Seminars

The 2021 Zero Emissions Solutions Conference will bring together leaders and scientists from businesses, governments, and academia from around the world. Happening on the sidelines of COP26, the ZESC will host up to fifteen sessions across the first week of COP featuring distinguished speakers who will showcase solutions relevant to the high-level champions thematic days including policy technology solutions for: finance, energy, youth, and nature.The focus of this year's conference is Key Climate Solutions for the Decade of Action.

The 2021 Zero Emissions Solutions Conference will bring together leaders and scientists from businesses, governments, and academia from around the world. Happening on the sidelines of COP26, the ZESC will host up to fifteen sessions across the first week of COP featuring distinguished speakers who will showcase solutions relevant to the high-level champions thematic days including policy technology solutions for: finance, energy, youth, and nature.The focus of this year's conference is Key Climate Solutions for the Decade of Action.

Last year, Emory University received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to establish an on-campus prototype for an anaerobic digester (AD). This technology can turn food waste into biogas (renewable energy) and soil amendments (agricultural use). Ultimately, Emory is interested in demonstrating how to design an anaerobic digester that reduces environmental justice concerns. To that end, Emory hosted various stakeholder meetings in summer 2021 to develop collaborative relationships across sectors and institutions in working toward a common goal of addressing sustainability challenges.

In continuing its outreach and collaboration efforts, Emory’s AD team is hosting a virtual international workshop on Thursday, October 14, and Friday, October 15. The workshop will consist of a keynote speaker, Prof. Carlton Waterhouse, Deputy Assistant Administrator at the EPA, and three panels (one hour each) focused on environmental justice, policy, and the AD technology.

Schedule:
October 14, 12p.m. - 1p.m. (EDT): Environmental Justice
October 14, 4p.m. - 5p.m. (EDT): Keynote Address: Professor Carlton Waterhouse
October 15, 11a.m. - 12p.m. (EDT): Policy
October 15, 12p.m. - 1p.m. (EDT): AD Technology

Carlton Waterhouse currently serves as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management after being appointed by the Biden Administration in February 2021. Carlton is an international expert on environmental law and environmental justice and has lectured globally on climate justice and group-based inequality.

Carlton began his legal career as an attorney with the EPA, where he served in the Office of Regional Counsel in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Office of General Counsel in Washington, D.C. He served as the chief counsel for the agency in several significant cases and as a national and regional expert on environmental justice - earning three of the Agency’s prestigious national awards.

Before rejoining the EPA in 2021, he held an appointment as a Professor of Law at the Howard University School of Law where he was building the school’s Environmental Justice Center. Prior to joining the Howard law faculty in 2019, he held an appointment as a Professor of Law at the Indiana University Robert McKinney School of Law where he directed the environment, energy, and natural resources law program.

Will Harris is a fourth-generation cattleman, who tends the same land that his great-grandfather settled in 1866. Born and raised at White Oak Pastures, Will left home to attend the University of Georgia's School of Agriculture, where he was trained in the industrial farming methods that had taken hold after World War II. Will graduated in 1976 and returned to Bluffton where he and his father continued to raise cattle using pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and antibiotics. They also fed their herd a high-carbohydrate diet of corn and soy.

These tools did a fantastic job of taking the cost out of the system, but in the mid-1990s Will became disenchanted with the excesses of these industrialized methods. They had created a monoculture for their cattle, and, as Will says, "nature abhors a monoculture." In 1995, Will made the audacious decision to return to the farming methods his great-grandfather had used 130 years before.

Since Will has successfully implemented these changes, he has been recognized all over the world as a leader in humane animal husbandry and environmental sustainability. Will is the immediate past President of the Board of Directors of Georgia Organics. He is the Beef Director of the American Grassfed Association and was selected 2011 Business Person of the year for Georgia by the Small Business Administration.

Will lives in his family home on the property with his wife Yvonne. He is the proud father of three daughters, Jessi, Jenni, and Jodi. His favorite place in the world to be is out in pastures, where he likes to have a big coffee at sunrise and a 750ml glass of wine at sunset.