The Global Hope Festival, the brainchild of inBusiness magazine of Turkuvaz Media Group, came to a conclusion on Tuesday after a string of events throughout 2021. The "Grand Gathering" of the festival took place online in the form of a webinar amid measures against the COVID-19 pandemic and to reach out to more people. The festival's mission is to raise awareness for global sustainability, a key issue in the new century where multiple challenges, from the climate crisis to health crises, threaten the world.
The festival's seminal event was the Road to 2030 Summit held in December 2020, which paved the way for further events bringing together prominent figures specialized in their fields, from business to science and technology. The organizers say the festival seeks to support the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals to raise awareness of the concept in the business world and the general public in a bid to create a "healing" economic system and promote good practices to that extent. The festival, supported by first lady Emine Erdoğan, reached 4.5 million people online via 10 webinars.
The last webinar of 2021 was attended by several dignitaries, including the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative in Turkey Louisa Vinton, Turkey's Deputy Foreign Minister Faruk Kaymakcı and Ibrahim Şenel, president of the Strategy and Budget at the Presidency of Turkey. The event also hosted representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), executives of companies, including Ülker and Bagfaş, and World Food Programme (WFP) Country Director for Turkey Nils Grede.
Speakers discussed sustainable development during multiple sessions of the webinar. The webinar touched upon ways to locate resources for the green transition, the impact of rural development on the future and preparations for the Green Deal.
In a keynote speech at the webinar, inBusiness editor-in-chief Hülya Güler said they accomplished their task to reach the masses to inform them about sustainable development goals through their webinars and that the Global Hope Festival would continue until 2030, the deadline for the accomplishment of goals.
Vinton said at the event that the world had gone through a year of catastrophes of unprecedented scale and that climate change was accelerating. "Countries, including Turkey, are working to curb emissions by 2030 and it is important to unite for this task. We need international cooperation both against the COVID-19 pandemic and against climate change and the United Nations serves as a hope for this cooperation. We have a lot work to do in 2022. We need to emphasize green growth and tackle it in a better way as a way of economic benefit. Green energy should be prioritized in this sense. We believe Turkey can lead on this issue, to emphasize economic gain through green growth in addition to its environmental benefit," she said.