The Association of Whistler Area Residents for the Environment is holding its annual general meeting on Wednesday, April 25 at the Westin Resort and Spa.
As usual the meeting will be preceded by a special guest. This year that guest is Dr. Brian Nattrass, co-founder of The Natural Step Canada, author, and one of Canada’s leading consultants on sustainable business with a list of clients that includes several Fortune 500 companies, NASA and the U.S. military. Both are Batten Fellows and Adjunct Professors of the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia, and lecture regularly at the U.S. Army War College and U.S. Air Force Staff College on the subject of sustainability.
As well, Nattrass and his wife are former Whistler residents. Brian has been skiing on Whistler Mountain since it opened in 1966.
Nattrass played an instrumental role in establishing Whistler’s own sustainability campaign, Whistler 2020, which is also based on The Natural Step framework and system conditions.
As a couple, the Nattrasses have also co-authored three books, including the Community Sustainability Toolkit prepared for the Whistler Centre for Sustainability, and Dancing with the Tiger: Learning Sustainability Step by Natural Step and The Natural Step for Business: Wealth, Ecology and the Evolutionary Corporation.
Nattrass will discuss ways that Whistler can adapt to the world’s shrinking resources, as well as what the town may look like when oil hits $100 and $150 a barrel. He will also look at how sustainable the tourism industry can be when it is reliant on the destination travel market.
Both the presentation and annual general meeting are open to the public. The doors open at the Westin Resort and Spa’s Alpine Ballroom at 7 p.m., followed by the reports from AWARE’s directors and an address by the president from 7:30 to 8 p.m. The presentation by Nattrass will run from 8 to 9 p.m., to be followed by the election to AWARE’s board of directors.
Entry is a suggested donation of $10.
