Featured Activities
Are you passionate about sustainability? Concerned about the impact of our changing climate on your home, business or region? Or maybe you’re curious about the current challenges and local efforts in place to tackle them? We are extremely lucky here in Wānaka to be the home of Aotearoa’s first and biggest sustainability festival, welcoming all to join, share, learn and work together towards a thriving future.
Wao is a not-for-profit organisation based in Wānaka, making ripples across Aotearoa. By working with locals across a range of sectors, their mission is to educate, inspire and enable communities to reduce their impact, accelerating us towards a carbon-zero future.
Wao Aotearoa hosts a series of events throughout the year as well as the annual Wao Summit, featuring five days of kōrero, tours and masterclasses. Through working with key groups like youth or the business community, Wao Aotearoa supports them to develop a strategy for a sustainable future and then works towards mapping out that vision.
If you’re not familiar with Wao or the week-long Summit event, stick around.
Arna Craig, Wao Co-Founder, talks about how Wao started and what the Wao Summit is.
‘Wao’ is the Māori kupu | word for forest. Forests have intrinsic diversity, natural regeneration and climate regulating abilities. In this instance, the forest refers to different parts of an interlinking system, which is the image Wao aspires to emulate – an interlinking system in our communities, including tourism, building, food, hospitality, youth and business.
WAO is also an acronym: working as one. The name reflects their core values of partnership and collaboration, and focusing on a regenerative approach to future thinking. This year’s theme for Summit, ‘Better Together’ also stems from this.
The annual Wao Summit is coming up from October 29 to November 2 across Wānaka and Queenstown. Held over five days with kōrero, tours, and masterclasses, Wao Summit brings together those who are passionate about sustainability, regeneration, climate change, and climate action. The Summit aims to explore a 360-degree approach to fostering social and environmental change in our communities.
Featuring an extensive list of experts, here is the full list of good humans who will be gracing the stage at this year’s Wao Summit.
If you’re a newbie to Wao Summit, we’ve got you – there’s a First Timers to Wao Summit blog right here.
‘Better Together’ highlights the power of uniting together to create a sustainable future. The emphasis being, that collaborative efforts can lead to more effective and enduring solutions to climate change.
Uniting individuals, businesses, and communities means pooling resources, sharing diverse perspectives, and amplifying impact – leading to more significant and innovative solutions.
Collaboration brings strength in numbers, a stronger influence on policymakers, and mutual support, ensuring a sustained commitment to environmental goals.
With 40+ events taking place over five days, Wao Summit focuses on sustainability and regenerative future across many disciplines and industries. There is literally something for everyone.
Browsing the full Summit programme, you might find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of events to attend. Wao have broken down each event into seven themes:
Each theme is represented with its own colour and has its own programme, so you can see sessions by the theme or topics you’re interested in.
The full Wao Summit 2024 programme:
Wao Summit offers business owners an opportunity to revolutionise their approach to business, by learning how to operate with greater purpose and sustainability. During sessions, you’ll learn about cutting-edge sustainable practices that can enhance profitability and contribute positively to society and the environment.
Think of it as one of the most relevant and important conferences you’ll attend. It’s a chance for meaningful growth through workshops, expert panels and networking sessions. Designed to enable business owners to implement impactful strategies that drive success, all while fostering a sustainable and ethical business culture. Sounds pretty good right?
This year there are two Better Business Days, one here in Wānaka, and another over the hill in Queenstown. While tickets for the Queenstown sessions can be purchased individually, this year, Wānaka attendees can purchase a Better Business Pass. Giving you access to four Better Business sessions at the Lake Wānaka Centre, followed by ‘Let’s Do Better Business’ Green Drinks at Wilson & Dorset.
Better Business Day events, as part of Wao Summit 2024:
