Proposed Network Goals and Principles
Vision: A sustainable human society
Mission: Accelerating change toward sustainability
Description of Success: The Natural Step Sustainability Network is a dynamic community that collectively drives real progress toward sustainability. It is an active network with thousands of sustainability leaders and champions world-wide who have a shared understanding and passion for sustainability.
Core Goals:
- Advance scientific development and application of a unifying Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development as an effective bridge between science and decision-making.
- Inspire action by supporting role-models and show-casing success stories for sustainability.
- Empower practitioners to develop their competence in sustainability by use of the framework.
- Facilitate learning and cross-sector collaboration through a global community of practice.
- Influence by openly disseminating the Framework and leveraging positive impact through strategic partnerships.
- Lead through strong collective voice, world-class competence and real change toward sustainability.
Shared Language for Sustainability:
The network unites around a shared language for sustainability – the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, its five inter-connected levels for planning in complex systems, its core method of ’backcasting from sustainability principles’, as well as its implementation and engagement processes. As the Framework is explicitly designed to create cohesion and alignment around common purpose, it supports the synergy and effective use of all sustainability tools and concepts.
Guiding Principles:
- Organised around shared purpose and approach to sustainability.
- Open to, and inclusive of, any individual or organisation using the Framework and related approaches.
- Simple, accessible and inviting.
- Enabling access and networking.
- Members are self-organising, diverse and interdependent.
- Driven by excellence and continual learning.
- Committed to transparency.
- Non-political and non-religious.
- Firmly grounded in science.