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The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay’s 18th Annual Chesapeake Watershed Forum, held at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV, is a watershed-wide event reaching over 400 restoration and protection practitioners to inspire and empower local action towards clean water. We share successful tools and techniques, offer lessons and learnings from on-the-ground work, build capacities of local organizations, foster partnerships, educate on new initiatives and emerging practices, network with others, and celebrate our successes.
Consumer demand and preference help drive private sector priorities and investments. An increasing number of consumers seek to lead an ethical and sustainable lifestyle reflected in the products they consume and economies they support. As a result, an increasing number of partnerships between the private and the non-profit, governmental, academic, and other sectors have formed to respond to consumer demands around sustainability, conservation, and local community investment. In the Chesapeake Bay watershed, we see these partnerships act by adopting and promoting clean water and climate-resilient best practices, greening supply chains, investing in green economies in marginalized communities, reducing carbon footprints, and more.
This year’s Forum will highlight examples of successful, sustainable, and equitable examples of such partnerships. We are particularly interested in partnerships where there is investment of corporate resources, private dollars, and/or impactful business policy changes. We are further interested in how these partnerships reckon with and address historic injustices and are proactively working with under-resourced stakeholders.
We will showcase pathways for accessing new or existing partnerships of different sizes and scales, from landscape-scale restoration efforts with international corporations to local, community-based systems and endeavors. Additionally, we will feature innovative solutions and new scientific approaches that drive these partnership efforts towards achieving ambitious sustainability goals.
The Alliance is committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in all partnerships and recognizes that systems have historically left out underrepresented communities. Therefore, we will emphasize partnerships that prioritize equity and justice in their decision-making processes and showcase examples of partnerships that are committed to creating equitable and sustainable solutions for all.
View the schedule of events for the 2023 Chesapeake Watershed Forum. Updated August 14, 2023.
Forum Schedule (PDF)
View session descriptions and speaker bios for the 2023 Forum. Updated August 21, 2023.
Session Descriptions (PDF)
We at the Alliance commit to holding ourselves accountable to this statement and fostering a welcoming, inclusive experience at the Chesapeake Watershed Forum.
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Unless otherwise communicated to you by an Alliance staff member, in-person registration is sold out. Virtual registration will be made available at a later date. Updated at 1:30 PM on 08.28.23.
More Information
The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay offers a limited number of scholarships for the 2023 Chesapeake Watershed Forum registration.
Drawing in over 400 professionals, a Forum sponsorship places your brand or organization front and center as an action-oriented advocate for clean water and resilient lands in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Your sponsorship directly supports the convening of this important watershed-wide event.
The goal of the poster session is to provide the opportunity for individual presenters to share their work and/or research findings in a visual format with conference attendees. This is a juried event, with awards for the best poster in the new professional and professional categories.
Submission Guidelines
Last Update: April 17, 2023
The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and the National Conservation Training Center (NCTC) are committed to the safety of the staff, speakers, and all conference attendees. All staff, presenters, and attendees must abide by the Alliance’s and NCTC’s COVID-related policies. The following policies and procedures are in place to ensure all who visit the campus understand how we manage operations with your safety in mind.
All COVID policies are subject to change based on local, state, and federal regulations or CDC recommended best practices.
Contact Jenny McGarvey to find out more about the Chesapeake Watershed Forum.
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