Stop, Collaborate and Listen – Cases in Point

While the daily news about global un-sustainability can be depressing, taking a minute to reflect on the positive change happening in society can provide much-needed hope. Over the last six months, we invited a research team from Blekinge Institute of Technology to help us explore the question of scaling up through collaboration. What the team discovered were many inspiring examples and success factors demonstrating that collaborative partnerships are transforming the world, furthering the mission of organizations like ours. You can read more about their research outcomes in the next article. Meanwhile, we’d like to share some of the cases that inspired us:

The combination of the Ecological Footprint methodology with the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) widespread reach has helped to bring the concept of overshoot to the mainstream.
The World Resources Institute has made the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment tangible to business partners through tools that allow them to manage the risk and opportunity from their dependence and impact on ecosystems.
The International Union for the Conservation of Natural (IUCN) has tapped Google Earth’s mapping power in the interests of Marine Protected Areas.
After years of making limited progress independently, WWF and Coca Cola have made breakthroughs on water management by collaborating to understand the deeper issues in the sector.
The Pachamama Institute’s Awakening the Dreamer Symposium and The Hunger Project’s ‘animators’ have taken their messages far and wide through training of local activists and promoters.
The Sustainable Food Lab has fostered systems thinking and commitment amongst role model partners by using Theory U to shift minds (and hence behavior).

It was encouraging for us to see that supporting and show-casing role models is increasingly common - this is part of our own theory of change (see our annual report for more on this). We look forward to hearing your ideas on taking The Natural Step approach to new places - tell us what you think by contacting Richard Blume. In the next edition of Stepping Stones we will present a number of tools we are piloting to expand our impact. Stay tuned!