:
Entrepreneurial environment: not everyone wants to start something/become an entrepreneur. Two things are really important:
1.    Awareness raising – climate change. A lot of young people don’t know about it. Lots need to be done on this.
2.    Inspiration – Green Action Heros. Role modeling is important. Green Idol (India) campaigning should be done more.
Actions across different genders, ages, and nationalities.

1．    Should not only consider changing light bulbs. Think about changing something bigger. If you want to learn more about  young entrepreneurs in China, check up YakAroundtheWorld. They sell Yak products around the world and make a contribution to the local community.

At about 4:05pm，Mr. Maurice Strong came into the Kempinski Hotel，after a short conversation with Mr. Michael Naylor，he entered into the conference room. The first part is a speech about his own experience and what he himself learned; the second part is an interview with Brad Hiller, a Ph.D student from Cambridge.

Maurice F. Strong
PC, CC, OM, FRSC (born April 29, 1929, in Oak Lake, Manitoba) is one of the world’s leading proponents of the United Nations' involvement in world affairs. Supporters consider him one of the world's leading environmentalists. Secretary General of both the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which launched the world environment movement, and the 1992 Earth Summit and first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Strong has played a critical role in globalizing the environmental movement.

Key Points:
All of the people here have a commitment to the issue that is being discussed now – climate change. If there’s anything that I’ve learnt in my life, that’s the early interest of mine in nature and my study at MIT on climate change. Scientists have now made it clear that climate change is the single most urgent security issue that the human race is facing now. We are faced by the fundamental problem of survival, in a much broader scale. At the same time we are experiencing an unprecedenting economic crisis. It is quite clear that the environment crisis and the financial crisis have roots in the same source. It is the weakness of the economic system that gave rise to both problems. You can’t fix one without the other. Individual projects are important, but they alone will not do the job. More broadly, we must be prepared to make radical changes in political and economic environments. If there’s anything that I have learnt in my career, it is to stay on track no matter how many disappointments come. I grew up during the great Depression, and I have decided to spend my life to make a better world. Let your message be clear (and let yourself be flexible). If you stay on track and you are clear, continues to be confident, then you can be infinitely flexible.

The Interview:
Q&A session
Maurice and Brad
    There must have been many challenges that you and your team were facing in 1972 in Stokolm on issues of human environment. Please tell us more about it.

Political barriers, cold war etc. Many countries were not part of the UN. I took the view that eventually all nations must participate because it is an universal issue. It was the first UN conference that China has participated. I worked closely with them. That established continuing relationships with China in the environment field.
Well now what has changed is that nations realize that this is an important issue. The developing countries believe that the problem was created primarily by the developed countries so there’s been major tension regarding who’s responsible for  solving the problem. Not everyone has the same position. This will be solved in Copenhagen in December this year.

In terms of educating and sustainable development etc. this must be an important event.

What’s been happening is not sufficient. We have realized that it is possible to make changes but the major barriers are political. I hope for Copenhagen is the agreement ot have a continuing process and some steps towards it , but I don’t think there’s going to be radical changes. I think the best we can hope for is that we can’t get a final agreement, but get some steps towards it at least.

    Will this fundamental change come from the private sector? Govt? NGO?
All of the above I should say.  There’re sacrifices associated though. Change in attitude (examples of smoking, food etc). Changes don’t come easily but they are not impossible.

    Is there a future conference planned?  What role does it play?
The conferences are useful. You can’t solve the problem straight away but you can bring it into a political agenda. Govt got into the habit of making great commitments without actually doing them. The trouble is that we are at a different stage now – it is the threat to survival of the whole human species. We have to understand the difference (conferences help us to understand that).

    Where do you see the biggest sustainability challenge China faces in the next decade?
Deng Xiaoping, and the economic growth – heavy environmental cost. But in the environmental field, eg vehicle regulations, China is tougher than the US. Pollution of the air etc are very important, Chinese are tackling them but has got a long way to go. But the problem is that they won’t always implement the policies. I prefer the term – harmonious development. China has a huge challenge – it cannot sustain its progress without considering the environment, and they are realizing it. Now it is a significant player in the global stage. The kind of meeting we are having here, ensures the exchange of ideas and mutual understanding, is vital.  It is the mutual learning process that’s important (not necessarily only advising the Chinese).

    We have a lot of young people presented in the audience today. What advices do you have for the young people who wishes to make a change?
If your objectives are fairly clear, Stay on track. Form your objectives in your own life and stay with them, be infinitely flexible in how you apply them.
I have graduated from high school at 14. I am a continuing lifetime student.


Session III: Climate Change: Global Opportunity

John Milligan-Whyte
Center for America-China Partnership
John Milligan-Whyte is a Chairman of Center For America-China Partnership, America-China Partnership Foundation and CORE Capital Ltd. He is the author of books which create a New School of US-China Relations and a senior partner of Milligan-Whyte & Smith, co-recipient of the International Financial Law Review's 2002 Asian M&A Deal Of The Year Award. He is an Honorary Research Professor at Peking University, Guest Professor at International Business & Economy; Senior Advisor to the Venture Capital Research Center at China Renmin University, a Fellow of the International Center for Legal Studies in Strasburg. Milligan-Whyte holds a B.A in Political Philosophy, an LL.B, and LL.M from the University of Toronto, Queen's Law School, Osgood Hall Law School, continuing legal education at Harvard Law School and executive education at Harvard Business School.

Key Points:
1.    The Era of New School: US-China cooperation on clean energy and climate change
2.    The challenge we are facing
3.    Pilosophy, Getics and Phyics

Michael Naylor
Key Points:
I have always been interested in tropical rainforests. I was fortunate enough to be able to experience various rainforests (Brazil?). My career with in the financial sector was rather successful, but it was the endangered rainforests that is always haunting me.
(Video)
What you saw in the film was the stored carbon in the forests. We will be talking about dead carbon today. (rather unpleasant). It leads to billions of tones of CO2 as a result of deforestation. I used to go to a lot of renewable energy conferences. But this issue of deforestation has not been talked about often. About 18% of CO2 emission comes from deforestation. World Future Energy Summit 2009, Crown Prince of the Netherlands – When the Roman Empire eventually collapsed, most of the Europe area is deforested. They did not think about the future generation. They collapsed due to the unsustainable use of primary energy sources.
Tony Blair – deforestation provides more CO2 than entire global transportation sector.
The fundamental issue I am stressing here is that we have to live within limits. We are moving into the Post-carbon modern age. We have degraded the natural world that we all depend. My friend lives deep in the Brazilian rainforest. It takes a long way to get there. They have solar panels in the village, and have got internet. No phones/TV, but have internet. We’ve destroyed about 50% of the global rainforests within the past 50 years. These ecosystems create volatile water compounds where the rainfall comes from. The tropics act as the engine room for the world. If we keep taking the forests down, this is like a utility bill.lf you don’t pay it, it will be cut off. It is another fierce urgency. 100 tonnes of carbon released from 100tonnes of forests laid down – that work would be invane unless we also attack the problem of deforestation. Buying the ecosystem service – put a value on it: a tree is worth far more alive than dead. Value the forests is important. Philanthropy – too small; Govt – too slow. People need investment and finance. Saving forests is not the ultimate solution but it is buying time. The service of the rainforest is valuable – so we need to pay for them otherwise they’ll be cut off. To end, “respect, be grateful, act now,” and save the forests. We have the world in our hand.

Martin Bloom
Chairman ReneSola
Martin Bloom, a former corporate strategist at Unilever and with 25 years experience in strategic partnering, technology commercialization and business strategy, is an active and successful private venture capitalist investing in technology and life sciences companies in both the UK and the US. Martin is Chairman of ReneSola, the Chinese solar wafer manufacturer based in Zhejiang Province. He is Special Advisor for Asia and a Board Member international telecom and media convergence venture capital fund, Argo polo Capital Partners. Martinis UK-Chairman of the UK-China Venture Capital Joint Working Group, established by the British and Chinese Governments in January 2005 to foster collaboration between the venture capital and private equity industries in both countries, and launched by Gordon Brown, the UK's Finance Minister, during his official visit to Beijing in February 2005. He is also the member the Advisory Board of a UK and Chinese government-funded collaborative Programme that brings together a number of UK and Chinese universities for joint research projects. Martin has a B.Sc. (Soc.Sc.) Honours in Economics from the University of Southampton and a M.Sc. in the History of Science jointly from Imperial College and University College, London.

Key Points:
Most of the participants are students from Peking University, Tsinghua University and Renmin University of China. Some of them are fans of TED, others may just heard about this event for the first time, but they all said it a successful event. Just ten minutes after the conference started, there was almost  no more room.
The organizers are from Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton，Peking University and Renmin University of China. Even though this is the first time they hold such event, they showed their talented mind, teamwork spirit and optimism.


TED: Ideas worthy spreading.
Generally, the speech is within 18 minutes. But this contains the wisdom the speaker has gained through his or her life experienced.
The participants of TEDxPedition Beijing Conference also sent emails to the TED headquarter This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to feedback their feelings and suggestions about the Beijing Conference of TEDxPedition. They also helped filling in the questionnaire.
There were more than 16 media attending the conference.

Conference Schedule

 

Saturday, September 5, 2009
13:00-14:00	Registration
14:00-14:30	Opening Remark: Leon Chen, founder of Sustainable China Enterprise (Suchen) Michael Naylor, Director and Founder, Forrester Partners, Advisor Prince's Rainforest Project
14:30-15:30	Session I: Climate Change: Global Challenge Keynote Speakers: ·John Dennis Liu, Director, EEMPC, Horizon Research Group Topic: Earth's Hope: The Loess Plateau case study and Ecosystem regeneration ·Sir John Houghton, former co-chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) scientific assessment working group. Topic: Recent research results and their forecast on the climate change issue -TED talk
15:30-15:45	Table Discussion/Q&A
15:45-16:00	Coffee Break
16:00-17:00	Session II: Climate Change: Global Solution Keynote Speakers: ·Andrew Jones, Director, Sustainability Institute Topic: The responses of various governments and international corporations to the climate change ·Andrea Krause, Director, FYSE (Foundation of Youth Social Entrepreneurship) Topic: Generation Changemaker -  Are youth really making a difference on climate change? -TED talk
17:00-17:15	Table Discussion/Q&A
17:15-17:30	Coffee Break
17:30-18:30	Session III: Climate Change: Global Opportunity Keynote Speakers: ·John Milligan-Whyte, Chairman, Center For America-China Partnership Topic: The Era of New School: US-China cooperation on clean energy and climate change ·Martin Bloom, Chairman, ReneSola Topic: China: a growing solar super power ·Michael Naylor, Director and Founder, Forrester Partners, Advisor Prince's Rainforest Project Topic: If we do not win the battle against deforestation we cannot win the war against climate change
18:30-18:45	Table Discussion/Q&A
18:45-19:00	Free Time
19:00-21:00	Closing Remarks and Dinner