Climate Week NYC

Climate Week NYC

Climate Week NYC takes place every September. According to its website, it’s the largest annual climate event of its kind, bringing together over 600 events and activities across the City of New York.

If you’ve ever been to New York in September, you’ll know it’s a great month to visit. By then the muggy extremes of July and August are normally done, yet it’s still warm enough to be outside all day and enjoy the city’s many famous attractions.

Climate Week NYC is hosted by Climate Group, a non-profit with offices worldwide who are hosting the official programme during the week. Its website says this event brings together senior international figures from business, government, civic society and the climate sector.

Climate Week NYC 2024

This year, Climate Week NYC is being held 22 -29 September. These dates coincide with the United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week events are run in partnership with the UN.

This year is rather special for the UN, as in September, it will also hold its own ‘Summit of the Future’ from the 20th to the 23rd.

Essentially, it’s the UN attempting to reset itself and make itself more relevant. With an emphasis on the future and the environment, this new-style ‘UN 2.0’ (their words) aims to be more reactive in a world increasingly dominated by despots, chronic poverty, water shortages and the 24 hr news cycle.

Climate Week NYC mainly concentrates on construction, net zero transport, sustainability in nature and food systems as well as financing the Green Economy.

Whilst not on the same ‘celeb’ level as New York Fashion Week (which is actually a fortnight before) Climate Week NYC still manages to attract many well-known people from industry, academia and public life.

This is also evidenced by the introduction for 2024 of a Climate Film Festival – billed as the city’s first film festival to ‘take a wide-angle lens on climate.’

Whilst it’s arguable how many more environmentally-based film festivals the planet can take, at least this one has the cachet of a decent name and location. Whether film festivals do the environment any good (apart from making its winners feel warm and fuzzy) is also arguable, as every extra attendee will each increase the event’s carbon footprint.

Climate Week Sponsors for 2024 are headed up by Financial Services giant PwC and also include:

• Saint Gobain (Glass and Construction materials)
• Hitachi (Transportation and many other sectors)
• Salesforce (Business Software)
• Siemens (Multi-sector, including transport, sustainability and recycling)
• L’Oreal Cosmetics (Recently recognised for its leadership in sustainability by the UN Global Compact)

Why Climate Week is Important?

Climate Week NYC 2024 holds significant importance for several reasons:
• Global Platform: Climate Week NYC serves as a prominent global event to discuss pressing climate change issues.
• Awareness and Advocacy: The event plays a crucial role in raising awareness about climate change and its impacts on the environment, society, and economy.
• Policy Discussions: Climate Week NYC serves as a forum for policymakers to engage in discussions on climate policy, regulation, and international cooperation.
• Business Engagement: Climate Week facilitates useful engagements between businesses, investors, and industry leaders driving innovation, investment, and corporate responsibility.
• Innovation: Events showcase cutting-edge technologies, solutions, and initiatives that contribute to climate resilience, adaptation, and mitigation.
• Networking Opportunities: It provides a valuable platform for networking, collaboration, and partnership building among diverse stakeholders in the climate action community.
• Impact and Influence: By bringing together a diverse range of stakeholders, including government officials, businesses, NGOs, academics, and activists, Climate Week NYC has the potential to catalyse real-world impact and influence climate policy, corporate practices, and public perception.

Key Themes of Climate Week NYC

The key themes of the 2024 event will encompass:

• Clean and renewable energy
• Environmental justice
• Financial opportunities for a green recovery
• Food and agriculture’s contribution to climate change
• Climate change and health
• Heavy industry and the circular economy
• Nature – preservation and restoration
• Local and national climate policies
• Sustainable living and lifestyle
• Transport including electrification

This is ambitious and wide-ranging but the organisers expect real and meaningful progress to come out of this year’s event especially bearing in mind the concurrent UN summit.

Climate Change and Water Scarcity

One disappointing aspect of NYC Climate Week is that water hardly gets a look-in. Seeing as water scarcity is one of the greatest challenges facing the world today, this is puzzling.

Although topics like reducing embodied carbon in buildings and making finance available for more green initiatives are important, the fact that the world could run out of fresh water soon is apparently deemed not worthy of discussion.

Perhaps it’s sponsor pressure; perhaps it’s because it’s felt that this subject isn’t ‘sexy’ enough. But let’s suggest it is that because water management has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere, the organisers decided to address other topics.

So be it. But that doesn’t mean the issue will go away. 2022 figures from the United Nations show that worldwide:

• 2.2 billion people still lacked safely managed drinking water, including 703 million without a basic water service.
• 3.5 billion people lacked safely managed sanitation, including 1.5 billion without basic sanitation services,
• 2 billion lacked a basic handwashing facility, including 653 million with no handwashing facility at all.

Environmental Justice

Environmental Justice is one of the themes of Climate Week NYC 2024 and they state:

‘The Environmental Justice program is a dedicated space to amplify the voices and stories of those who bear the brunt of climate impacts, but have been left out of the decision making. It means learning from and letting the most vulnerable communities lead, and centring environmental justice in all climate conversations.’

At Arvia Technology, we feel that one of the most important aspects of Environmental Justice is to increase access to clean water for everyone. The figures in the previous section show that whilst many enjoy access to clean water, a worrying number don’t.

Protecting the Earth’s Ecosystem

Water is often an element of the ecosystem conversation that is ignored. The problem is that many people just consider water to be ‘there’. But water is actually a finite resource – fresh water even more so.

Industry uses billions of litres of fresh water every day – and in many cases, pollutes it and then discharges it without removing many of the most dangerous pollutants. That’s because current discharge regulations mean they’re not obliged to. The technology is there to remove these dangerous pollutants, but worldwide, regulation is lagging behind.

This is one of the most challenging environmental issues the world faces today.

Climate Change and Sustainability

At Arvia, we design and manufacture a range of electrochemical water treatments that can ‘polish’ water to selectively remove a range of highly dangerous recalcitrant chemicals. These are compounds like antibiotics, PFAS (the so-called ‘forever chemicals’ as they don’t break down) and many other ‘synthesised chemicals’ that are dangerous to human health and marine life.

By recycling more water, pressure on existing sources is reduced, and more is available for alleviating water poverty, agriculture and green manufacturing.

Whilst many of the aims of Climate Week NYC 2024 are laudable and we wish them every success, it would be good to see water preservation back on the agenda in 2025.

Arvia Technology is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of electrochemical industrial water treatment and processing systems. With its HQ, R&D and manufacturing base in Cheshire, UK, it also has facilities in China, India and is expanding into the US.

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