Summer Davos aims for 'green' meeting of minds

The venue for the 2014 Tianjin Summer Davos Forum is under preparation. [Photo/China Daily]

The 2014 Tianjin Summer Davos Forum, also known as the Eighth Annual Meeting of the New Champions, will be held with a more sustainable and environmentally friendly fashion this year.

"Tianjin will host the conference following a thriftier model and reduce unnecessary spending," said Wang Hezhen, deputy director of the Tianjin Event and Conference Office.

The Tianjin Meijiang International Convention and Exhibition Center, the venue for the forum, has been designed from a low-carbon perspective. Energy-efficient and recyclable materials will be used at the convention site, in addition to electronic mini-cycles that will be made available to participants and volunteers, according to Wang.

Wang said that to save costs and increase efficiency, "in contrast to previous years, we cut down on the number of volunteers, from 2,200 to 890".

The summer event of the World Economic Forum is scheduled to open on Sept 10 with the theme of "Creating Value Through Innovation". Through last week, the three-day forum had attracted a record registration of 1,706 people from 110 countries and regions, according to Wang.

The annual global business gathering has attracted participants such as the prime ministers of Denmark and Albania and top leaders from Russia and Serbia. Overall, foreign guests account for more than 70 percent of the total attendees.

Meanwhile, Tianjin has been busy preparing topics for discussion. Nankai University, along with other renowned institutions, has held several brainstorming sessions, establishing 20 topics under seven sections.

"The forum will feature more China-related topics this year, such as the discussions of Chinese-style free trade zones, the development and supervision of China's financial market, and China's innovation in urbanization," said Zhang Jun, section director of the Tianjin Event and Conference Office.

Other topics will be the spirit of entrepreneurship, the value of science and technology in innovation, and strategies for building a global supply chain, Zhang said.

Since the first Summer Davos meeting in 2007, Chinese port cities Dalian and Tianjin have taken turns hosting the event.

The World Economic Forum, a Geneva-based nonprofit organization, is dedicated to engaging political, business, academic and other leaders in collaborative efforts to shape global, regional and industry agendas. In addition to the annual winter meeting in Davos, Switzerland, it also organizes the summer Davos in China each year.