Learn more about the Keynote speakers
Dr Peter Ellyard
Dr Peter Ellyard is a futurist, strategist and a leading international conference speaker. He is a graduate of Sydney University (BSc.Agr) and of Cornell University
(MS , Ph.D).
read more »»Maarten Stapper
Dr Maarten Stapper has lived, studied and worked in the Netherlands, Canada, USA,
Iraq, Syria, and since
1982 in Australia.
read more »»John Mongard
John Mongard specialises in community planning and has been focussed over the last twenty years on regional sustainability.
read more »»
Press Releases
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'Our Place - Country Town Living 2025'
Forum for our Future
The Forum is jointly hosted by Gwydir Shire Council and Vision 20/20. We recognise that change is taking place at an accelerating rate.
The Forum seeks to identify some of the changes that are coming, and to put us in a positive frame of mind to look for the opportunities.
For our Shire, this is the start
of a process to rethink our Vision out to 2025.
The Forum has a fantastic array of speakers to stimulate our thinking, and then
an innovative workshop on the second day to apply those ideas
to a local framework.
Our Place – Country Town Living 2025
A
Forum for our future
at The ROXY Theatre and Bingara RSL Club, Bingara
The forum is jointly hosted by
Gwydir Shire and Vision 20/20
Key Note Speakers
Dr Peter Ellyard
Dr Peter Ellyard is a futurist, strategist and a leading international conference speaker. He is a graduate of Sydney University (BSc.Agr) and of Cornell University
(MS , Ph.D).
He is currently Chairman of the Preferred Futures Institute and the Preferred Futures Group, which he founded in 1991. He also Chairs the Sustainable Prosperity Foundation.
Dr Ellyard is a highly experienced executive. He is the former Executive Director for the Australian Commission for the Future. He held CEO positions in a number of public sector organizations over 15 years including two associated with Environment and Planning, and one with Industry and Technology. He was also Chief of Staff of an Environment Minister in Canberra for 3 years.
He is Adjunct Professor of Intergenerational Strategies at the University of Queensland and a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators, the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand ,and the Australian Institute of Management. He is an elected Member of the International Union of Associations, based in Brussels, which has 45,000 international NGO members. He is also a Director of Green Cross Australia.
He has been a Senior Adviser to the United Nations system for more than 30 years including to the 1992 Earth Summit where he was a senior advisor on both the climate change and the biodiversity conventions. In this he was the only Australian and one of only 20 globally. At other times he has been a senior consultant to the UNEP, UNDP and UNESCO.
Dr Ellyard is the author of the best selling book Ideas for the New Millennium (1998, 2001) and Designing 2050: Pathways to Sustainable Prosperity on Spaceship Earth (2008). He is an enlightening, challenging, thought-provoking and inspirational speaker.
Dr Maarten Stapper
Dr Maarten Stapper has lived, studied and worked in the Netherlands, Canada, USA, Iraq, Syria, and, since 1982, in Australia. He has an Agricultural Engineering Degree from Wageningen University, the Netherlands, in farming systems and catchment management in semi-arid tropics. He has a PhD from the University of New England, Armidale, in wheat production systems, linking crop physiology with agronomy and daily weather in simulation modelling.
Dr Stapper was till 2007 a senior scientist with CSIRO based at Griffith and Canberra. He is an expert across a wide spectrum of agricultural areas including irrigated and dryland wheat agronomy, farming systems, participatory research, agricultural information technology and biological agriculture.
Dr Stapper says biological farming is not just about soil health through improved biology and carbon – it is also about making plants, animals and land more resilient in variable climate (ie drought tolerant), and utilising natural resources for increased productivity – and is thus ecosystem based. His focus is on biological farming that helps farmers improve the profitability of their operations by harnessing the power of natural soil processes. Required practices not just create healthy soils while reducing heavy reliance on fertilisers and chemicals but also improve quality of food and feed.
Maarten featured in ABC Australian Story “Back to Earth” on 1 June 2009 about his road into biological farming systems and disconnect with official science world.
“Dr Stapper is a dynamic and engaging speaker who is able to relate the concepts of soil health to the practical problems that farmers are grappling with.”
John Mongard
John Mongard specialises in community planning and has been focussed over the last twenty years on regional sustainability. Climate change, peak oil and ageing are key drivers in his work with communities. Public space is quickly morphing to integrate food producion and John is facilitating this transition in many places throughout Australia.
Talk outline
Feeding/Greening/Caring
We need to collectively reduce our food miles and carbon footprint. By pursuing a nexus of feeding and greening and caring, designers can move communities and their public realms toward a more reasonable future. Current future-proofing projects in the city and in the country are explored as case studies of this approach.
