Global sustainability champion Dr Aled Jones is guest speaker at the Business Weekly Awards presentation dinner in Cambridge on March 20.

Dr Jones also chairs a working group on climate finance within the Capital Markets Climate Initiative on behalf of Greg Barker, the Minister for Climate Change in the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

He is inaugural Director of the Global Sustainability Institute (GSI) at Anglia Ruskin University.

The GSI’s research is focused around personal motivations and systems change set against the challenges of sustainability.

Dr Jones said: “Our core research question is how does the system influence the individual and how does the individual influence the system?

“The 'system' in this case includes our political, financial, industrial and social frameworks that are the 'cause' of the challenges we face - whether they be environmental challenges such as climate change, natural capital challenges such as resource limits or social challenges such as local and global inequity.”

Dr Jones was previously Deputy Director at the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership and Director of the Climate Leadership Programme and Chevening Economics of Climate Change Programme for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

He is a founding member of the ClimateWise insurance principles and was facilitator for the P8 Pensions Group – 12 of the world's largest public pension funds working collaboratively to address the problem of climate change and investments and helping set up the Banking & Environment Initiative.

Business Weekly CEO, Tony Quested, said: “Cambridge’s industrial profile and technology slant is increasingly international with local companies expanding across the planet and overseas businesses coming to the UK cluster.

“Companies need to manage their growth in a sustainable and responsible manner while acknowledging their wider obligations to society and the planet. Dr Jones is the ideal ambassador to help encourage best practice in the burgeoning CleanTech and renewable energy cluster that is developing in Cambridge.”

To see the the Business Weekly awards hall of fame and videos of last year’s event visit http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/business-awards/hall-of-fame

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Dr Aled Jones