There is a growing realisation of need to create new solutions to tackle the resource productivity challenges that are faced worldwide.
This was excellently illustrated by Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the launch of UNEP's International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management in November 2007.
"Economic growth in our modern times cannot be achieved with old consumption and production patterns - a point brought into sharp relief by our new Global Environment Outlook-4 which shows that collectively humans are over-utilizing the Earth's nature-based resources at a rate that is outstripping nature's ability to renew and replenish them.
We need to provide a boost to resource-efficient growth and innovation.
We need to break the links between economic growth and environmental degradation"
Following on from the successful Low Carbon Innovators workshop, the network for eco-innovation has brought together a range of eco-entrepreneurs who will present the challenges faced and lessons learnt of moving from a eureka moment of an initial green idea to developing the concept on the "drawing board", through research and development (R&D) to commercialisation.
Each case demonstrates the creativity, persistence, "blood, sweat and tears" and dogged determination needed to move resource-efficient innovations from concept to reality.
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