Dr. Naidoo is responsible for the strategic direction of ICLEI’s Circular Development work, overseeing key projects, and fostering strategic relationships to bring about sustainable systemic change. Previously, he spent 14 years with the eThekwini Municipality, South Africa, in multiple Departments such as the Energy Office, where he worked on thematic areas such as the Green Economy. He holds a Doctorate of Business from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

I seek to create more liveable and equitable urban environments. During my career, I have had the privilege to work with communities and organizations across Canada and internationally to achieve sustainability and environmental justice goals. My research focuses on urban forestry and social-ecological interactions in urban environments, with an emphasis on environmental justice, human health, well-being, and climate change. I am currently examining four interrelated topics (1) the relationship between greenness exposure and public health in urban environments; 2) urban forest governance systems that promote resilience and equity; 3) smart technologies and their applications in urban forestry; and 4) urban environmental justice. In the realm of environmental justice, my current research is particularly concerned with understanding the nature and dynamics of green gentrification, i.e., the physical or psychological displacement of residents due to local greening activities.

Dr Steffen Nijhuis is an internationally experienced academic, designer, project leader, and author of award-winning publications. By training, he is a landscape architect and a gardener. His work focuses on landscape-based urbanism, sustainable urban landscape development, design with natural processes, designed heritage landscapes & gardens and digital landscape architecture. He is the Department of Urbanism Research Leader and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Delft University of Technology, and an Associate at OKRA Landscape Architects. More info www.steffennijhuis.nl

Marijana, as Lead of Data at Circle Economy is actively working on measuring and understanding circularity in different contexts, regions, or sectors and at different scales. She is designing and building the architecture that supports Circle Economy’s research and digital products and developing communities for circular economy knowledge sharing. Marijana and her team at Circle Economy solve problems with real world applications; they are building and part of a global decentralised community. She is specifically working on cool and creative methods of applying mathematics, modelling techniques, data science and computer science towards circularity or impact measurement.