Sustainability Sites

Summary: Discover and make available sustainability sites to support World Sustainability project.

Goals

  1. Discover and display sustainability portals.
  2. Collect comments about building here.

Sustainability Sites

The majority of web sites that might serve as portals for sustainability reflect larger organizations, while my humble effort is one guy in a sea of web sites on the theme of sustainability. A Google search on the phrase "sustainability portals" yielded over 33 million results. Below are selected sites with a brief narrative indicating origin and theme. Eventually, as I discover more sites, sub-headers will demarcate sectors corresponding to ThreeFolding.

General Sustainability Sites

  1. The Club of Rome has articulated the theme of limits to growth for over forty years. The latest entry in this series is 2052 by Jorgen Randers and Money and Sustainability by Bernard Lietaer. Randers, a member of the Sloan School of Management at MIT that wrote the Limits to Growth, runs the World 3 model to forecast Earth in 2052. With evidence and systematic argument, he concludes that civilization and humanity will have collapsed by mid-century. Be concerned.
  2. Wikipedia has collected a portal of a wide variety of sites that indicate the sheer scope of sustainability --- thus why the term can be adapted in many settings.
  3. Perhaps you can find the Encyclopedia of Sustainability, but take note that a three-volume encyclopedia exists.
  4. The comprehensive Global Issues site tackles sustainability along with a host of other essential concerns. The extensive data-driven links provide background on a host of issues: global warming, poverty, bio-diversity, and many others. This project appears to be the solo project of Anup Shah, but inspires me to tackle my audacious mission.
  5. Mother Pelican: A Journal of Sustainability and Solidarity by Luis Guiterriz holds a dizzying array of sites and themes. It offers a key component of Mother Pelican Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability, stressing themes of anti-materialism and spirituallity. The site is robust and comprehensive.
  6. The Stockholm Resilience Center offers a thoughtful approach to sustainability science. Note the comprehensive array of topics displayed in this informative scientific web site.
  7. Hans Rosling gives a dazzling Ted Talk that lays out the dimensions of global crisis with an emphasis on public health. The video is renowned for its graphic display of data and Rosling's charm.

Sustainability-Oriented Civil Society Organizations

The champions of World Sustainability come from the growing ranks of civil society organizations, a compelling and diverse global movement.

  1. Wangari Maathi founded the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya that stands as a sterling example of World Sustainability in action at the local and regional level, where the movement can be highly effective. Dr. Maathi earned the recognition of a Nobel Peace Prize.
  2. The Humanity Campaign, headquartered in Chapel Hill, NC, focuses on contributing concrete solutions to the social aspects of globalization with emphasis on entrepreneurial solutions. See their inspiring mission statement and statement of values.
  3. View the inspiring film: The Economics of Happiness: See the web site of the International Society for Ecology and Culture. Also view the short video: Winning the Story Wars - The Hero's Journey
  4. Read Paul Hawken's, graduation address, University of Portland, May 19, 2009, and view his speech at Bioneers about his book, Blessed Unrest: How The Largest Movement In The World Came Into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. Paul Hawken, a founder of Smith and Hawken, had been a successful entrepreneur who has re-defined the role of business in the economy with his classic, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (NY: HarperCollins, 1993).

Sustainability Business Sites

The role of business provides a basic plank to the program of ThreeFolding, recognizing an emerging wave of activity by a key player that can partially counter-balance the destructive practices of other companies and industries--- that still needs attention and critique. The economic sector provides diversity, dynamism, capital, and leadership that must be harnassed to implement sustainability, but cannot be ignored. (See my disclaimer.) Here is a sample:

  1. The New Economics Foundation provides an important online book, The Great Transition, that defines a path to a sustainable future. The NEF defines another road for economics to travel.
  2. The Center for the Study of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) provides leadership in re-defining economic growth. See their Briefing Papers.
  3. A top of the food-chain trend within business is the leadership of the re-insurance industry, revealed in Swiss Re's robust sustainability statement. The re-insurance industry provides insurance to other companies. Re-insurance has a vested enlightened interest to forestall the mounting financial costs of climate disruption. Re-insurance exerts leverage and provides credibility.
  4. The Dictionary of Sustainable Management offers a dictionary of supportive technical concepts helping to define sustainability for business.

Working Comments

Remarks about portals for sustainability will be found below. The primitive display of my home page and nodal sub-pages obviously needs work. However, two solo sites show that the lone concerned citizen can make a difference, and which inspire me, are the Global Issues site by Anup Shah and the Mother Pelican site by Luis Guiterriz.