Welcome to Climate Week NYC, ASU is back

By the numbers:

• More than 100,000 people expected to take part in Climate Week NYC
• More than 1,000 events across New York City and beyond
• Three days at The Nest Climate Campus, Sept. 22–24
• One day as a partner at Nature Hub, Sept. 23

Climate Week begins in New York

Climate Week NYC is underway, and for the next several days, climate conversations will take over conference rooms, universities, offices and gathering spaces across New York City.

ASU Conservation Futures is here for the week, returning to the place where we announced this work a year ago. This time, we will share all that’s been accomplished in the last 12 months.

Organized by Climate Group each September alongside the United Nations General Assembly, Climate Week is a citywide series of events that brings together people from business, government, finance, civil society and communities to exchange ideas, build partnerships and push climate action forward.

More than 100,000 people are expected to participate in over 1,000 events. This year’s theme is “Energy. Impact. Action.” The official program stretches across 12 themes, including nature, land and oceans, industry and supply chains, finance, technology and AI, and policy and leadership.

Those categories give some sense of what Climate Week has become. The people gathering in New York this week include conservation practitioners, business leaders, investors, policymakers, scientists, philanthropists, Indigenous leaders, students and others approaching the challenge from very different places.

That is one reason ASU's Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures and the Conservation Futures Academy is here.

We came to Climate Week last September to announce a $115 million investment from the Rob Walton Foundation and a new effort at ASU focused on conservation education. A year later, we are back to share some of what has happened since, but also to listen.

There's lot we want to learn this week.

We want to hear what conservation organizations need from the people they are hiring and developing. We want to understand what businesses are confronting as nature becomes part of conversations about risk, supply chains and long-term strategy. We want to hear from partners about where education can help and where it needs to change. And we want to make connections with people whose work affects conservation, whether or not they would describe themselves as conservation professionals.

Those conversations matter to what ASU builds next and how we share it to make the most impact.

Find us around Climate Week NYC 2026

Starting Tuesday, The Nest Climate Campus at the North Javits Center, 445 11th Ave., will be our home base. ASU's School of Conservation Futures and Conservation Futures Academy will be there Sept. 22–24, with faculty, staff and partners coming through over the three days.

The Nest brings together people working across climate, business, technology and innovation, giving us a chance to make connections beyond the traditional conservation community. We want to hear from businesses and other organizations about the decisions they are making, the challenges they are encountering and where conservation knowledge could help.

On Wednesday, Sept. 23, we will also be at the Nature Hub at KPMG Two Manhattan West as a partner. ASU’s Jen McGowan will participate in a panel as part of the One Ocean, One Climate plenary. Being part of the Nature Hub puts us alongside organizations working directly on nature, biodiversity and conservation and gives us another place to listen, learn and contribute.

We will be moving around the city too, meeting with partners, joining events and talking with people whose work intersects with conservation in ways we want to understand better.

Each day this week, we will share something from Climate Week, from what ASU and its partners have built over the past year to new programs, ideas and conversations taking shape in New York.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at what has happened in the year since ASU announced Conservation Futures here at Climate Week NYC.

Follow along throughout the week, or if you are in New York, come find us at The Nest.

Explore ASU's Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures and Conservation Futures Academy activities at Climate Week NYC: info.learning.asu.edu/conservation-futures-climate-week-nyc-2026

What we will be watching

With 2030 getting closer, we expect to hear a lot this week about the distance between making commitments and delivering on them.

Countries have committed to protecting 30% of the world’s land and oceans by 2030 and to mobilizing at least $200 billion a year for biodiversity. Businesses are also being asked to understand their relationships with nature more clearly, from the resources they depend on to the effects of their operations and supply chains.

People are already asking how that success gets counted. Monday at the Innovate for Impact sessions, we sat in on a panel called "The Places That Connect Us." "If a country is depleting its ecosystem and water for a short-term benefit while increasing its balance sheet, is that a success?" asked Amber Carter, a marine social-ecological scientist and postdoctoral resilience fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

The questions underneath those commitments are practical ones. Who will do the work? What do they need to know? Where are the gaps between what organizations want to accomplish and what their people are prepared to do?

We will also be paying attention to where nature and climate conversations overlap and where conservation and business conversations align. How are Indigenous knowledges and leadership shaping the work? What do changes in business and technology mean for conservation? And as expectations change, what will people need to know to respond?

We don't expect Climate Week to provide one answer to those questions. But with so many of the people making decisions, doing the work and shaping what comes next gathered in one city, it's a good place to ask them.