You know the feeling when you say yes to do something and then when it’s coming closer you feel in reality you don’t have the time to, but in the end you’re really lucky you went there. That’s exactly what happened to me with the #G100LeadershipSummitPortugal where I went together with three other members of G100 Security and Defence Wing, Doris Wagner – Country Chair for Germany, Sílvia LLopart Gracia – Country Chair for The Gambia and Ceylan Tutan, member in our soon to start Spanish section.

Our theme for our panel at the conference was ”There is no sustainability without safety”. Ceylan spoke about safe living and the man made disaster caused during the earthquake in Turkey and Syria where around 60.000 people died in one day due to poor constructions not fulfilling the basic construction rules for earthquake areas. Doris spoke about the links between economy and ecology/climate from a business perspective and the need to adapt to new rules to reach climate neutrality very soon. Silvia spoke about food security from an African developing country’s perspective, linking it also to rising prices of wheat due to the war in Ucraine. I spoke about human security as opposed to territorial security and that it differs depending on where you live. We need to defend ourselves against real threats, military or not. I showed 2 pictures from my catalan home area. The empty water dam and last years forest fires. With no water, less clean electricity and more expensive fossil fuel, less water for irrigation and households, less possibilities to fight the fires and so on.

A big thanks to Linda Pereira who invited us, and to all other fantastic women which we shared thoughts and experiences with during three days.