Robert Swan, the first person to walk to both the North and South poles, will speak at 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 9, on the effort to preserve the Antarctic as the earth’s last wilderness.

His talk, sponsored by the Applied Sustainability Center at the Sam M. Walton College of Business in association with Walmart Stores Inc., will be in the First Security Auditorium in Willard J. Walker Hall on the University of Arkansas campus. The talk is free and open to the public.

Swan is an explorer and environmentalist who speaks on motivation, environmentalism and the effort to protect the Antarctic continent through education as well as business and governmental cooperation. He promotes recycling, renewable energy and sustainability to combat the effects of climate change.

Swan is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Youth, a visiting professor of the School of the Environment at Leeds University and a special envoy to the director general of UNESCO. He was awarded an Order of the British Empire in 1995.

Since 2003, Swan has taken more than 400 business leaders, teachers, students, entrepreneurs, chief executive officers and sustainability experts to Antarctica as part of his company’s International Antarctic Expeditions.