The Networking Evening, which is part of MGBC’s Networking Series for the Session 2016/2017 under their Events, Media & Communications’ Committee, hosted its fellow Green Building Council representatives across the Asia Pacific Network (APN) as well as MGBC’s Industry Partners from various trades and industry. The networking was held at the Roofino Sky Dining & Bar @ KL Trillion on the evening of 11th April 2017 and attended by more than 80 guests. Most notably, the evening was graced by Tai Lee Siang, the Chairperson of the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC).The evening kicked off with a candid welcoming from Ir. Ahmad Izdihar Supaat, the President of MGBC, who echoes on the importance of all Green Building Councils working together to drive the sustainability agenda within the APN as well as assisting the WorldGBC on their global efforts to create a greener built environment. Tai was then invited to deliver a short, keynote speech to all guests present and he gracefully shared his visions on the cities that we love and live in. According to him, there is one problem which has escaped the big picture when we think about building green and that’s the cities.
“Cities are places we love and should think about carefully during planning & building. That’s because up to 66% of Green House Gas (GHG) & 70% of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions are from buildings & transportations – which largely took place in cities. These are alarming figures & we definitely need to do something to address the issues”, stressed Tai.
In his keynote presentation, he further emphasised that governments shall not be the only organization tasked to deal with the issues as all of us who lives in cities must play a critical role or suffer from the deteriorating consequences. And this is exactly why Tai feels that it is imperative to get people from all walks of life to be interested and engaged in the sustainability topic so that it will motivate everyone to care more about our cities and Mother Earth.
“We must rethink what we can do for the cities. There are many ‘ingredients’ that I feel makes people love their cities, such as ‘families-oriented cities’, ‘less car cities’, ‘garden cities’, ‘interactive cities’, ‘innovation cities’, ‘shopping cities’, ‘sports & healthy cities’, ‘edible cities’, ‘smart cities’, ‘happy cities’, ‘cities of hope & honour’, ‘cities of romance’ and many more,” Tai said.
Tai then provided some model cities, such as Tokyo in Japan for pushing a less-car city concept and whereby on average 40-million people commute by trains on a daily basis – which literally means that the roads are then ‘returned’ to the people instead of being cloaked by vehicles. Another example, he noted, is the Singapore city which he originates from, being a garden city as increasing number of buildings are turning their rooftops into herbs gardens and greenery-in-the-sky concepts. The last speech of the evening was delivered by B.K. Sinha – the CEO of MGBC, who thanked everyone attending for making the networking evening a successful one.
“I do believe this is a very exciting time ahead for both MGBC and all our regional GBCs. In the APN, we have a 15-strong countries membership and share the common mission of driving green buildings and sustainability adoption. What’s great is that we have been and will continue to work with many sectors and partners who have assisted us in many ways, most notably in delivering our vision and mission at a much greater pace. We would also like to extend our gratitude to the WorldGBC for being a guiding light and forming a wonderful camaraderie between all the Green Building Councils to form a very solid platform for all of us to work on,” Sinha said.
The evening then continued with a simple video presentation by the MGBC Events team that was dedicated to Dong Ji (M) Sdn Bhd – the exclusive Green Partners for this 2-days APN Meeting and Networking functions. This was followed by a presentation of the Appreciation Trophy and Certificate of Appreciation to Melissa Ng – the Marketing Manager of PENTENS Holdings Sdn Bhd. The presentation was delivered by Tai & Ahmad respectively. Melissa was then invited to give a short introductory speech about Dong Ji (M) Sdn Bhd, and how the company has worked with and supported MGBC over many years on delivering green building activities, seminars, courses to all the industry stakeholders.
After all the enlightening speeches, the evening continued with more discussions and networking amongst the guests. Finger food and wines were served throughout the evening for all guests to enjoy and overall, it was a wonderful evening of gathering of the industry players that not only created new friendships, but great sharing of new ideas that hopefully will unite the green building industry not just in Malaysia, but both regionally and globally.
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