The Peter Roberts Memorial Lecture Series
The Peter Roberts Memorial Lecture annual lecture series began in 2008, two years after Compassion in World Farming founder, Peter Roberts, passed away. Each year, global experts from across the world are invited to address the audience at these well received events.
Video highlights and podcasts of the speakers are available by following the links on each lecture.
For the first time we held our event in Brussels, the central policy hub of the European Union. All our speakers emphasised that we must achieve more sustainable use of resources like grain and water in order to feed the world's people without destroying the planet or causing untold suffering to farm animals.
Bishop Athenagoras of Stinope opened the event by reading a message from His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch.
Speakers included:
- Ms Despina Spanou, Principal Advisor to DG Sanco, European Commission;
- Dr Modibo Traoré, Assistant Director-General (Agriculture and Consumer Protection) at the FAO;
- Dr Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food;
- Jean-Pierre Halkin DG Development, European Commission;
- Jeremy Wates, Secretary General, European Environmental Bureau;
- Philip Lymbery, Chief Executive of Compassion in World Farming, who launched his Food Sense report, calling for an urgent rethink of our food and farming systems.
The key speakers were Professor Arjen Hoekstra, creator of the Water Footprint concept and Dr Samuel Jutzi of the FAO.
Lester Brown, environmental expert and founder of the WorldWatch Institute and Earth Policy Institutes, and author of the visionary series Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, gave the 2008 lecture.