CALL FOR SESSION PROPOSALS

The Sustainability Research and Innovation Congress (SRI) will be held from 16-19 June, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. For more information about the congress, please visit sricongress.org.

SRI2025 invites proposals to the 2025 Congress program by 7 December 2024 (17:00 ET (UTC -4))

Submit a Session Proposal

Since 2021, SRI has united global leaders in research, government, civil society, and business to meaningfully advance sustainability. The SRI Congress offers an exceptionally inclusive and inspiring global platform for co-creating state-of-the-art solutions and innovations; building a coalition of the willing to achieve a sustainability transformation. SRI is co-convened by Future Earth, the Belmont Forum, and local co-organizers. The Congress is in North America for the first time this year - Chicago, Illinois! SRI2025 will build on the work done in Oceania, African, Latin American, and European-hosted events.

Building on the spirit and progress of previous events, the University of Illinois System (UI) is hosting this year’s Congress. UI is working with the Belmont Forum and Future Earth to host a generative event so that each participant leaves with action items, new connections, and increased hope. Our future is not inevitable; we have solutions for the climate and the many other issues facing humanity and our planet, and it’s time to act. We want Congress participants to leave feeling energized to implement solutions in their best way, whether it's with their communities or with their companies. Your contributions are critical to reaching this goal.

We invite you to submit session proposals around the issues and challenges facing us,  potential solutions, and the questions you want answered. Your proposals are critical to SRI2025 being innovative and inclusive: Covering a wide range of topics and engaging participants to collectively achieve a goal. The SRI Congress team will work with session organizers to design sessions that are interactive, informative and inclusive, making sure we provide all participants a range of ways to engage.

This call for contributions is open to any group of people working to develop and implement the solutions we need to create a more sustainable, equitable, inclusive, and just future. We invite session proposals from groups of people from all sectors including, but not limited to: research, government, business, philanthropy, art, communications, technology, and civil society. All submissions will be reviewed by the SRI2025 Program Team.

                SRI2025 Themes                
This year’s Congress focuses on Pathways to Sustainable Solutions but also has four related themes. Sessions should align with the vision of the Congress and/or one or more of the following themes:

1. One Health: Connecting Human, Animal & Planetary Health 
   The concepts of One Health and Planetary Health take an integrated and interdependent approach to balance and optimize the health of people, animals, plants, and the environment across our planet, on land, in air, and in freshwater and the ocean. This includes but is not limited to responding to effects of environment, climate, regional stress on humans and other life; disease control; biomes and health; optimizing health security; developing early warning systems for health risks.
    
2. Collaborative Decision-Making: Fostering Connections with Communities
   This theme includes topics that bridge the gaps between sectors; such as: institutional and shared leadership; national, regional, and corporate leadership; science diplomacy, social, climate, and environmental justice, equity, intergenerational fairness; impacts from climate immigration; community engagement at all levels, including interfaith leadership; engagement with local communities and/or indigenous peoples.
    
3. Holistic Solutions: Integrating Food, Energy, Water, and Infrastructure
   All communities, both urban and rural, need infrastructure to deliver food, energy, and water. How can we make these systems more sustainable? This theme includes the future of agriculture and aquaculture, freshwater availability, buildings, addressing energy and transportation systems transition; impacts on the nexus of food, energy and water; living in climate-impacted economies and urban and coastal environments.
    
4. Innovative Tools: Developing & Deploying New Technologies for Sustainability Solutions 
   Addressing sustainability, climate, and equity challenges requires innovative applications and new tools. Includes digital world issues; future role of AI, machine learning and quantum computing and communications in sustainability solutions; advances in data evaluation, the role of virtual reality; demonstrations; open science.

Below are example session topics that touch on one or more of the themes above:  

• Deploying equitable solutions to mitigate the effects of heat waves in urban and rural communities (OneHealth, Innovative Tools)
• Early warning systems, one size does not fit all. How to scale lifesaving information? (Innovative Tools, Holistic Solutions)
•  A sustainable energy future (Holistic Solutions)
• Future of transportation for a sustainable world (Holistic Solutions)
• Achieving sustainable aviation: SAF and other solutions (Holistic Solutions, Innovative Tools)
• Hidden opportunities for innovation: Corporate Environmental & Social Governance reporting (Collaborative Decision-Making, Innovative Tools)
• Understanding the role of biomes in improving health (OneHealth)
• Closing the gap on climate mitigation and adaptation investments (Collaborative Decision-Making)
• Understanding and implementing solutions for resiliency (Collaborative Decision-Making)
• Ecologists & Land Managers work together to Manage a Changing Landscape (Collaborative Decision-Making, OneHealth)
• Scalable Solutions: Using Wastewater to Sequester Carbon (Innovative Tools)
• Marine Protected Areas: What can we learn from successes and failures from around the world? (Decision-Making, OneHealth, Holistic Solutions)
• Climate, Environment & Health Kick Off Meeting (Belmont Forum, OneHealth)
• Tools for Changemakers: Creative Problem Solving (Collaborative Decision-Making)
• Reducing the Urban Heat Island: Architectural and Urban Planning Solutions (Holistic Solutions, Collaborative, Decision Making)
• Faith & Climate: How the religious community is addressing climate change (Collaborative Decision-Making)
• Social Networking to Reduce Waste: How to grow circular urban economies (Holistic Solutions, Innovative Tools)

                 Session Design                 
Sessions can take on a variety of designs to facilitate a range of generative experiences for session leaders and participants. The proposal submission form will ask you to designate one of three types of sessions: (1) Panel Discussion, (2) Workshop, (3) Interactive Session. The SRI2025 team will then follow up with all chosen session convenors to discuss specifics and offer assistance. 

1. Panel Discussions: The 3-5 panel speakers, chosen by session organizers each have a few minutes to speak towards a specific question or questions before getting questions from the panel facilitator and directly from the audience. (60 minutes)
2. Workshops: An inclusive session geared towards building capacity and/or teaching skills to its participants. (60 - 90 minutes)
3. Interactive Session: There are multiple participatory and innovative approaches for sharing ideas and advancing solutions. Working in concert with the SRI Congress team you will be able to co-design an exciting session to address your topic and meet your goals. 

General information for All Session Contributors

• All session contributions are required to have an organizer/single contact point who is responsible for confirming speakers, session logistics, and reporting outcomes to the SRI2025 Program Team.
• Session organizers should prioritize attending a virtual 30 minute Congress platform training prior to the Congress.
• Session organizers should plan to meet with representatives with the SRI2025 Program Team to get input on their session at least once prior to the Congress in June.
• In the case of similar proposals being submitted, the SRI2025 Program Team may ask those organizers to collaborate and co-create a combined session.
• Given space limitations for concurrent sessions, we can not ensure session acceptance.
• SRI is interested in supporting contributions from young and early career professionals, researchers, and Indigenous Peoples, as well as participants from low and middle-income countries and communities. Please see the definitions below: 
  • *Early career:
  • We define an early career as anyone whose career has started within the last 10 years. This includes researchers who have received their Bachelor’s or Master’s qualification within the last 10 years or their PhD within the last six years, as well as professionals working at the interface of society, policy, practice, and research.
  • Low and middle-income countries:
    Low and middle-income countries are defined according to the OECD DAC list of ODA recipients. 
  • Indigenous groups:
    Indigenous groups are defined according to Article 1 (1b) of the International Labour Organisation’s Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (ILO No. 169 ). This convention applies to: 
    a) tribal peoples in independent countries whose social, cultural and economic conditions distinguish them from other sections of the national community, and whose status is regulated wholly or partially by their own customs or traditions or by special laws or regulations;
    (b) peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonization or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions.

Submit a Session Proposal

                Criteria for Selection                
The SRI 2025 Program team intends to build on your successes and select sessions that will be generative, interactive, inclusive, focus on solutions and are clearly linked to one or more of the Congress themes. These values are reflected in the rubric on which all session submissions will be scored by the Program Team.

Scholarship opportunities will be available in the next few weeks. To stay updated, please visit sricongress.org or sign up for our newsletter. 

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More information at sricongress.org.