The Fourth Nishan Forum on World Civilizations was held in Qufu, Shandong Province, Nov. 15-17, 2016. The Forum attracted more than 250 attendees from both home and abroad, contributing about 90 pieces of theses. The theme of the Forum was "Traditional Culture and Ecological Civilization – Human Life towards Greenness and Simplicity", which was discussed around three sub-topics: ecological wisdom of different civilizations; ecological civilization and simple life; ecological civilization and sustainable human development. Executive vice Director of IAHS Peimin Ni attended the Forum and presented a keynote speech titled “Confucian Virtue of Frugality and the Model of Economic Development in Modern Times.”  Beginning with the observation that using high consumption of material goods as the main leverage for economic development is causing devastating ecological crisis and is therefore unsustainable, he suggested that we can follow Confucius’ idea that “Once being populous, make the people prosper; once being prosperous, make the people instructed,” and shift the focus of economic development toward the “self-production of the human,” i.e., to promote consumption in the areas of culture, education and art, and raising the standards in these relevant aspects of human life, and meanwhile, revive the Confucian virtue of frugality.