The Aspen Environment Forum was devoted entirely to the environment. In the spirit of the Aspen Institute, our hope was to expand and enhance your views on key environmental issues and further your understanding of the magnitude and complexities of the challenges we face by means of an extraordinarily rich exchange across a wide array of important environmental topics and ideas.

For nearly 60 years, the Aspen Institute has  been a prominent gathering place to engage in deep and lively discussion about the ideas and issues that shape our lives. One of the enduring topics at Aspen Institute gatherings is our responsibility for the well-being of the natural world. The Aspen Environment Forum represented an exciting and unique opportunity for a broad and diverse group of participants to engage intellectually in discussions that raise awareness, stimulate new thinking, and build understanding and perhaps even consensus.

The Aspen Environment Forum was part convocation, part roundtable, and part local town meeting. It was not an exclusive business conference for managers or a scientific colloquium removed from political realities; nor was it a gathering limited to special interest organizations or insider policy practitioners. Instead, it combined experts, insiders, and the public in a manner seen nowhere else. Unlike forums where distinguished speakers may appear, lecture for 20 minutes and leave, here they remained as eager participants throughout the forum. Like the Aspen Institute itself, the Aspen Environment Forum was essentially about dialogue and communication. No one was passive, and the enrichment continued in breaks between sessions, in walks around our campus, and in the mountains nearby, and from breakfast into the late evening.

We thank our partners at National Geographic, known around the world for mapping and presenting the world in superlative written detail and stunning visual imagery, for educating and entertaining us all for over a century by capturing the complexity, mystery, and wonder of the known universe — precisely the lofty goal we share as we present the next Aspen Environment Forum to you.

David Monsma

Executive Director

Aspen Environment Forum