Event: SEED Symposium Bangkok 2020

Event Date: 21 - 22 January 2020 

City, Country: Bangkok, Thailand

Venue: True Digital Park, Bangkok

You are welcome to view the final event report of the SEED Symposium Bangkok 2020 here.

Sustainable development and green economy agendas have increasingly drawn global attention in recent years. Southeast Asian nations have devoted resources within their private, public and social sectors to shifting policy and cultivating an ecosystem that answers to the international objectives of UN Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement commitments. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has attested to the importance of intergovernmental cooperation for climate-smart, sustainable and inclusive regional economic development. In 2019, under the Thai government’s chairmanship, ASEAN dedicated itself to “Advancing Partnerships for Sustainability” – thereby acknowledging the importance of collaboration and mirroring the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 17 around Partnerships for the Goals in transforming our economies and societies.

Founded in 2002 as a global partnership for action on sustainable development, SEED offers business development programmes (from incubation to acceleration) that support small and growing eco-inclusive enterprises – offering locally-driven, innovative products and services with positive environmental, social and economic impacts – to start-up and scale-up their contributions to green economies and sustainable development. Alongside SEED’s direct enterprise support programmes, SEED facilitates ecosystem building opportunities to mobilise partnerships between private, public and social sector actors and co-create targeted policy and finance-based mechanisms that enable these enterprises to succeed as core drivers and innovators in the transition to green and inclusive economies.

From Sustainable Development Objectives to Opportunities

In light of the increasing need for collaborative approaches to promote green and inclusive economies in the region, the SEED Symposium Bangkok 2020 brought together 180+ enterprises, financial institutions, policy-makers, donors, business development service providers and others to develop innovative approaches and partnerships that promote social and environmental entrepreneurship in sustainable development and green economy agendas, while exploring key questions including:

How can aspiring environmental and social enterprises providing decent work and sustainable development solutions be better supported with knowledge, technologies and more?

Which exemplary enterprises in the region are actively delivering climate-smart products and services that offer combined economic, social and environmental benefits?

How can collaborative partnerships among ecosystem actors (policy-makers, financiers and others) strengthen the impacts of socially inclusive and climate-smart entrepreneurship?

Highlights of the Symposium

Through hands-on, collaborative formats and a diverse mix of stakeholders, the SEED Symposium Bangkok 2020 explored major themes around how all stakeholders (policy-makers, financiers and intermediaries) can support the growth of social and environmental enterprises. Participants joined together over the interactive two-days to discover trends and look to the future of business development services, innovation supported by digital technologies and methodologies, and much more. The Symposium has laid the groundwork for partnership building that confronts head-on the major challenges facing our joint achievement of global and regional goals in our transition to green and inclusive economies. The Symposium featured:

• Panel and Roundtable Discussions celebrated the impacts and potential of environmental and social entrepreneurship in the ASEAN green, inclusive economies transition.
• Interactive Parallel Sessions provided a platform to discuss and co-create strategies and instruments for promoting eco-inclusive entrepreneurship for sustainable development.
• Enterprise Exhibition showcased effective entrepreneurial approaches with inspiring products and services that deliver positive environmental and social impacts while being economically viable.
• SEED Awards Ceremony honoured outstanding eco-inclusive enterprises and invites them to share their enterprise journeys.

 Final event report of the SEED Symposium Bangkok 2020 available here.

Discover outcomes of past SEED events here.

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