Our Projects

We are a growing wave of entrepreneurs, scientists, advocates, philanthropists, and investors who are forging new pathways to enable strong stewardship of our planet. We are local, regional, national and international in focus. We are ideating, prototyping, piloting, scaling and replicating. Learn more about our work below.

Areas of Focus

All We Can Save Project View Project All We Can Save Project Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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United States
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All We Can Save Project

The Challenge: Stepping back to consider root causes, it’s clear that there’s a leadership crisis at the heart of the climate crisis.

Too many people in positions of power focus on short-term profit, prestige, and sustaining the status quo — at the expense of a livable planet.

Many of those awake to the climate crisis stand on the sidelines. In the US, a majority of Americans say they are worried, but only 8% are active in some way. More are willing but unsure how best to engage.

At the same time, conventional climate leadership has centered too narrow a set of voices, ideas, and contributions. The drain of the work also takes its toll, and burnout is a real challenge.

Climate transformation hinges on a range of solutions — from clean energy to effective policy to broad mobilization. All of it hinges on people. But what it takes to grow and sustain leaderful participation has too often been an afterthought.

What can be done:

We believe the antidote to this leadership crisis is a broad leadership upwelling, with many more people linking arms to grow a life-giving future for everyone. Supporting that upwelling is what we’re here to do.

A leaderful climate community is abundant. It’s abundant in people, diversity, superpowers, courage, action, and collaboration. It honors that each one of us is a node of possibility for climate healing.

We believe the following eight dynamics are necessary for deep, sustained, and courageous climate engagement.

I understand climate truth, just solutions & leverage points for change
I’m able to work with climate emotions & access healing / rest
I can see myself in the unfolding, collective climate story
I feel connected to Earth & kindred community
I hold deep motivations to foster a just, life-giving future
I have a sense of possibility, authentic power & joy in the work
I find footholds for meaningful action & collaboration
I have clarity around my contribution, while embracing its evolution

How The All We Can Save Project is meeting the challenge:

Everything we do is designed around growing the above eight dynamics. We use three core tools:

Narrative change — fostering public narrative shift around climate truth, courage, and solutions through creative communication (e.g., the bestselling anthology All We Can Save).
Community building — equipping people to build climate community and move towards action together (e.g., our self-led small group model All We Can Save Circles).
Deep learning — offering educational programs and resources to deepen understanding and nurture participation (e.g., our Climate Wayfinding program for gaining clarity on your climate journey)

And in all of this, we work to tend the emotional-spiritual root from which climate leadership grows.

Our team is a group of strategists, creatives, teachers, and community-builders living in Atlanta and New York.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Alter Eco Foundation View Project Alter Eco Foundation Sustainable, Equitable Economies Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
Central and South America
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Alter Eco Foundation

The Challenge: In 2014, the United Nations issued a warning to farmers: if they don’t change the way they grow crops, most of the soil they rely on to sustain their livelihoods will disappear within 60 years. Soil destruction is caused by a combination of farming techniques and other influences including monoculture which strips soil of nutrients, chemical-heavy farming techniques, deforestation which increases erosion, and global warming. Maintaining healthy soil is essential for providing food for most of the world, and unhealthy soil reduces both the quality and quantity of crops and leads to increased poverty and hunger, especially in developing countries. If small farmers are going to continue to maintain their livelihoods and provide high-quality, nutritious food we must implement techniques to ensure that land and soil remain healthy and viable.

What can be done: Dynamic agroforestry is an ecologically-friendly farming system that aims to grow different types of crops on the same piece of farm lands with respect to the conservation of the natural biodiversity. Based on the knowledge of indigenous Latin American farmers, the method constructs forest-like systems where the crops don’t compete for resources but create symbiotic systems. When dynamic agroforestry is done well it helps to maintain soil quality, reduce the need for external resources, increase farmer income and benefit the climate by sequestering more carbon than single crop farms.

How the Alter Eco Foundation is meeting the challenge: The Alter Eco Foundation, the charitable arm of Alter Eco Foods, will focus its efforts on growing cacao the way that nature intended. Both cacao and the soil beneath it flourish when cacao is planted amongst diverse other crops, which is the model of dynamic agroforestry and regenerative agriculture. Alter Eco Foods currently sources 50% of its cocoa beans from the Unocace cooperative in Ecuador.  In 2015, 400 farmers from this cooperative started the 4-year process of transitioning some or all of their 5-7 acres parcel of land from monoculture to dynamic agroforestry creating a diverse environment with 7 to 15 species in each acre of cocoa field. This transition is expected to have clear benefits:

farmers will generate more revenue and have better working conditions
farmers will need less water, fertilizer and artificial shade structures which reduces their costs
more carbon will be sequestered creating healthier soil and benefits for the climate

The Alter Eco Foundation will provide resources to help more cocoa farmers improve their quality of life by transitioning to a dynamic agroforestry methods.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Animal Agriculture Reform Collaborative View Project Animal Agriculture Reform Collaborative Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
United States
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Animal Agriculture Reform Collaborative

The challenge:

The impacts of extreme industrialization in food and agriculture is nowhere more evident – or harmful – than in the animal agriculture sector. The resulting U.S. marketplace domination of factory farms is a primary driver of myriad social, economic, and environmental problems, and further cements political and economic disconnections between urban and rural populations. This industrialized system is powered by large-scale corporate enterprises who systematically prioritize shareholder profits over local farmers, sustainability, stewardship, and animal welfare.

What can be done?

By acting collectively, we can create a food and animal agriculture system that is just, sustainable, accountable to people and that will advance:

Accessible, affordable, healthy food for all
Safe, living wage jobs that support racial and economic equity
Thriving rural communities, including farmer independence and local control
High animal welfare practices coupled with public health protection
Strong local stewardship of rangelands, water and more.

How AARC is meeting the challenge:

Animal Agriculture Reform Collaborative (AARC) is a movement alignment hub where organizations from the environmental, independent farmer, sustainable food, labor, civil rights, and animal welfare movements work together to build a broad, powerful base across the country. With this shared vision of a just, sustainable animal agriculture system, these movements can jointly challenge corporate control of the food system and advocate for better U.S.-based agricultural policies.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Azul View Project Azul Healthy Planet & People Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
California
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Azul

The challenge:

Although the Latinx population in the U.S. reached nearly 58 million in 2016 and has been a key driver of population growth, the mainstream marine conservation movement has failed to keep pace with the country’s shifting demographics and to meaningfully engage the Latinx population in ocean and coastal advocacy. Together with other minority communities, Latinx communities – particularly those in Coastal California – are more vulnerable to health disparities and risks to their livelihoods due to impacts from climate change and sea level rise.

What can be done?

The Latinx community is diverse – both culturally and geographically – yet the community still shares common beliefs and values, including a commitment to their communities. In California, where Latinxs form a plurality that outnumbers non-Hispanic whites, the environment is a key concern, and preserving the coasts and oceans is a key element of a healthy environment. Engaging Latinx voters in California can strengthen the voice of Latinx communities, support strong environmental policies, and help preserve and protect our oceans and coastlines.

How Azul is meeting the challenge:

Azul is the only ocean conservation organization in the U.S. that focuses specifically on working within Latinx communities. Using culturally relevant communication techniques, Azul leverages both localized grassroots and “grass tops” strategies to engage Latinxs as long term conservationists with a pragmatic and common sense approach to resources use and protection. Azul has been instrumental in driving several California-based policy “wins” including banning of single use plastic bags, banning the sale and possession of shark fins, and creating legal remedies that allow fining private property owners who illegally block public access to California’s beaches.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

California Water Library View Project California Water Library Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
California
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California Water Library

The challenge:

Although water availability, use and access is arguably one of California’s most pressing and often controversial public issues, finding unbiased information on California’s water issues can be frustrating and time-consuming, even for those working in the water industry. Thousands of critical and timely reports, articles, white papers and legal rulings about California’s water are buried in an assortment of disjointed websites maintained by public resource agencies, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, research centers, and others.

What can be done?

Provide unbiased, consolidated online access to resources about California Water so that anyone can access information needed to make informed decisions about the State’s most precious natural resource.

How California Water Library is meeting the challenge:

The California Water Library provides streamlined access to a constantly curated collection of reports, articles, essays, fact sheets, research, white papers, and documents generated by state and federal agencies, nonprofits, experts, and others. Targeted search tools enable users to find documents based on author, publisher, date, title, keyword, and more.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Canopy Collective View Project Canopy Collective Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

Service Area
United States
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Canopy Collective

The Challenge: “Unexamined pasts fester, and become open wounds.” – Susan Neiman, “Learning from the Germans: Race and Memory of Evil”

The United States of America rests on a broken system. A system built on the pain, exploitation, genocide, and terror of Black people since its inception. Our current ways of life have continued to perpetuate injustices and inequity against Black Americans, and has refused to look at itself and make proper repair. The COVID-19 pandemic made those inequities more prevalent to mainstream America and made stark the rampant State violence against Black people, wealth and health inequities in Black communities, and the continued racial divide that exists in our worlds. Additionally, this moment of time also revealed the starkness of racial inequities around the world.

Yet, to save our Democracy and to rebuild a world with equity and justice we need to confront the past, harm-doers must be held accountable for the harms and make amends, and those harmed must have a system that attempts to restore and repair life for them and their descendants. For many years, this practice comes in a form known as reparations, which is vast and comprehensive. While interest in reparations for Black Americans has grown dramatically in recent years, but several barriers stand in the way of national success.

Efforts toward truth telling and reparations in the United States are under-resourced, fragmented, and are highly disconnected from crucial wisdom around the world. While the US context is unique, countries of all stripes have reckoned with complex legacies of abuse and developed programs to redress them. A whole field – called transitional justice – has been developed to study these processes and their hard-earned lessons. Yet the US movement has virtually no access to these projects, their leaders, or the robust practice of the field. Additionally, pockets of this movement have been and are taking place, with varied levels of success in advocacy, retribution, and history-telling. Yet, these pockets of expertise and practices are often disconnected and lack infrastructure to learn from one another and build on a movement together to instigate change at scale.

What Can Be Done: The challenge of our time is to deal and heal from our past, develop accountability and repair. This can be best accomplished in the following ways:

Restitution for slavery and centuries of racial subjugation in the United States is critical to achieving justice for millions of Black Americans. It is also key to securing the future of American democracy.
Scholarship shows us that societies that fail to acknowledge and redress histories of abuse give rise to shame, division, resentment, lost faith in institutions and the rule of law, and civic cynicism. It is no coincidence that all these factors threaten our democracy today.
Without truth telling and reparations in the United States, we cannot become a truly United States. Without resolving history, we’re doomed to repeat it, with escalating cycles of distrust, contempt and violence.

How Canopy Collective is meeting the challenge: Canopy Collective is a global group made of artists, movement leaders, activists, and researchers, and led by those with the closest proximity to the issues and who have been most harmed through these unjust system. Canopy Collective works together to end and heal from systemic racialized violence in our lifetimes. Canopy Collective believes to achieve this we must learn from – and build solidarity with – kindred struggles for liberation and transformation from around the world. CANOPY COLLECTIVE focuses on grief, mourning, repair, healing — because virtually no one is invulnerable to the power of these processes — they thread dead center through the human experience. To thrive together, we must heal together.

There are three pillars to our strategy, each served by a focus on international collaboration:

Support the US Grassroots: Provide funding, capacity, and global mentorship to the front lines.
Build Public Narrative: Inspire and educate the public through journalism and culture.
Shape Policy: Help institutional leaders take action – across government, industry, and NGOs.

Canopy Collective aims to launch three signature initiatives:

First, in partnership with Vox, create and launch an eight-part podcast miniseries for a US audience that tells the stories, triumphs and tribulations of truth-telling and reparations work from other countries that have reckoned with legacies of atrocity and abuse. 

Second, in support of this liberatory work, build a transnational collective bringing together US practitioners with leaders abroad who have ushered in truth and repair efforts in their own countries — from Sierra Leone to New Zealand, to Guatemala to South Africa to Germany. Through the transnational collective, we will support practitioner-to-practitioner collaboration, learning, and experimentation. 

Finally, fund and directly support US-based truth-telling initiatives and their collaborations with our global peers through learning communities, art activism, and best practice in advocacy and praxis.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Catch Together View Project Catch Together Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
United States
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Catch Together

The challenge:

Under “catch share” management strategies, U.S. fisheries are one of the best-managed marine resources in the world. Fishery managers set an overall limit of fish that can be caught in each fishing area to ensure that healthy fishery populations are maintained. While this strategy has gained momentum, it has also created an unintended side effect. Because industrial fisheries have more access to capital, they can use their purchasing power to purchase the bulk of the shares, leaving few shares available to smaller-scale, local fishermen. As a result, local fisherman can lose access to fishing in their own coastal waters, placing their local livelihoods and coastal economies in jeopardy. Corporate fishing fleets are also more likely to use destructive fishing practices than smaller, local fleets and these unsustainable practices can further harm the broader marine ecosystem, including endangered species like seabirds, turtles, and marine mammals.

What can be done?

Community-based permit banks are a relatively new strategy for buying, holding, and leasing fishing permits, quota or catch shares that have enormous potential to help ensure long-term access to fisheries by local fishing communities. Permit banks can level the playing field for small-scale fishermen, while also support more sustainable fishing practices, which in turn helps rebuild, conserve and ensure resilience of ocean ecosystems and sustainable coastal livelihoods and communities for future generations.

How Catch Together is meeting the challenge:

Catch Together works alongside fishermen and fishing communities to create community-based permit banks with buying power which own fishing quota and catch shares and ensure fishermen access to local fisheries. These permit banks, which emphasize sustainable fishing practices, can also generate cash flow to support local leadership and stewardship, and to fund ongoing fishery improvements. Since access to capital for newly established permit banks is a key issue, the newly established Catch Together Fisheries Fund also helps provide loans for qualified community-based permit banks to purchase permits or catch shares.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

cChange View Project cChange Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
Pacific Islands
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cChange

The challenge:

The Pacific Ocean is the largest ecosystem in the world, covering almost half the globe’s sea surface. 22 Pacific Island countries and territories govern approximately one-third of the Pacific. Although the ocean is the major economic, social and cultural lifeline for 10 million Pacific islanders, this vast ecosystem is threatened by overfishing, habitat destruction, pollution, and severe threats from climate change and rising sea level. Yet, awareness alone is not enough to drive and sustain change, whether change is needed in public health, education, or conservation. For example, in Fiji, there is an increasing awareness of coastal fisheries decline and an increasing interest in fishery management, yet short-term needs for food and income continue to drive decision-making within communities, despite decades of attempted interventions.

What can be done?

Progress and behavior change will depend on powerful communications approaches to shift social norms and create broad support and momentum for change. When communities and leaders feel the personal relevance of society’s issues, when they are motivated by their own values and desire the solutions, when barriers to action are meaningfully addressed, then will they change their behavior in ways that will lead to the transformational outcomes needed.

How cChange is meeting the challenge:

With offices in Brisbane, Australia and Suva, Fiji, cChange uses sustained targeted messaging in its behavioral communication efforts that is designed to succeed within local contexts and available resources. Historically focused on sustainable natural resource management, including work on fisheries management, climate change, and sustainable land management, cChange now applies targeted change communications to a host of social and health issues. A key part of cChange’s work is making changing behavior as smart and compelling as possible, and this demands creativity and talent. cChange has assembled a highly capable team of writers, photographers, videographers, graphic designers, and animators to respond to make change fun, easy, and engaging.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Center for Transformative Technology View Project Center for Transformative Technology Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

Service Area
Worldwide
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Center for Transformative Technology

The Challenge: Technology is growing exponentially while human growth and development remains linear. This gap between technology growth and human growth presents both opportunities and threats to human-beings. Many recent developments in technology have taxed our thinking and relationships instead of attempting to advance human beings to reach their full potential. People are struggling mentally and emotionally. Stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia and more are widespread. People are not trained for the AI future where as rote tasks go away, jobs will center on human interaction skills enabled by psychological wellbeing and social and emotional intelligence. People feel adrift and without purpose, a primary driver of wellbeing. But, we aren’t taught the skills to develop our purposes individually or collectively so it is no surprise that we do not align to solve our existential threats. Humans must begin to prioritize building the technology that helps us know ourselves better than the algorithms and create deeper understanding between the interconnected nature of ourselves, one another and our world.

What Can Be Done: Humanity must get psychological health, growth and development to be exponential in order to create wellbeing- an essential skill for health, work, and human excellence. Widespread wellbeing is the right tool to bend the arc of human history towards a humane and flourishing future. Across the globe, hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, innovators and investors have the capacity to develop technology focused on mental health, emotional wellbeing and human flourishing. But, without a community of pioneers, the likelihood of creating truly world-changing tech that will permanently move people into a state of well-being is low. Transformative technology entrepreneurs need a community where they can freely share ideas and feedback, find funding and learn from others failure. A global network can help foster innovative ideas, ensure the use of ethical frameworks, strengthen the bridge to and from academia and build a global movement towards transformative technology.

How Center for Transformative Tech is meeting the challenge: The Center for Transformative Tech is a burgeoning ecosystem supporting change makers who are building and leveraging technologies to improve health, work and human excellence. As the leading network dedicated to the development of wellbeing technology, the Center for Transformative Technology stewards a global community of entrepreneurs, innovators and investors in over 70 countries and 450 cities. The Center conducts an intertwined combination of conferences, summits, online programs and meet-ups:

Transformative Tech Conference – A 2-day deep dive on transformative technology research, companies, and opportunities with keynotes, panels, and hands-on demos of cutting-edge wellbeing tech.
Transformative Tech Academy – A pioneering tech seed-stage program focused on human wellbeing.
Transformative Tech Lab – The nexus point for Transformative Tech for the basic research across academic, industry, and public sectors including working with corporate and city innovators on research publications and summits.
Transformative Tech Community – Entrepreneurs, innovators, and investors in over 70 countries and 450+ cities plus 27 City Chapters and 12 Salons. Studies show that entrepreneurs and innovators do better when embedded in a supportive community.

These activities allow a cross-section of wellness experts, corporations, civic institutions, investors and innovators to come together to discuss the type of technologies that the world will need now and into the future and begin to make those technologies a reality.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Certifications and Ratings Collaboration View Project Certifications and Ratings Collaboration Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
Global
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Certifications and Ratings Collaboration

The Challenge: The seafood industry is a principle driver of the health of the world’s oceans, employs and supports nearly 60 million workers and is a primary means by which to ensure global food security. But, the demand for seafood is growing more rapidly than fish-stocks are able to regenerate themselves and, unless more environmentally sustainable and socially responsible fishing and aquaculture practices are put in place, we will not be able to supply the human demand for seafood.

What can be done: Certification and ratings programs have played an important role in advancing the sustainable seafood movement during the past decade. However, the seafood certification and ratings landscape can seem confusing and seafood business and governments need help understanding the value of these tools and how they complement each other. Fisheries and aquaculture producers – particularly in the developing world – need more support to move along the path toward environmental sustainability and social responsibility. And the sustainable seafood movement as a whole needs a shared understanding of the global seafood landscape – its status and trends, what’s working and what’s not, and where the gaps are – in order to accelerate more sustainable fishing practices.

How The Certification and Ratings Collaborative is meeting the challenge: The Certification and Ratings Collaboration is an effort among five global seafood certification and ratings programs to increase efficiency, address challenges, and help more fisheries and aquaculture achieve environmental sustainability and social responsibility. The collaboration strives to coordinate our complementary tools for measuring and improving fishery and aquaculture performance, communicate clearly with seafood producers and buyers about our tools and the pathway to sustainability and analyze and track the global landscape of sustainable seafood. The participating organizations are the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, Fair Trade USA, Marine Stewardship Council, Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, and Sustainable Fisheries Partnership. The Certifications and Ratings Collaborative works together to coordinate tools and increase impact so that more seafood producers move along a clear path toward environmental sustainability and social responsibility.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

ChangeScale View Project ChangeScale Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

Service Area
Northern and Central California
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ChangeScale

The challenge:

Environmental education is a cornerstone of lifelong learning. The San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area is home to a wealth and diversity of environmental education organizations and supporters. But now with impending climate issues and disasters approach, a new approach to education—one that is collaborative and adaptive to our changing societal and environmental needs must be established.

What can be done?

By working collaboratively to develop and implement best practices, a more robust environmental education system can be developed to create healthy communities and a healthy planet.

How ChangeScale is meeting the challenge:

Through an open dialogue with practitioners, researchers, and funders who share a common interest, ChangeScale members worked inclusively with thought leaders across the region and country to identify strategies to increase the impact of environmental education in our region. Through ChangeScale, organizations work together to catalyze movement toward widespread integration of environmental education that strengthens the foundation for preserving the planet. ChangeScale partners have developed a two-pronged approach for achieving meaningful impact in our region:

Over the next five years, ChangeScale’s member will expand access to high-quality, evidence-based, and data driven environmental education for 150,000 children through school and community partnerships.
To support the growth and effectiveness of the field, ChangeScale provides opportunities for professional development and community building.

By working together, environmental educators across the region will reach more young people, while continually improving the quality, relevance, and effectiveness of environmental education in our region.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Climate Resilience Fund View Project Climate Resilience Fund Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

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Global
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Climate Resilience Fund

The challenge: The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that an annual investment of $2.4 trillion is needed in the energy system alone until 2035 to limit temperature rise to below 1.5 °C from pre-industrial levels. But the effort to tackle climate change goes beyond reshaping energy systems: it includes needed investments in reforestation, coastal-defense systems and many other efforts to cut emissions and adapt to rising temperatures. According to analysis, spending on adaptation efforts is particularly low. A drastic increase in investing in adaptation measures, such as early warning systems and resilient infrastructure, would not only avoid tremendous human suffering and economic losses, but would bring benefits that would outweigh the costs.

What can be done: Communities are beginning to realize that climate resilience and adaptation strategies are necessary if they are going to continue to thrive in the future. In the United States, New York has revamped some zoning and building codes with an eye to rising seas and more extreme weather, and has begun a project to help protect parts of lower Manhattan from storm surges. Voters in Miami approved a $400 million bond that would partly go to making the city more resilient. Norfolk, Virginia, which is particularly vulnerable to rising seas, is trying to become a laboratory for adaptation. But these interventions and investments are far short of what’s needed. The lack of investment can often be attributed to policy makers inability to coordinate within the existing resilience ecosystem and the need to build collective capacity to facilitate the use of climate services tools and resources by decision-makers in communities.

How Climate Resilience Fund is meeting the challenge: The Climate Resilience Fund (CRF) is committed to the idea that climate change adaptation and resilience strategies embody an opportunity to re-shape societies’ relationship with the natural world; an opportunity to mainstream principles and practices of sustainability, conservation, and social equity into decision-making in all sectors and at all levels of governance. CRF works with our partners to advance a positive vision of a climate resilient society and to mobilize the resources for achieving it. CRF is committed to championing and investing in climate adaptation and resilience professionals and the strategies, resources, and tools that are necessary for local and regional decision makers to proactively address the impacts of a changing climate on people and nature. CRF’s approach is to mobilize investments from philanthropic investors/partners through pooled or aligned funds which are used to leverage matching dollars from secondary partners. CRF’s primary grantmaking consists of field-building investments that support collaborative efforts to streamline, coordinate, and make more transparent the tools and resources required to implement climate adaptation and resilience strategies in every sector, region, and community. CRF also invests in foundation-partner aligned grants that aim to build capacity in “boundary” organizations that bring knowledge and expertise about climate change impacts and the resources, tools, and strategies for addressing them to local and regional decision-makers and practitioners.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Climate Safe Lending Network View Project Climate Safe Lending Network Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People

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Global
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Climate Safe Lending Network

The challenge: More than a decade after the global financial crisis, with less than a decade to prevent catastrophic climate change – and despite public commitments – our financial system is still financing fossil fuel expansion and failing to direct sufficient finance towards a green, just transition. According to Rainforest Action Network’s 2022 Banking on Climate Change report, since the 2015 Paris Agreement the world’s 60 largest commercial and investment banks have invested $4.6 trillion into fossil fuels. The major role that banks play in the global economy – through lending and investment decisions, employment, tax contributions and international trade – means that they play a critical role in successfully transitioning to net zero carbon economies. Key to containing carbon emissions to a 1.5°C global temperature increase is aligning bank lending with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

What can be done? Getting global emissions of greenhouse gases onto a rapidly declining pathway requires deep transformation of the banking system – from the level of purpose, values, and mindsets through to the business processes and strategies that drive banks’ impact in the world. This level of change requires a two-pronged approach that consists of 1) supporting banking professionals in leading the adoption of climate safe lending policies (influencing change from within banks); and 2) aligning the efforts of external influencers, such as clients, investors, financial regulators, and environmental activists with a shared interest in removing carbon emissions from lending (pressuring banks to adopt climate-safe lending practices).

How Climate Safe Lending Network (CSLN) is meeting the challenge: CSLN supports lending institutions to collaborate with each other and wider parts of the financial system – including investors, clients, regulators, policy makers, academics, and civil society organizations – to align bank lending with climate safe scenarios that contain emissions to a 1.5℃ temperature increase and incorporate strategies for a socially equitable and just transition.

CSLN is concentrating collective efforts to align bank lending with climate safe scenarios through these collaborative initiatives, each of which is capable of incubating new ideas and driving transformative projects:

Climate Safe Learning Lab: Connects and supports banking professionals who are advancing the climate agenda within their organizations.
Climate Safe Policy Initiative: Engages commercial and central bank leaders in shifting the narrative about financial regulation to encompass financial and planetary stability.
Climate Safe Prosumers & Influencers Initiative: Mobilizes commercial and retail clients to collectively influence banks to transition to climate safe lending practices.

Through these efforts, CSLN catalyses systems change by focusing on key leverage points in the banking system that when collectively acted upon by public, private, and civic sector leaders, can accelerate the decarbonization of the banking sector and real economy.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Columbia Rediviva View Project Columbia Rediviva Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

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Pacific Northwest
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Columbia Rediviva

The challenge:

Without efforts to protect the waters that support wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, this keystone species may be headed toward total extinction. The Columbia River, which rises in the mountains of British Columbia and flows south into the U.S. through Washington state and Oregon, was once one of the world’s most productive salmon systems. Once central to the region’s culture and economies, the absence of salmon now shapes the region. Many Columbia River Basin salmon populations are already extinct; of those remaining, thirteen are endangered and over 80% are mass-produced in hatcheries instead of spawning naturally in the wild. The Columbia is also the most hydroelectrically engineered river system on Earth with more than 400 dams on the Columbia and its tributaries. In recent years, rising operation and maintenance costs combined with the proliferation of less expensive renewable energy, have lowered demand for electricity from the dams and rendering them obsolete.

What can be done?

Updating our outdated 19th Century operating framework to align with today’s understanding of two energy systems on the Columbia River – one electrical and one biological – can lead to the largest river restoration project in U.S. history, and creating a robust and distributed power grid, while fundamentally reshaping our relationship to the natural world in this region.

How Columbia Rediviva is meeting the challenge:

Columbia Rediviva is communications platform about the Columbia River Basin – its literal and figurative power structures, its salmon, its water, and its regional economy. Columbia Rediviva’s goal is to help area stakeholders make the best decisions – for their communities and for salmon – as dams are dismantled.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions View Project Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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North America, South America, Europe, and Japan
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Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions

The challenge:

Feeding almost 10 billion people in the year 2050 will require innovative, collaborative, and viable solutions that consider political and economic uncertainty, growing pressure on natural resources, and climate change.

What can be done?

Substantial scientific evidence suggests seafood, both farmed and wild, has the potential to significantly contribute to food security on a global scale amidst these changes, if sustainable practices are widely implemented throughout supply chains. Such an approach supports vibrant and resilient ocean and freshwater ecosystems that contribute to improved livelihoods, healthy communities, and food security, while also protecting human rights, dignity, and access to resources for future generations. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governmental entities, and the seafood industry must align and foster best practices. The cultivation of an enabling business environment that drives supply chain actors to align their behavior with best practices and credibly document their efforts is essential if sustainability is to become the norm.

How Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions is meeting the challenge:

The Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions is a community of organizations that believe seafood production is a powerful driver of change for the health and biodiversity of our oceans and the economic and social well-being of individuals and communities around the world. With a shared understanding of the changes that need to happen to successfully transform the seafood supply chain, the Alliance works together to accelerate and increase the overall collective impact of our community.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Conservation & Community Investment Forum View Project Conservation & Community Investment Forum Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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Indonesia
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Conservation and Community Investment Forum (CCIF)

The challenge:

Indonesia is the second largest marine capture fisheries producer in the world with millions employed throughout the fishery value chain, and fish supplies over 20% of animal protein consumed in Indonesia. Yet many of Indonesia’s fisheries are fully or over exploited, presenting a looming health and economic crisis. Fisheries management, perhaps more than any other measure, has been shown to be critical to improving fishery sustainability, but, while Indonesia embraces many best practices, there are no good examples of fisheries management in the country. Moreover, the regulatory context, institutional infrastructure, individual capacities, and established procedures in Indonesia are insufficient to support effectively managed fisheries, and are instead predisposed to maximizing resource extraction, and near-term growth. Indonesia’s fisheries are a critical economic, social, and environmental resource, yet this resource is under threat from destructive fishing practices and poorly managed economic development.

What can be done?

By working with highly experience local partners, hands-on tools, policy strategies, and resources can be effectively designed to be culturally and politically relevant in order to address urgent conservation and community development issues in Indonesia.

How CCIF is meeting the challenge:

Based in Bali, Indonesia, Conservation and Community Investment Forum (CCIF) combines expertise in pragmatic, on-the-ground conservation and community development work with extensive experience in finance, natural resource economics, enterprise development and investment banking to design and help to finance conservation and community development solutions which lead to direct and sustaining outcomes. CCIF partner organizations provide models for best practice fisheries management in Indonesia. By providing models and guidance, highlighting gaps, and creating demand for improved fisheries management in Indonesia, CCIF plays an important and catalyzing role in reforming fisheries management.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Conservation Finance Network View Project Conservation Finance Network Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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Conservation Finance Network

The Challenge: Increasingly, the conservation community has recognized that traditional models and sources of capital cannot keep pace with the scale of social, environmental, and economic problems, as evidenced by the $700 million annual biodiversity finance gap. Further, it is abundantly clear that a more holistic, systems approach is needed for conservation impact which better centers human health and equity considerations.

The emerging field of conservation finance offers critical ways to leverage public, private, and philanthropic dollars for the projects that matter. Yet there are few opportunities for practitioners to learn about these tools and techniques and how to put them to use. At the same time, capital providers are looking for new opportunities to put their resources to work in social, environmental, and equity-oriented projects. However, evidence suggests that the field is not impeded by the availability of capital, but by a multitude of other factors. These include a shortage of investable deals with appropriate risk and return profiles, a shortage of familiarity and expertise among investors and practitioners, small transaction sizes, difficult exit strategies, high transaction costs, and limited commercial support for early-stage projects. As such, progress against the finance gap depends on building sector-wide infrastructure and growing sophistication among practitioners.

What can be done: Expanding the use of blended finance strategies offers our best hope to achieve meaningful impact for human health and equity, climate change, land and water conservation, and biodiversity. By increasing capacity, confidence, and connections among a growing network of public, private, and nonprofit professionals, we can increase the amount of capital available for innovative—and effective—projects and efforts. Targeted convenings, technical assistance, and insight can bolster the work of land trusts, conservation organizations, community groups, investors and financial managers, foundations, public agencies, and academic institutions.

How The Conservation Finance Network is meeting the challenge: Conservation Finance Network (CFN) was founded in 2012 to accelerate the pace and scale of land and resource conservation, restoration, and stewardship by expanding the use of innovative and effective funding and financing strategies. As a trusted community of practice, we help practitioners develop and scale conservation finance approaches that increase their access to capital and environmental markets. CFN builds and supports a growing practitioner network through convenings, technical assistance, intensive workshops, and timely and actionable insight to increase the financial resources deployed for conservation. We accomplish this by employing the following goals and strategies:

Overarching Goals

Expand the use of innovative and effective conservation finance strategies
Build a networked community of practice
Increase the financial resources deployed for land and resource conservation

Strategies

Train: provide a sustained learning environment for practitioners
Convene: create opportunities that allow for the sharing of actionable knowledge
Incubate: foster the development of new techniques and strategies
Partner: leverage the impact of the network through strategic and creative partnerships with people and institutions
Disseminate: capture and disseminate innovative and cutting-edge approaches to funding and financing
Build: sustain and build upon the Conservation Finance Network’s overall effort
Elevate and Empower: Better center equity and justice considerations across the field by contributing to and elevating the efforts of practitioners, organizations, and coalitions.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program Collaborative View Project Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program Collaborative Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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United States
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Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program Collaborative

The challenge:

Solving the complex and accelerating problems of habitat loss, climate change, threats to biodiversity, and other conservation challenges requires innovative and imaginative solutions. The probability of identifying and implementing creative solutions is greatly enhanced when a diverse workforce consisting of people from a broad range of backgrounds brings new ideas, perspectives, experiences, and knowledge to the table.

Furthermore, in an increasingly diverse society, disciplines that draw from a narrow ethnic and racial slice of the population are likely to be undervalued by society. This is reflected in a lower level of participation in voluntary conservation activities, membership in conservation organizations, and donations contributed toward conservation by people of color than for people from the white population. Given the changing demographics of the US and the environmental challenges we face, fostering expertise in and appreciation of conservation science across the demographic breadth of society may be key to long-term success of conservation programs.

What can be done?

To diversify the field of conservation, we must build capacity in a diverse cadre of college graduates by providing them with skills in biodiversity conservation, leadership, and breaking down barriers to diversity and inclusion while in college. We must also provide access to the field by strengthening their relationships with other scholars and alumni of our program and by helping them build strong professional networks.

How Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program Collaborative is meeting the challenge:

The Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program Collaborative is designed to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of biodiversity conservation, with a specific emphasis on the conservation of land, water, and wildlife.

As part of a network of Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Programs, the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program Collaborative is a highly competitive, two-year undergraduate experiential research program focused on preparing the next generation of diverse environmental conservation professionals. Scholars take part in applied field research projects, professional internships, mentoring, and form strong professional networks. Scholars learn a variety of field techniques and research and presentation skills. Students are also prepared to help increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of conservation through coursework in communication, creative problem solving, leadership, and diversity, equity, and inclusion all while building important leadership and communication skills.

ABOUT THE DORIS DUKE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is to improve the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and child well-being, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke’s properties. The foundation’s Environment Program seeks to ensure a thriving, resilient environment for wildlife and people and foster an inclusive, effective conservation movement. For more information, visit ddcf.org

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Environmental Data and Governance Initiative View Project Environmental Data and Governance Initiative Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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Environmental Data and Governance Initiative

The Challenge: Environmental regulations are not effectively protecting the environment and public health. This stems from: the influence those who benefit from environmentally harmful practices have on regulation and research ; data systems that have been designed with flawed scientific and social scientific assumptions; and forms of public engagement that constrain meaningful public participation in decision making, agenda setting, and actions to improve environmental health and justice.

What Can Be Done: Government actors can be held accountable by research communities and tools that enable rapid public analysis of changes in regulation, data, and websites. Additionally, data infrastructures can be redesigned to improve identification and prediction of environmental harms and to create more public accountability for these harms. Academics, non-profits, regulatory agencies, and communities can collaborate to build effective and just environmental information systems.

How the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) is meeting the challenge: EDGI is building software and research communities to track federal regulations, data, and websites. They have developed a research community who interview agency staff to offer uniquely human-centered analysis of changes within the federal government. Additionally, EDGI are developing new software for the public and their representatives to engage data on environmental contamination and the enforcement of environmental laws. EDGI are working to convene communities, academics, technologists, non-profits, and policy makers to discuss and develop more just, effective, accountable, and public forms of environmental data and governance.

EDGI’s work encompasses five major program areas:

Analyzing the inner workings of federal environmental policy.
Monitoring changes to, and exploring standards for, web-based information provided by the federal government about the environment, energy, and climate.
Developing new ways of making environmental data more effective, accessible, just and accountable to the public.
Conceptualizing and moving toward environmental d ata j ustice.
Prototyping new organizational structures and practices for distributed, collective, and effective work rooted in justice.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Fed By Blue View Project Fed By Blue Healthy Planet & People Secure Natural Resources

Fed By Blue

The Challenge: Over 3 billion people on our planet today rely on seafood for their primary protein source. Yet we are overfishing our oceans and waterways, endangered species are often caught as bycatch and important marine and aquatic ecosystems are threatened. As our population grows towards 10 billion by 2050, the United Nations and scientists worldwide are advocating for increasing seafood supply to provide food that is nutritious and accessible. As we work to meet this challenge, we must do so in a way that is restorative to our oceans and waterways to ensure healthy ecosystems and abundant “blue food” for generations to come.

What can be done: All actors -from fishers to consumers to policymakers – play an important role in protecting ecosystems and ensuring that blue foods are responsibly sourced. Educating consumers about the health and environmental benefits of responsibly sourced blue foods; ensuring transparency and traceability of where blue foods are caught or farmed; and securing policies that promote conservation and responsible sourcing of blue foods. A holistic approach to sustainable blue food is necessary.

How Fed By Blue is meeting the challenge: Fed By Blue is a first of its kind global campaign to raise awareness and inspire action for marine and aquatic conservation and responsibly sourced blue foods. The campaign will:

Help consumers make the best choices about responsibly sourced seafood
Educate young people about the importance of protecting ocean and aquatic ecosystems and using the resources responsibly
Activate constituencies to advocate for policies that promote ocean and aquatic conservation and responsible sourcing of seafood
Ensure that seafood can be traced from source to dinner plate

The fate of our planet depends on healthy, biodiverse oceans and waterways. Fed By Blue will help educate and activate new audiences to be part of the solution.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Feeding Good View Project Feeding Good Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

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United States
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Feeding Good

The Challenge: More than 11 million children in the United States live in “food insecure” homes, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). That means those families don’t have enough food for every family member to lead a healthy life. This doesn’t always mean that there is nothing to eat. But it can mean that children get smaller portions than they need, or parents don’t have the resources to afford nutritious foods. Many of these families rely on the free or reduced-price meals their children receive through school or community organizations. However, with schools and after-school programs across the country closed for the foreseeable future and nearly 30 million people unemployed, an essential element of the COVID-19 response will be bridging the food access gap for low-income families.

What Can Be Done? Several states and schools have begun developing their own solutions, adapting traditional service models to reduce disease transmission. Some districts have announced “Grab-n-Go” meal sites throughout their districts that can provide up to 5 days of meals at once. Other districts are arranging meal deliveries to school bus stops or homes. The USDA has also initiated a public–private partnership in rural areas to deliver shelf-stable food packages that include food that families can prepare. It’s clear that there are many approaches to tackling this issue, but the most successful of these programs will distribute food effectively and equitably while preventing disease transmission and ensuring cost-effectiveness and sustainability for the duration of school closures.

How the Feeding Good Project is meeting the challenge: Multiplier and Revolution Foods have partnered to launch the Feeding Good Project. Feeding Good directly funds healthy and delicious meals for low-income and food-insecure households across the country. Revolution Foods’ quick response to the COVID-19 crisis ensures that communities who were already struggling with food insecurity prior to the pandemic have access to meals with the highest nutrition, ingredient and culinary standards. In coordination with school partners, community organizations and other world-class nonprofits, Feeding Good ensures families are able to remain well-nourished during these difficult times.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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FieldKit View Project FieldKit Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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Global
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FieldKit

The challenge:

Science and technology will be at the heart of the innovation that secures the future of our planet and its people. Without global advancement, scientists predict that ocean acidification and high greenhouse gas emissions will rapidly and significantly alter the ecosystems and food webs on which we depend. Weather will get warmer and more severe, and studies suggest that, by 2050, climate-driven events will make cities uninhabitable for as many as 200 million people who will need to migrate to survive. Species will not be able to adapt and extinction rates will rise. Without easily accessible science information, these rapidly-changing conditions cannot be monitored effectively and solutions may not be found before it’s too late.

For the last century, science and technology has been the engine of global economic growth. Now, we will also depend on it to save our planet and its people. In developed countries, science and technology are omnipresent, widely adopted, and accessible. For example, in the U.S., science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jobs have outpaced other industries for more than 40 years and leading technology and science companies are often challenged to fill the jobs to meet growing demand. In contrast, developing countries still lag far behind the developed world, both in leveraging innovative technology developed elsewhere, and in fostering the institutions that can support advancing technology in-country. Without strong science and technology-based economies, the developing world lacks the knowledge, systems, and tools that can drive many aspects of social and economic development in critical areas like agriculture, health care, infrastructure, communications, and climate resilience.

What can be done?

There is an urgent need for development of low-cost and highly reliable scientific and research monitoring technology that can make data readily available anywhere in the world. By easing access to data collection and analysis tools, real-world applications of new ideas can be developed cost-effectively and rapidly and can accelerate planet- and people-saving advances.

How FieldKit is meeting the challenge:

FieldKit is an open-source software and hardware platform that allows individuals and organizations to collect and share field-based research data, and to tell stories through interactive visualizations. It bridges the gap between hard science and storytelling, by combining the analysis features of open science frameworks with the public-facing storytelling features of data visualization and map-based interactive platforms. The scientific community, students and educators, conservation and wildlife NGOs, citizen scientists, environmental activists, and science communicators can all benefit from FieldKit. The platform is currently under development and includes:

* FieldKit Hardware: microcontroller-based open source sensor kits equipped with SD card slot, GPS, wifi, and sensor-to-sensor radios.

* FieldKit.org website (modular database software for collection, storage, visualization, and sharing of research data)

* FieldKit App: Android/iOS app that connect to fieldkit.org and allows for sensor configuration, data download, and photos/videos/recordings from the field.

* FieldKit Naturalist: A handheld unit that gather high fidelity environmental metadata (temp, humidity, light level, noise level, dew point, altitude, etc) as the student/scientist/explorer is walking around.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Food Commons View Project Food Commons Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

Service Area
United States
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Food Commons

The challenge:

The economic model for the U.S. food and agricultural industry has evolved into one which is often predicated on scale, technology and serving large enterprises and global markets. While this model serves many contexts, a natural casualty of that evolution is the formerly close connection of local or regional food enterprises within their communities. This stunts growth for local farmers who cannot enter the market and fails to match of local needs with a local freshly-available resource.

What can be done?

By recreating the local and regional food systems to reflect 21st-century advances, local farmers can enhance existing and emerging regional food system initiatives and offer their communities options for safer and healthier foods.

How Food Commons is meeting the challenge:

The Food Commons model is a networked system of physical, financial and organizational infrastructure that allows new local and regional markets to operate efficiently, and small to mid-sized food enterprises – from farms to processors, distributors, and retailers – to compete and thrive according to principles of sustainability, fairness, and public accountability. This system can revitalize and ensure the continuity of small and mid- sized family farms that steward the land, nourish our communities and our health, and comprise the fundamental building blocks of local and national food security.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Future of Fish View Project Future of Fish Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

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Global
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Future of Fish

The Challenge: International small-scale fisheries are most vulnerable to the threats of overfishing and climate change. Small-scale fisheries represent over 50% of the wild capture seafood caught globally and include 90% of the workforce in the industry. The threats of overfishing, pollution and degradation not only puts the global environment at risk, but it has direct human impacts on over 3 billion people globally who rely on seafood as their main protein source. Failing to solve these problems can have catastrophic knock-on effects for the communities reliant on wild fish as livelihoods, food security, and resilient communities all come under threat.

What can be done: Thriving, resilient oceans that support more fish, feed more people and improve prosperity are within reach. With every fisheries management success, the prospects improve for healthy oceans that help sustain the well-being of nations, communities and people around the world. Better business practices and increased investment are needed that benefit both fishing communities and industry in order to create thriving ocean based economies. However, small-scale fisheries continue to deteriorate as the complex problems of human development, informality, inequitable supply chains, and lack of policy and enforcement are too great for any one stakeholder to tackle. Deep and broad collaborations are urgently required to unlock resources and create incentives for change. Only by working together and taking a holistic approach, can we end overfishing without ending fishing.

How Future of Fish is meeting the challenge: Future of Fish (FoF) serves as a system intermediary connecting small-scale fisheries to critical networks including seafood businesses and the private, public, and non-profit sectors. FoF brings these groups together to co-design, innovate, and implement replicable, scalable solutions and develops access to resources appropriate for both grassroots and broader systemic impact. Through diverse collaborations, FoF creates the enabling conditions to remove the barriers to change, incentivizing better business practices to improve sustainability, equity and economic opportunity in coastal communities.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Global Cool Cities Alliance View Project Global Cool Cities Alliance Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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Global
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Global Cool Cities Alliance

The challenge:

When the temperatures rise, densely populated cities experience an “urban heat island effect” caused by urban development and waste heat due to additional energy use. As a result, these metro areas become significantly warmer than the surrounding areas. As our climate warms, temperatures in these urban heat islands are climbing, leading to increased energy consumption for active cooling and higher green house gas emissions, which in turn both contribute to global warm and climate change. It is a vicious cycle, and can compromise human health and comfort (particularly for seniors and children), impair water quality, and damage surrounding ecosystems. For example, hot pavement and rooftop surfaces directly heat stormwater runoff, which then raises water temperatures in surrounding streams, ponds and lakes. These stressors can be fatal to aquatic life in these important watersheds, including fish, turtles, birds, and the food sources on which they depend.

What can be done?

Urban planning and design that incorporates more “cool” infrastructures (e.g. white roofs and pavements) and green infrastructure (e.g. trees, parks, and rooftop gardens) can dramatically reduce the effects of urban heat islands.

How Global Cool Cities Alliance is meeting the challenge:

The Alliance works in partnership with cities and other stakeholders, giving them the tools and support they need to identify, customize and implement successful policies and programs to lower urban heat by harnessing the benefits of cool surfaces. At the forefront of best practices, the Alliance’s key recent initiatives include:

One Million Cool Roofs Challenge: A first-of-its-kind, $2 million USD initiative to accelerate the transformation to cool surface in places that need it most.
Los Angeles Urban Cooling Collaborative: Helping to demonstrate the benefits of a cooler Los Angeles as a model for other cities
South Africa Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Exchange: A regularly-updated platform for sharing information on initiatives related to the growth of markets for efficient, clean, and sustainable technologies in South Africa.

Global Cool Cities Alliance also created and hosts the Cool Roofs and Cool Pavements Toolkit website.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Interfaith Sustainable Food Collaborative View Project Interfaith Sustainable Food Collaborative Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People

Service Area
San Francisco Bay Area
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Interfaith Sustainable Food Collaborative

The challenge:

Food-insecure and low-income Americans face universal challenges in trying to be healthy, including more sedentary lifestyles (particularly for seniors) and increased portion size and proliferation of fast food. They also face additional challenges. Low-income neighborhoods often lack full-service grocery stores and farmers’ markets where they can buy fruit, vegetables, grains, and low-fat dairy products. They are also less likely to have and use their own vehicles for food shopping, so food choices may be limited to what they can carry. When low-income residents are able to access healthy food, it can be more expensive, or may be of poorer quality because of a lack of supply and demand.

What can be done?

In recent years, several initiatives among religious denominations at the national level have highlighted the connection between the food system, spirituality, and social justice. Many creative programs have blossomed from these efforts. However, the diverse application of congregational-level projects has not been shared in a way that facilitates development of new projects across the faith spectrum.

How ISFC is meeting the challenge:

The Interfaith Sustainable Food Collaborative (ISFC) is focused on building a more sustainable food system in the San Francisco Bay Area by leveraging faith-based communities as key resources to help their members and other local residents access healthy, sustainably grown, local food. ISFC provides resources to help committed congregations expand their work, as well as facilitates policy activism by connecting congregations to educational resources and timely advocacy opportunities. ISFC has been actively engaged in bringing community supported agriculture (CSA) programs to faith-based communities to provide members with vegetables, fruit, and dairy and also ensuring that seniors and other SNAP recipients can easily access their benefits through the faith-based institutions that they trust.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Intertidal Agency View Project Intertidal Agency Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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Global
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Intertidal Agency

The challenge:

At a time when consumer products are swimming in big data, we often struggle to get basic data on our oceans, wildlife, and public lands. Solutions are out there, but we need to translate and repurpose them to meet the needs of the people that manage, protect, and rely on our natural infrastructure.

What can be done?

The environmental sector needs better data collection, system design, and data analysis that works across institutional silos, answers real management questions, and engages the public in stewardship of our public resources. Data can point to solutions and facilitate conversations about where to work next, and why.

How the Intertidal Agency is meeting the challenge:

Intertidal Agency seeks to make connections across the conservation and technology sectors to enable digital stewardship on a changing planet, by bringing high-quality design, computer science, and digital ingenuity to bear on conservation challenges and natural resource management. Intertidal Agency focuses on making it easier for managers, resource users, and the public to collect, analyze, and access essential data for smart decisions and long-term stewardship of our planet. Intertidal Agency offers three main services:

Network building–Intertidal Agency seeks out, connects, and cultivates relationships among a wide array of professionals to expand the capacity of the natural resource management sector and catalyze new and innovative projects.
Problem framing & design–Public agencies and user groups do not always have the capacity to assess their current data systems, conduct qualitative research to identify community needs, or explore a wide range of potential tools. Intertidal Agency can help with problem framing directly or by finding and matching you with experienced service designers and technical consultants.
Project management–Once you’ve identified your project’s goals and scope, Intertidal Agency can help you fill out your team with researchers, designers, software engineers, and other skilled partners. Intertidal Agency also offers project management capacity to keep a project on track.

Intertidal Agency’s recent projects include:

AI for fish in New England–A team of fisheries and machine learning experts co-created the N+1 fish, N+2 fish challenge where competitors developed algorithms to count, measure and identify fish species from video from fishing vessels. The open source results will help make it easier and faster to monitor fishing in New England, providing better data to sustain future fish populations.
Improving U.S. Fisheries Data Systems–As part of a 2016 expert panel, Intertidal Agency helped develop recommendations to increase the accuracy, speed, and usability of U.S. fisheries data. Intertidal Agency supports ongoing projects to implement those recommendations.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Junglekeepers View Project Junglekeepers Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
Peru
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Junglekeepers

The challenge:

The Amazon Jungle stretches across parts of nine South American nations. In Peru, the administrative regions of Madre de Dios houses the most uncharted and biodiverse areas of the Amazon, serving as home to more species of birds, butterflies, amphibians and reptiles than anywhere else on earth. Through this region runs Las Piedras River, with headwaters flowing through a large portion of two of Peru’s most important protected areas, the Alto Purús National Park and Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve for People Living in Voluntary Isolation.

In 2009, when the Interoceanic Highway was cut, a growing influx of settlers, gold miners, loggers, and farmers began infiltrating this once pristine landscape. Frontier extraction settlements are still on the rise in the region as illegal roads allow for both legal and illegal industries to export forest resources to market. Recently the Peruvian government has been working to implement stricter laws and higher fines in an effort to better police illegal activities. However, Lower Piedras has traditionally fallen outside state protection. Government-based land policy is continually ignored as profit is maximized.

What can be done?

Working in collaboration with local Peruvian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and indigenous communities, preventive and sustainable solutions for the long-term protection of the rainforest ecosystems can be deployed to save this threatened ecosystem.

How Junglekeepers is meeting the challenge:

Junglekeepers, in collaboration with partner NGOs and Peruvian conservationists, has created an initiative known collectively as Corredor Las Piedras (CLP). CLP’s focus is to create an uninterrupted conservation area stretching along the Las Piedras River. Through its sister organization, Junglekeepers Peru, Junglekeepers purchases sizeable land concessions from the Peruvian government or current rights holders, then operates the concession as a conservation area, employing local rangers to monitor and secure the land to ensure no illegal activity is taking place. Junglekeepers Ranger Program, operated in collaboration with ARC Amazon, actively monitors the current 4,906 acres of Junglekeepers concession-conservation area, as well as another 11,201 acre concession from ARC Amazon. Junglekeepers also seeks to protect and maintain the land of several conservation concession holders who do not have the resources to do so and are experiencing illegal activity such as logging and poaching.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Kitchen Table Advisors View Project Kitchen Table Advisors Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

Service Area
Northern California
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Kitchen Table Advisors

The challenge:

Sustainable, local farming is a capital-intensive business, with thin margins and high barriers to entry. Many farmers work long hours, yet struggle to earn the equivalent of minimum wage. And the failure rate for new farms is high: more than half go out of business within their first five years and at 15 years, the failure rate for farms is 75%. On their own, small farms often lack the capacity to bring their food products to larger markets, thus further increasing their likelihood of failure. The San Francisco Bay Area has already lost 217,000 acres of farm and ranch land to urban sprawl since 1984. The limited land that remains carries a high premium, which stymies access to both leasing and purchasing farmland, and renders new enterprises or growth nearly impossible for most small-scale farmers. Accompanied by California’s drought, wildfire and water access issues, farmers in Northern California face a constant uphill battle to sustain local farms.

What can be done?

We can design a healthier food system built upon a solid foundation of thriving sustainable small farms. Helping small, family-run businesses survive and thrive supports economic development and community vitality, particularly in rural communities throughout Northern California. When they are financially stable, small farms create community-based jobs for low-income workers, produce healthy food, ensure regional food security, and generate positive economic activity throughout the region.

How Kitchen Table Advisors is meeting the challenge:

Kitchen Table Advisors fuels the long-term economic viability of environmentally-sustainable small farms and ranches in Northern California. The farmers in KTA’s client portfolio are some of the neediest, the most difficult to reach, and least likely to respond to traditional outreach methods. KTA’s two-pronged approach includes:

KTA’s core program provides in-depth, one-on-one business advising, financial management coaching, and training for diverse, low-income, sustainable farmers and ranchers, so they have the tools to ensure their businesses will thrive over the long term.
KTA’s “regional ecosystem building” program focuses on improving access to land, sales markets, and financing for small scale, organic and sustainable farmers and ranchers, especially for farmers of color, immigrants, and women who are underrepresented in the profession.

By supporting small farms and helping shape the marketplace, KTA deepens its impact on the livelihoods of farmers and ranchers while influencing more systemic change with ripple effects throughout the region and beyond.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Marhaver Lab/Creative Coral Science for Reef Recovery View Project Marhaver Lab/Creative Coral Science for Reef Recovery Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
Caribbean Sea and other reefs throughout the world
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Marhaver Lab/Creative Coral Science for Reef Recovery

The challenge:

A healthy ocean depends on healthy coral reefs. Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the seafloor, yet they house approximately 25% of all species in the ocean. They are also vital to our global economy. Coral reefs are worth $1 Trillion USD per year through fisheries production, drug discovery, shoreline protection, and the creation of tourism jobs. However, compounding stressors – especially coastal development, overfishing, sewage input, fertilizer runoff, and temperature shock – are causing critical declines in the reproductive output and genetic diversity of coral populations.

10 Species of coral juveniles raised by the Marhaver lab

What can be done?

To complement coral conservation on the policy scale, innovative technical solutions are needed at the reef scale to pioneer new methods to save our reefs and the ecosystems they support.

How Marhaver Lab is meeting the challenge:

The Marhaver Lab is a marine biology research lab based in Curaçao. By studying reproduction in the Caribbean’s most fragile corals and inventing new tools to help them survive, the Lab pioneers methods so that everyone can grow more corals, faster. This includes decoding the reproductive behavior of understudied species through traditional natural history and combining advanced methods from diverse fields of science and engineering. The Marhaver Lab also hosts students from around the world for projects in coral ecology, reproduction, and restoration. Working at the leading edge of coral science, the Lab recently partnered with the Smithsonian Mote Marine Lab and the Florida Aquarium to achieve the first assisted gene flow in Caribbean corals, and the first fertilization of the threatened Elkhorn Coral Acropora palmata using cryopreserved sperm. This breakthrough creates powerful new tools for coral conservation, gene banking, and reef restoration.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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MarViva Foundation View Project MarViva Foundation Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
Eastern Tropic Pacific/Oceano Pacífico Este Tropical (PET)
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MarViva Foundation

The challenge:

The Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP) Ocean, which extends from San Diego west to Hawaii and south to Peru, is one of the richest and most bio-diverse regions in the world. Its coastal habitats and ecosystems are the foundation of a dynamic tourism industry, and multiple industrial and artisanal fisher sectors depend on its marine resources. It contains high productivity coastal and high seas sites, contributing significantly to global climate regulation. Despite priceless environmental services and socioeconomic benefits, the ETP faces increasing threats to sustainability, among others, unsustainable and illegal fishing, wildlife trafficking, pollution, sectoral policy-making, and weak institutional capacities and coordination.

What can be done?

Promote a balance between socioeconomic development and marine conservation, in favor of environmental sustainability and the well-being of present and future generations.

How MarViva Foundation is meeting the challenge:

MarViva Foundation, created in 2002, is a regional non-profit NGO with mission to promote the conservation and sustainable use of marine resources in the ETP. MarViva advances participatory initiatives in the local and regional scope, leveraging its multidisciplinary experts team, composed of marine biologists, environmental lawyers, geographers, journalists, business administrators and other complementing specialists. With focus in Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and the High Seas, MarViva facilitates multi-sectoral processes to advance marine spatial planning, market incentives for conservation and integral development (with emphasis on sustainable fishing and tourism, and the deterrence of marine litter), and capacity building for enhanced marine stewardship.

El reto:

El Pacífico Este Tropical (PET), que se extiende desde San Diego hasta Hawaii y el sur de Perú, es una de las regiones más ricas y biodiversas del mundo. Sus hábitats y ecosistemas costeros son la base de una dinámica industria turística, y múltiples sectores de pesca artesanal e industrial dependen de sus recursos marinos. Contiene sitios costeros y de alta mar, de alta productividad, que contribuyen de forma significativa a la regulación climática global. A pesar del valor incalculable de los servicios ambientales y beneficios socioeconomics, el PET enfrenta crecientes amenazas a la sostenibilidad, entre otras, pesca insostenible y/o ilegal, tráfico de especies, contaminación, planificación sectorial de políticas, y debilidad de capacidades y coordinación institucional.

¿Qué podemos hacer?

Promover un balance entre el desarrollo socioeconómico y la conservación marina, en favor de la sostenibilidad ambiental y el bienestar de las presentes y futuras generaciones.

Cómo MarViva está enfrentando el reto:

Fundación MarViva, creada en 2002, es una ONG regional sin fines de lucro, con misión de promover la conservación y uso sostenible de los recursos marinos en el PET. MarViva impulsa iniciativas participativas in el ámbito local y regional, con base en su equipo multidisciplinario de expertos, compuesto por biólogos marinos, abogados ambientales, geógrafos, periodistas, administradores de empresas, entre otras fortalezas complementarias. Con enfoque en Costa Rica, Panamá, Colombia y al Alta Mar, MarViva facilita procesos multisectoriales para avanzar el ordenamiento espacial marino, incentivos de mercado para la conservación y el desarrollo integral, (con énfasis en pesca y turismo responsables, y el combate a la contaminación marina), y construcción de capacidades para el mejoramiento de la gestión del mar.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Maven's Notebook View Project Maven's Notebook Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
California
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Maven’s Notebook: California Water, Verbatim

The challenge:

In California, a state faced with ongoing water supply challenges, access to water is critical. California’s working lands, a $50 billion driver of the state’s economy, need access for irrigation and drought reserve. California’s growing population relies on the water supply for safe drinking water and sanitary systems. Both of these needs must also be weighed against the need for protection and conservation of California’s natural resources, include rivers and streams and other riparian habitats that support birds, fish and other wildlife. Given these demands, the world of California water policy is confusing, complex, and controversial. Californians face a constant barrage of opinions, arguments and assertions of ‘facts’ about water. Making sense of the competing claims is extremely difficult and finding accurate information on California’s water issues can be frustrating and time-consuming, even for those working in the water industry.

What can be done?

An informed public, and informed policy makers, are essential to resolve California’s complicated water challenges. We need a comprehensive source of factual, unbiased information on California water issues that will allow us to effectively weigh competing priorities — a need that will only continue to grow in the face of climate change.

How Maven’s Notebook is meeting the challenge:

Published daily, Maven’s Notebook helps cut through the complex and controversial details of water flow, water supply and water quality and environmental disputes, leading to more rational outcomes. As a source of objective and understandable information about these multi-faceted issues, the Notebook’s unique value comes from several complementary approaches:

Objectivity: To ensure objectivity, the Maven’s Notebook rejects editorializing in favor of reporting. the Notebook covers critical events such as meetings of state agencies and quotes the participants directly and at greater length than conventional media coverage, leaving it to the reader to judge how successful the different interests are in making their case.
Comprehensiveness: Maven’s Notebook provides reliable, hard to get information by reporting on major planning/regulatory efforts. For example, the Department of Water Resources, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the State Water Board all issue a steady stream of press releases which are meant to inform, yet planning and regulatory efforts go mostly unreported in the mainstream media.
Timeliness: Maven’s Notebook is the only daily source of complete, comprehensive California water news. Published daily, it posts breaking news, provides weekly updates on reservoir and hydrologic conditions, and provides daily news aggregation of relevant news, articles, and commentary, as well as a calendar of meetings and events that are of interest to readers.

In an effort to make this information as accessible as possible, there is no charge to use the Notebook website. It is reader-supported journalism, made possible by donors and sponsors.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Menlo Spark View Project Menlo Spark Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
Menlo Park, California
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Menlo Spark

The challenge:

Climate change is harming our health, finances, and natural spaces. Recent reports on global climate change have stated clearly that we need to move away much faster from fossil fuels to retain any hope of preventing a perilous future on an overheated planet. Global temperature rise is currently on track to exceed the Paris Agreement target of limiting temperature rise to no more than 2°C, however, the world can achieve sharp emissions reductions and avoid climate catastrophe with existing technologies.

What can be done?

Hundreds of scientist agree that we must slash emissions by more than 40% within the next 7 years to have any chance of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change (limiting warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F)). The good news is that we can achieve this with tools either already available or in rapid development—though time is running out.

Key steps to avoiding the worst impacts of climate entail:

Halting development (and use) of additional fossil fuels and accelerating our transition to renewables, which can be facilitated by falling prices for clean technologies;
Fast-tracking the shift to electric vehicles;
Eliminating methane gas use & reimagining efficiency when designing and operating buildings;
Redesigning cities—where majority of people live—to avoid sprawl, add more green spaces, and better facilitate public transport, walking and biking.

Other important steps include reducing deforestation, restoring coastal ecosystems, and improving the management of working lands, like farms and ranches. Carbon removal technologies are also considered essential to achieving climate targets, and these and dozens of other nascent climate innovations must be funded, developed and rapidly scaled. And as individuals, we can make a difference in our own daily lives by adopting cleaner transportation habits, switching to plant-based diets, reducing all forms of waste, and voting for leaders who will prioritize climate action.

How Menlo Spark is meeting the challenge:

Smaller communities like Menlo Park have the power to spark solutions!

Menlo Spark is a nonprofit collaboration of local government, businesses, and residents helping Menlo Park adopt a suite of measures by 2025 that are necessary to reach zero carbon by 2030, as we advance equity, economic vitality, and community health. Our key focus areas include:

Building Electrification: Coordinating a citywide shift to fully electric heating and appliances, that avoids fossil fuel use in homes and buildings.
Transportation: Increasing safety and accessibility of walking and biking, providing more public transit choices, and supporting the adoption of electric and zero-emission vehicles.
Sustainable Living: Promoting simple everyday actions to reduce climate impacts.
Equitable Access: Creating assistance programs, especially for low- and moderate-income households, and other measures to ensure an equitable and affordable transition.

Climate change is no longer a future threat; it is here now. The impacts of severe drought and wildfires confront Californians every day, and as fossil fuel emissions continue, those impacts will escalate. With our highly engaged community and unique resources in the heart of Silicon Valley, Menlo Spark is a national leader in climate action, generating massive local benefits while serving as an example to similar cities and towns across the country.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Mobius View Project Mobius Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People

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United States
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Mobius

The challenge:

Billions of people use digital technology as a primary portal through which we work, play, live, and even love. As a result, the direction of technology profoundly impacts our individual and collective well-being at all levels. Unfortunately, technology often preys on the most vulnerable parts of human nature, and the consequences of this are increasingly in stark relief.

What can be done?

We are at a tipping point. Companies throughout the tech sector are rapidly recognizing and responding to the unintended negative consequences of technology. Many of them are developing strategies to prevent harm. In this next chapter, we have the choice to not only reduce harmful effects, but also to create technology that brings out the best in humanity.

How Mobius is meeting the challenge:

Mobius supports leaders to put the well-being of humanity at the center of technology, and is part of a growing movement towards more ethical and humane tech. They identify compassionate and brave tech leaders and provide them with access to:

The Mobius Collective: Intimate and action-oriented communities of mission-aligned tech leaders who support each other to create a world in which technology brings out the best in humanity.
The Mobius Council: The world’s experts on well-being who advise on tech products and strategy, spanning from senior spiritual teachers such as Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg to leading neuroscientists such as Dan Seigel and Richard Davidson.

In doing so, Mobius:

Creates greater moral courage and resilience among mission-aligned tech leaders. This gives rise to brave solutions that would not be possible otherwise.
Creates conditions for previously disparate efforts to improve tech’s impact on our humanity to become far greater than the sum of their parts.
Catalyzes measurable, positive and scaled impacts on endemic challenges such as loneliness, addiction, and anxiety.

This manifests concrete, bold strategies that begin to create a world in which technology brings out the best in humanity.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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National Science Policy Network View Project National Science Policy Network Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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United States
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National Science Policy Network

The challenge:

The United Nations estimates that by the year 2100, our planet will serve as a home to 11 Billion people. While our human population continues to grow, our planet is warming at an alarming rate and we are already witnessing the devastating effects of climate change. NASA predicts that by 2100, sea level will rise between 1-4 feet, with strong storm surges and high tides inundating coastal cities and towns and devastating infrastructure, surrounding maritime ecosystems, and the economies on which they depend. Addressing climate change requires not only investment in cutting edge science and engineering innovation, but also effective and meaningful translation into actionable policies from local to international levels. A lack of science-based decision-making poses a challenge to addressing many modern challenges, including regulation of gene editing, advancement of digital technologies and security, growing the renewable energy sector and protecting public health. While scientists and researchers operate at the forefront of cutting-edge research and development of innovative solutions to the world’s most intrinsic challenges, policymakers often lack understanding or tools to leverage science and engineering to inform their decisions. As a result, policies can be made in a vacuum, or even worse, based on misinformation. Not only does it mean that these poorly informed policies may not achieve their goals, but such policies can also curtail efforts to bring proven solutions to scale or to fund future discoveries that preserve environmental resources, protect public health, and advance digital technology.

What can be done?

Policy change and science together play a critical role in protecting our planet and its people. Through targeted educational training, outreach, and advocacy, early career scientists and engineers have the unique opportunity to strengthen the nexus between innovative research and enabling policies. By promoting stronger ties between the scientific community and policy makers, attracting more researchers to critical areas of study, and increasing research funding, we can ultimately improve the translation of scientific discoveries into innovative societal solutions that will benefit our planet and its people.

How National Science Policy Network is meeting the challenge:

The National Science Policy Network (NSPN) is a growing network of early career scientists with a shared vision of a world in which the scientific community is a pivotal voice in all levels of policy making, scientists and engineers are equipped to mindfully contribute to public policy, and are encouraged by an academic and societal culture that values their role as engaged public citizens. NSPN’s mission is to catalyze the engagement of early career scientists and engineers in policy making by training the next generation of leaders, fostering community and advocating for the role of science in policy. The Network consists of national and regional teams that support more than 40 chapters located in 25 states throughout the United States. Some of NSPN’s key programs include:

Hosting an annual National Science Policy Symposium for graduate students, including in-depth workshops on grassroots advocacy, mentorship, effective policy writing and communication, and more. The 2019 symposium, Leveraging Science and Technology to Benefit Marginalized Populations, will be held November 1-3, 2019, in Madison, Wisconsin.
Providing microgrants to support local and regional initiatives led by early career scientists, including science communication training, science policy and diplomacy guest speakers, and other educational advocacy events in their communities..
Leading an NSPN 2020 Election Initiative to leverage the critical opportunity that the 2020 election cycle presents for the scientific community to coordinate its efforts and effectively advocate for the importance of science in policy-making and the public.
Holding an annual international policy memo competition in collaboration with the Journal of Science Policy and Governance.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Nest for Families View Project Nest for Families Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

Service Area
Hawai'i and United States
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Nest for Families

The Challenge: In an ideal maternal health system, all parents would have access to comprehensive, seamless medical care with links to behavioral, economic, and social supports as needed. They would be engaged in this system before, during, and after pregnancy. Sadly, the reality of our US maternal health system is quite different, with many lacking access to even basic services. This is especially true for families who live in geographic isolation, experience poverty and often don’t have access to quality perinatal care or general parenting support. A recent study indicated that fewer than 50% of birthing parents who live in rural areas have access to perinatal care within 30 miles of their home. Without this type of improved and enhanced care, a range of negative maternal health outcomes increase, and continue to disproportionately impact communities of color and indigenous populations.

What can be done: Delivering perinatal and early childhood support in areas where families are geographically isolated or otherwise lack access to a service provider can be challenging, but technological innovations are emerging. Technology proactively expands access to lactation care and behavioral health services, including treatment for perinatal anxiety and mood disorders, relationship issues, workplace stress, general anxiety, parenting and infant feeding support. These digital healthcare solutions can decrease the gap to access experienced by many isolated families, and digital options can increase timely engagement with care for all parents.

How Nest for Families (Nest) is meeting the challenge: Nest provides critical parenting services, delivered virtually, to increase resilience and connection for pregnant and parenting families in Hawai’i throughout the first 1,000 days of life. By sending simple, culturally-attuned and engaging text messages from a team of familiar peer educators, supported by lactation and behavioral health clinical specialists, Nest creates meaningful impact using accessible technology. Combining semi-automated two-way messaging with merge-field technology assures all participants receive personalized, evidence-based guidance at key moments in their early parenting journey. Nest’s intensive two-way text messaging provides timely and authentic connection for parents in a region where over 30% of expectant parents have late or no prenatal care, with many families living in geographic isolation and poverty. Nest reaches families who are least likely to otherwise receive the critical support they need, and is there for them in key trouble moments. As one participant put it, “You tell me just what I need to hear exactly when I need to hear it.”

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Net Gains Alliance View Project Net Gains Alliance Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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United States
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Net Gains Alliance

The challenge:

Oceans cover almost 75% of our planet, and sit at the very foundation of our societal, culture, and ecological well-being. Yet, throughout the world, the management of our oceans and related marine resources, especially fisheries, is reliant on archaic, stove-piped information management systems that are inadequate to serve the needs of governmental managers, the fishing industry or the public. Although new technology in critical areas like on-the-water monitoring and data collection are now available and continue to emerge, the existing management and technology infrastructure is so outdated that it cannot support nor successfully integrate with modern advances and solutions. Without an investment in upgraded technology infrastructure and management systems, we are placing our critical marine ecosystems, marine economies, and ultimately our entire planet at risk.

What can be done?

Effective management of information is vital to the current and future well-being of the world’s marine resources. Systems that constructively manage the people, processes and technology utilized in interactions with our oceans enable necessary control over the structure, processing, delivery and usage of information. Today’s information includes both electronic and physical components and our systems must be capable of managing this information throughout its lifecycle regardless of source or format – data, paper and electronic documents and files, audio, video, and the like – for delivery through multiple channels, outlets and interfaces. Fostering and enabling these sound, well-functioning systems will ensure that we can sustainably utilize our oceans to provide for both our immediate needs and those of future generations.

In the United States, the Fishing Data Innovation Task Force began in 2016. The Task Force, including representatives from NGOs, the fishing industry, and other fisheries experts, saw improving the U.S. fisheries data system as a critical advancement to meet key conservation and economic goals and released the Net Gains Report in early 2017. Since then, Task Force members have engaged stakeholders and have found growing support for partnership at the national and regional levels.

How Net Gains Alliance is meeting the challenge:

Using a partnership-based model, the Net Gains Alliance was formed to continue to facilitate the development, implementation and adaptation of robust information management systems and modernize the outdated, fragmented systems that are currently used in the U.S. to manage our oceans and marine resources. The Net Gains Alliance focuses on several interwoven strategies:

Driving national and regional policy improvement necessary to facilitate systemic change;
Catalyzing implementation projects that can unlock and demonstrate the power of better fisheries information; and
Creating a virtual network of change agents and building a constituency for modernization.

The Net Gains Alliance also plans to export the knowledge, resources and other benefits resulting from its U.S.-based focus to align with other entities seeking to accomplish similar outcomes in the other major jurisdictions around the world.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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New York Energy Democracy Alliance View Project New York Energy Democracy Alliance Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People

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New York State
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New York Energy Democracy Alliance

The Challenge: Residents of cities, towns and states should have the right and the authority to determine their own energy future, protect vulnerable populations, and prevent the wholesale destruction of our precious ecosystems. Too often though, residents are overruled by private corporations, investor-owned utilities, regulators and legislators who may not have their best interests in mind. Putting ownership and control over the means of sustainable energy production into the hands of everyday people, into the hands of municipalities, and into the hands of local communities must be a top priority for our cities, states and nation as a whole.

What Can Be Done: Renewable energy systems that are led by and prioritize solutions for low- and moderate-income communities and communities of color who are most negatively impacted by our current energy and economic system can help transform a community’s relationship to power. Through advocacy, organizing, job creation, coalition-building, policy research, and public education for an equitable, sustainable energy future, we advance legislative and regulatory interventions that benefit low-income communities and communities of color, and to follow the wisdom of these communities in determining what that looks like.

How the New York Energy Democracy Alliance (NYEDA) is meeting the challenge: The New York Energy Democracy Alliance is an alliance of 27 community organizations, grassroots groups, and policy experts working toward a just transition to a resilient, localized, and democratically controlled clean energy economy in New York State. NYEDA supports a rapid and equity-based transition to 100% clean, renewable, fossil-free, nuclear-free energy in order to address climate change, build resilient communities and create economic opportunities. NYEDA derives strength from its highly organized, yet decentralized leadership structure: many leaders make our work possible, and our work is grounded in the varied experiences and expertise of our member organizations. Their leadership is elected and accountable to our membership.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Ocean Sewage Alliance View Project Ocean Sewage Alliance Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

Service Area
Global
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Ocean Sewage Alliance

The Challenge: It is estimated that 80% of human waste is discharged into the environment untreated every year. In developed coastal areas, sewage is often the most wide-spread pollutant, and it’s known to contain hundreds of different compounds, including excess nutrients, pathogens, endocrine disrupters, suspended solids, sediments, heavy metals, and other toxins. Sewage pollution is bad for any coastal ecosystem, but some of the most obvious effects can be seen in areas with coral reefs, where the extra nutrients spur algae and seaweed growth, which choke out the reefs. When reefs die, fish populations suffer, which in turn hurts fishing and can also impact tourism. And yet, sewage pollution is rarely addressed as an environmental problem.

What can be done: Human health watchdogs such as the World Health Organization are well aware of how poorly managing and dumping human waste leads to toxic algal blooms that are deadly to people as well as outbreaks of cholera, hepatitis, infectious viruses and gastroenteritis. They’ve been working for decades to improve water, sanitation and hygiene solutions in this sector that are meant to keep people from getting sick, such as by increasing hand washing or using chlorine tablets. These methods help prevent illness in people but don’t do anything to address the root causes of the polluted water. Similarly, most environmental legislation, such as laws that create Marine Protected Areas, are designed to keep people from taking too much from the ocean, not to protect from what people put into it.

How Ocean Sewage Alliance is meeting the challenge: Ocean Sewage Alliance is a diverse collective of organizations and academic partners committed to reducing the threat of ocean wastewater pollution and increasing the health and wellbeing of both humans and nature. Through cross-sector collaboration, synthesis and sharing of knowledge, developing solutions and raising awareness of the problem Ocean Sewage Alliance will:

Build an evidenced-based case to drive action and support decision-making to reduce wastewater pollution
Create a united voice that supports action
Serve a knowledge and learning hub to support successful implementation of solutions
Expand the donor network and funding to support evidenced based actions that reduce ocean wastewater pollution.

The Ocean Sewage Alliance will promote cross sector collaboration and make it easier for a diverse set of practitioners to become fluent in the problem of ocean sewage pollution and learn how to best engage with others who are interested in tackling the problem.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Piggy Bank View Project Piggy Bank Healthy Planet & People Secure Natural Resources

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United States
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Piggy Bank

The challenge:

With the advent of industrial agriculture, some livestock breeds of pigs, poultry, cows, horses and sheep have become threatened by extinction. Three of the ten heritage breeds of pigs–breeds that had been raised for hundreds of years before industrialization–are critically endangered (Choctaw, Mulefoot, Ossabaw Island) with populations estimated at only a few hundred animals of each breed. Bred for longevity in a free range environment, four of the breeds are threatened and the other two are on “watch lists” for livestock conservancy organizations. Six of the breeds are unique to North America. As factory farming has become commonplace for pork, many larger pig farms have become less focused on animal welfare, less sustainable, and more wasteful. Also as a result, smaller pig farms have limited access to successful farming techniques, especially when it comes to heritage breeds.

What can be done?

Heritage pigs are uniquely adapted to particular climates and terrains and are raised by small-scale family farmers that care about sustainable farming. Heritage pig farm give pigs unlimited access to open pasture and range, where they have sunlight and can exhibit their natural foraging behavior. Pigs are also free from routine prophylactic antibiotics and from administered growth hormones. By providing easily accessed information about sustainable heritage breed farming practices, more farmers can focus on heritage pig farming, which will increase the availability of higher quality, sustainable pork available in local and regional foods systems throughout the country.

How Piggy Bank is meeting the challenge:

Piggy Bank is a farm-in-the-making which, in addition to serving as a living genetic sanctuary to preserve rare heritage pig species, will provide an open forum about heritage breed pig farming, where the public will have access to information on all heritage breed pigs and free access to business plans written by other farmers. Breeds on the farm will include conservancy listed species such as the Mulefoot (critical), Large Black (threatened), and Hereford (watch). In 2017, Piggy Bank partnered with The Butcher’s Ball to collect monetary contributions for relief and recovery efforts in support of heritage breed pig ranchers in Texas impacted by Hurricane Harvey.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Project Equity View Project Project Equity Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

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United States
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Project Equity

The challenge:

Our broken inner city economies need a new approach. Our cities are full of hard-working poor people, yet in most communities, holding down a job (or even two) is not enough to get out of poverty. In Oakland, California for example, more than 20% of adults live below the poverty line, and 38% of these adults in poverty hold jobs. Nearly half of Oakland’s working adults earn below the Basic Family Wage, the minimum needed to cover basic living expenses of food, shelter, healthcare, transportation and childcare. For people of color, the situation is even worse, with Black workers in Oakland earning only 60 cents, and Latinx workers earning only 47 cents per dollar earned by Whites.

As baby boomer business owners in the United States retire, our local business landscape is going through a dramatic shift that will further endanger the low-wage jobs that now exist. With boomers owning about half of all privately-held businesses in the U.S., we will see a massive ownership changeover of locally-held businesses as the “Silver Tsunami” of retirement approaches. The vast majority (over 85%) of business owners do not have a succession plan in place, and many find it hard to locate a buyer when they are ready to sell. As a result, some of these companies will quietly close down, a very small percent will be passed on to family members, others will sell to another local owner, and some will be sold to a larger company or out of area buyer. Those in this last category will likely lay off employees, moving ownership and prosperity outside of the local community while escalating unemployment rates for those already barely able to provide for their families.

What can be done?

People who work hard should be paid enough to live with dignity and raise a family, and create opportunity for themselves and their children. Business decisions can be made through a lens of what is good for workers and communities, leading to businesses that are more successful, communities that are more resilient, and workers who have stable jobs and economic security. The “Silver Tsunami” yields an unprecedented opportunity to keep many locally-owned businesses open for the long term and to deepen their positive impact on our local economies. By helping them transition to broad-based employee-owned and cooperative business models, these businesses can stay open–serving their communities, increasing job availability, quality and stability, investing locally, and growing their impact on environmental sustainability.

How Project Equity is meeting the challenge:

Project Equity supports local businesses to transition to broad-based, democratic employee ownership. Project Equity works with qualified business owners who are interested in selling to assess fit with this approach and support the sale of the business to employees. Project Equity also works with a core group of employees to structure employee ownership and create an effective ownership culture. Services include outreach and awareness, feasibility studies, designing a conversion roadmap, helping structure the sale and financing, and providing pre- and post-transition training and support to ensure ongoing success. Project Equity also provides technical assistance and training to partners organizations seeking to replicate this unique approach in their communities nationwide.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Project Wayfinder View Project Project Wayfinder Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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United States
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Project Wayfinder

The challenge:

There is a mental health crisis brewing among our youth. Nearly one in three adolescents will meet criteria for an anxiety disorder by the age of 18. And our schools aren’t helping. While schools are in session, high school students are the single most stressed out population in the U.S. While more than 17 million high school students go to high school everyday, youth depression and anxiety are rising at alarming rates. The magnitude of the dysfunction of our current high school model is immense; America’s high schools are failing our students academically, but more importantly, they are doing little to address their human development, including developing sense of stewarding the planet and its resources. Without a deeper sense of purpose and a strong internal compass to guide them, our youth will continue to suffer at epidemic rates.

What can be done?

Students who have purpose in their lives are happier, healthier, more engaged, and less stressed out than their peers without a sense of purpose. Drawing upon purpose development research, brain science, expert interviews and practices from native wayfinding traditions, we can redesign an adolescent education that supports students to build lives of purpose, with tools for them to develop skills and wisdom to meaningfully contribute to, and steward, our world.

How Project Wayfinder is meeting the challenge:

In collaboration with Stanford University’s d.school, Project Wayfinder has developed robust toolkit and curriculum to equip students with the skills, knowledge and confidence to become purposeful navigators of their lives. Designed to be taught in high schools, colleges and other educational organizations as a year-long, weekly program, the Wayfinder Toolkit provides a year-long meaning-making journey that unleashes purpose in students and enriches the lives of educators.

Project Wayfinder is currently being taught by 200 teachers to more than 4000 students at 56 schools and colleges. Project Wayfinder’s partners are located in 17 states across the US and in Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Reparation Generation View Project Reparation Generation Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People

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United States
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Reparation Generation

The Challenge: The average white family has roughly 10 times the amount of wealth as the average Black family. White college graduates have over seven times more wealth than Black college graduates. The racial wealth gap in America started with slavery but hasn’t diminished over time. Centuries of discrimination and government policy, most powerfully through land and housing, took wealth earned by Black Americans before it had the opportunity to grow. Making the American Dream an equitable reality demands that wealth that was denied to Black Americans be restored in the form of individual cash payments that will close the Black-white racial wealth divide.

What Can Be Done: The most powerful and effective form of reparation would be a U.S. government federal reparations package that includes individual and collective benefits that build wealth and reduce debt for Black Americans. This could include things like individual payments, college tuition remission, student loan forgiveness and housing down payment or business grants for descendants of enslaved Black Americans. So far, the US government has shown little will to enact a reparations package despite several opportunities to do so. Many organizations are continuing to build grassroots movements to advocate for systematic reparations but, until the federal government takes action, individuals and philanthropic organizations can help to provide financial restitution to the descendants of enslaved people.

How Reparation Generation is meeting the challenge: Reparation Generation is an interracial movement of citizens who acknowledge America’s full history and apologize for the systemic racism which has been its legacy. Reparation Generation is building a bridge of truth and social solidarity to enact economic repair to Black Americans. 2020 marked the beginning of the greatest intergenerational wealth transfer in American history. In the next twenty years, Baby Boomers are expected to transfer trillions of dollars in wealth to their families. Reparation Generation seeks to redeploy this unprecedented, and often immorally produced, wealth to rectify a portion of the vestiges of slavery and systemic racism in America. As part of Reparation Generation, economic reconciliation decisions will be made by Black Americans to benefit Black Americans’ ability to build long term wealth.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Rogue Water Lab View Project Rogue Water Lab Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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United States
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Rogue Water Lab

The challenge:

Clean safe drinking water has been available for so long in the U.S that no one thinks twice about filling a glass of water from the kitchen sink or flushing the toilet. But the US municipal water sector is facing greater challenges than at any time in its history. Decades of under-investment have left a legacy of decaying infrastructure and an industry that is ill-equipped to meet environmental standards or prepare for growing water scarcity. The fundamental problem is that water is a capital-intensive industry and the combination of low user fees and public ownership has meant that it is difficult to attract the necessary capital to the sector. The bottom line is that we are not investing enough in our water infrastructure and neglecting this investment will have grave consequences in the future.

What can be done?

A significant number of the water industry’s challenges stem from a lack of communication. Funding shortfalls, failing infrastructure and water waste all necessitate skillful communication to secure buy-in and move solutions forward. However, few training and networking opportunities exist for communications staff at utilities. Local and national water associations host conferences, but they are technical, operator focused, and seldom cover communication challenges or strategies. Even where communications content does make the program, the cost of attending these conferences is a barrier to access. Public communication programs and conferences for formal city communication professionals, like public information officers, are available but can be expensive, and much of the content misses the mark for water professionals.

How Rogue Water Lab is meeting the challenge:

Rogue Water Lab is a hub for all things water communications that is digital, dynamic, widely accessible, and affordable, with tools and resources all geared towards behavior change through the lens of communication. These resources and opportunities for engagement are delivered in a variety of mediums and platforms, including events, podcasts, and video. Programs within Rogue Water Lab aim to revolutionize the water industry by changing how the industry tells its story. Programs include:

Catalyst Mastermind Summit – A 2.5-day program for water educators and communicators, Catalyst brings together thought leaders from both inside and outside of the industry to share perspectives and to dive deep into strategies that create more effective communication, outreach, and education. Catalyst is more than a conference, it’s an experience. Water nerds leave empowered with the ABCs of water communication – assessment, branding, content, and strategy – and inspired through tribal collaboration and storytelling.

Water in Real Life – The only podcast in the water sector dedicated to communication and the power of storytelling. It highlights stories and storytellers, from inside and outside the water industry, sharing their experiences, failures, and wisdom for being better communicators. Facts and figures alone do not inspire change. Stories are data with a soul and the emotional component mandatory to inspire action that moves the industry forward.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Root Solutions View Project Root Solutions Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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United States
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Root Solutions

The challenge:

Environmental problems are human behavior problems. Environmental practitioners must recognize this key point: Human behavior is both the cause of – and the solution to – our environmental challenges. If we are to solve intractable and wicked problems in the environment, then large numbers of NGOs, foundations, agencies, businesses, and other entities must deepen their capacity to adaptively change the behavior of individuals and institutions on a large scale.

Many factors that influence human behavior – from our beliefs, values and mental models, to societal norms and expectations, to the built and legal environments, and finally, to our cognitive biases – the short cuts our brain takes to save us energy, but that can lead to suboptimal decisions. These factors combine to make environmental action difficult even for the most well-intentioned individuals or institutional actors.

The drivers of behavior are often not adequately understood or addressed. Yet this is the kind of expertise our world needs right now: an evidence-based way to super-charge environmentalism itself through a nuanced understanding of audience barriers and motivators, and how to apply the right behavior change strategies at the right time to make conservation efforts more effective. Root Solutions is a thought leader in doing just this. We design conservation solutions that take into account how humans think, act, and make decisions.

What can be done?

Behavioral solutions lead to environmental and financial wins. Organizations worldwide are creating significant positive social and environmental impact through simple, targeted interventions using behavior change techniques. This includes hotels who’ve saved water and money using simple signage, and energy suppliers who’ve substantially increased the number of customers in their renewable energy programs through mere enrollment form tweaks.

Behavioral science doesn’t just deliver environmental wins – it often comes with an economic return on investment as well. For example, Virgin Atlantic saved over $4 million in fuel use in eight months and dramatically reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants. How? By providing fuel-use feedback to their pilots, akin to receiving energy-use feedback on your monthly utility bill. JUST IMAGINE, if an airline can see this impact by using just one behavior change tool, what could our world be like if all environmental changemakers employed behavior-based solutions? Changing the behavior of millions for the better is possible.

How Root Solutions is meeting the challenge:

Root Solutions is dedicated to bridging the gap between environmental awareness and environmental action by building the capacity of the entire environmental movement to effectively change behavior. We spent years in R&D to identify the most promising environmental behavioral shifters — evidence-backed solutions for influencing behavior. Drawing from Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, Psychology, Economics, and other social sciences, we developed a framework to make it easy for anyone to run a behavior change campaign from start to finish. We share this via our book and training, and we employ these methods ourselves in our work with institutions, NGOs and public servants.

Due in June 2021, Making Shift Happen: Designing for Successful Environmental Behavior Change provides practical guidance for how to:

Research, design, test, and implement practical, data-driven, science-based initiatives that will get people to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors
Use tools such as design thinking, prototyping, and a behavioral drivers analysis that can be implemented quickly to adapt to rapidly changing situations
Design and strengthen pro-environmental policies and increase the adoption of and adherence to those policies

Making Shift Happen is a must-have guide for practitioners in organizations, businesses, and government looking to design successful campaigns and initiatives that shift behavior towards positive environmental outcomes.

Capacity Building

We have trained hundreds of organizations on how to create programs and campaigns that are effective at changing behavior. Our hands-on trainings introduce behavior design and teach practitioners how to employ it to promote lasting, impactful pro-environmental behaviors within targeted audiences. Our trainings incorporate case studies, interactive activities, and detailed design instruction, as we tailor our trainings to meet the needs of any organization.

Design Solutions

Root Solutions has a strong track record of working with both private and public sector organizations, including non-profits, businesses, universities, and national and local government agencies. We work closely with our clients and partners to identify behavioral leverage points in their initiatives, then assist in the design and implementation of cost-effective and scalable behavioral strategies. Using our evidence-informed tools and processes, our partners have designed and executed effective behavior change campaigns, policies, and strategies.

We have applied our expertise to help clients tackle single-use plastics, marine debris, sustainable transportation, paper waste, energy use, climate change, and more. Some of our past and current clients include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program, the Greater Farallones Association, The Nature Conservancy, UC Berkeley, Surfrider Oregon, Surfrider San Francisco, the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, and Climate and Land Use Alliance.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Sane Energy Project View Project Sane Energy Project Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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New York State
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Sane Energy Project

The challenge:

According the United Nations 2018 report, we are dangerously close to irreversible tipping points for our planet that can only be avoided by a stark reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a swift transition to clean energy. Yet, throughout the United States, policies and practices are still in place that allow coal and fracking to pose a grave threat to the environment, to public health, and to our climate.

What can be done?

For legislative changes to be made to eradicate fossil fuel consumption, a strong grassroots momentum needs to be established that calls for a rethinking of our energy system from the bottom up. By focusing, community by community, on efforts by impacted residents to stop the development of shale, gas, and coal infrastructure projects in their neighborhoods, we can work toward communities powered by 100% equitable and community-supported renewable energy sources.

How Sane Energy is meeting the challenge:

Sane Energy is focused on achieving a rapid and just transition in New York City and New York State to 100% renewable energy. Sane Energy’s signature style is modeled on local, community-driven, consensus-based organizing that encourages civic engagement, fosters mutual support among allied grassroots groups, helps build solidarity across geographic boundaries, and provides training and hands-on support for citizen engagement directly with policy makers on energy policy issues. Some of Sane Energy’s recent activities include:

The Wind Not Williams Campaign – designed to halt the expansion of the Williams pipeline in New York City and support wind energy alternatives
You Are Here Map – a powerful tool for local groups fighting fracking infrastructure projects to explain how their local battles fit into, and are affected by, the big picture of the gas industry’s buildout, as well as state and national policies
Energy Democracy – providing communications leadership to the New York Energy Democracy Alliance to help convey complex narratives about our energy system
Geothermal for New York State – working with local legislators and community leaders to encourage NYSERDA to include a geothermal solution for the Empire State Microgrid

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Sea Pact View Project Sea Pact Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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Multi-National (US and Canada)
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Sea Pact

The Challenge: Billions of people across the globe enjoy fish and seafood. Yet our ocean resources are limited. Collectively, we are taking more from our waters than can be replaced. This has serious impacts. Populations of marine species have more than halved in the last 50 years, and 90 percent of global fish stocks are overfished or fished to their ecological limit. As the global population and the demand for seafood grows, it will only become more difficult for communities around the world to have access to seafood.

What Can Be Done: Sustainable seafood appears to be a rising trend among chain restaurants, retailers, distributors and wholesalers who each see significant growth in the percentage of their seafood that will be sustainable in the coming years. Increasingly, these sectors are more open to dialogue and are interested in obtaining information that can help them make informed and responsible choices for themselves, their customers and the ocean. Some within this supply chain are uniquely positioned to affect change, both below and above them. These distributors and importers sit firmly at the center of the industry and, by working collectively, are poised to make positive change across the whole seafood industry.

How Sea Pact is meeting the challenge: Sea Pact is an innovative alliance of eleven leading North American seafood businesses, who have joined together and are using their collective power to lead and drive improvement throughout the global seafood supply chain. This innovative model of pre-competitive collaboration, focuses on the long-term viability of a product over the scarcity of sales of that product. Essentially, without assured supply of seafood to sell there will be no consumers to compete for. This cost-competitive strategy is an effective way to ensure needed access to seafood supplies while being responsible stewards of the resource. Together, these businesses can create an economy of scale, learn from each other, and create concrete positive outcomes. Sea Pact strives to advance environmentally sustainable fisheries and aquaculture practices and provide the building blocks for a long term and sustainable seafood industry.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Smart Parks View Project Smart Parks Secure Natural Resources

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Africa
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Smart Parks

The challenge:

Across the globe, wildlife populations have decreased by 60% in just the last 40 years. Illegal poaching, climate change, pollution, and deforestation have contributed to current rates of extinction that are now up to 1,000 times higher than before human impact on ecosystems was a factor. Public and private wildlife parks and concessions can help protect endangered species, but without technology, stemming off the rising tide of poaching is almost impossible, especially since most parks are remotely located and rarely have internet coverage or other mechanisms for real-time communication.

What can be done?

By implementing cost-effective specialized communication technology like sensors, monitors, and trackers, wildlife park rangers can collect information real-time information about the activity of wildlife, reduce human-wildlife conflict, and have access to early warning and detection systems for potential intruders and poachers.

How Smart Parks is meeting the challenge:

Smart Parks gives game parks 24/7 access to real-time information on all wildlife, actors, park assets and activities on their land. All information is collected in an easy-to-use web application which allows rangers to remotely monitor the whole area, and immediately take measures when needed. Smart Parks has set up solutions in a variety of locations:

Liwonde National Park, Malawi
Serengeti National Park, Tanzania
Elephant Protection, Assam, India
Akagera National Park, Rwanda
Mkomazi, Tanzania
Orangutan Tracking, Borneo, Malaysia

In the United States, Smart Parks is a fiscally-sponsored project of Multiplier. Tax-deductible contributions received by Multiplier are re-granted to Smart Parks to support their philanthropic work.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Survivor Corps View Project Survivor Corps Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities

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Global
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Survivor Corps

The Challenge: The COVID-19 global pandemic has had a devastating impact on communities around the world, with more than 4,000,000 people infected in the United States alone. The rapid rate of infection, coupled with the lack of a sufficient coordinated government effort to combat the disease, has created a huge gap in reliable information about diagnostic and antibody testing, symptoms, treatments, research, and potential vaccines. There is significant ongoing scientific, medical and academic research being conducted to identify and improve treatments, understand this disease and develop a vaccine. Daily life is unlikely to return to some semblance of normality before we better understand the long-term impact COVID-19 is having on health and our society; and until a vaccine is developed and widely distributed.

What can be done: Those who have been infected and have recovered from COVID-19 provide a critical source of information about the symptoms they have experienced. Additionally, most Survivors have developed antibody rich plasma that provides researchers with valuable data about COVID-19 and potential treatments and vaccines. This plasma is proving to be a valuable resource in treating those currently suffering with COVID-19 through convalescent plasma transfusions and in developing plasma-derived treatment products. Grassroots organizations can help connect researchers with Survivors so that they can share their stories and support ongoing research; resulting in a broader understanding of the disease and better treatments.

How Survivor Corps is meeting the challenge: Survivor Corps is the largest and fastest growing grassroots movement in the U.S., dedicated to connecting and educating Survivors and advancing the medical, scientific and academic research aimed at finding a cure for COVID-19. As a rapidly growing grassroots network of more than 110,000+ COVID-19 Survivors, Survivor Corps is providing support for those who have been infected or impacted by the virus. Survivor Corps is working with the medical community and researchers to help direct Survivors to plasma collection sites and to enroll in research studies. In addition, Survivor Corps is helping to capture the anecdotal information that COVID-19 patients are reporting about their short and long-term symptoms so that the scientific community can learn from their experiences. In order for this anecdotal information to be useful to the scientific community, researchers must be able to access and engage with this group of Survivors on an ongoing basis. Survivor Corps is providing access to this network by continuing to engage its members and encourage, educate and empower them to participate in studies and trials that will help the scientific community improve treatments and find cures.

Survivor Corps has partnered with blood collection centers and research institutions around the country on studies, which will help inform policy decisions through science. Survivor Corps has also joined unprecedented alliances and coalitions of plasma industry companies, research institutes and community organizations committed to spearheading educational campaigns regarding plasma-related treatments and encouraging plasma donations. By educating the public on how to get involved in research and treatments, empowering Survivors, increasing awareness about plasma donation and treatment and partnering with key research projects, Survivor Corps is helping the world beat COVID-19.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Turn Forward View Project Turn Forward Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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Turn Forward

Turn Forward is an independent, non-profit offshore wind advocacy organization, launched to advance a shared, multi-stakeholder vision for American offshore wind power that meets today’s climate, economic, equity and environmental challenges. The new organization will work with a broad array of stakeholders to build momentum for policies and projects that significantly expand offshore wind generation, deliver game-changing benefits to workers and communities, and protect marine and coastal resources. Turn Forward aims to work with the federal government and states to have created by 2025 a path toward generating 100+ gigawatts of offshore wind power, with strong policies in place to maximize benefits to communities and workers and ensure environmental protections as the renewable energy source is developed.

More details coming soon!

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Upper Amazon Conservancy View Project Upper Amazon Conservancy Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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Peru
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Upper Amazon Conservancy

The challenge:

The Peruvian Amazon ranges from east of the Andean mountains to Peru’s borders with Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and Bolivia. It encompasses about 60% of the country and it one of the most biologically diverse areas of our planet. Yet, within the rainforest’s Alto Purús headwaters, there is a conservation and human rights crisis. Because of its remoteness, illegal activities including poaching endangered species, logging, and community exploitation often go undetected, threatening the few remaining isolated indigenous tribes who have lived symbiotically within the network of rivers and forests and made the Alto Purús-Manu Mosaic their home for centuries. Many members of the tribes are descendants of those who fled other areas to avoid devastating epidemics as industrialization made its way to Peru a century ago. However, contact with both well-meaning missionaries and outsiders seeking to exploit their land still resulted in more violence and disease. Continuing to live in isolation is, in the view of the tribes who live here, essential for survival.

What can be done?

The future of this remarkable region ultimately depends on the success of local indigenous communities as protectors and stewards of the ecosystem in which they live. Protected areas can be created and strengthened to prevent illegal activities, protect isolated tribes, mitigate climate change, and maintain ecosystem health. Local communities can be empowered to benefit from conservation and sustainable resource use, while still preserving their culture and traditions.

How Upper Amazon Conservancy is meeting the challenge:

Upper Amazon Conservancy has 25 years of experience working in the region, successfully developing trust-based relationships with indigenous tribes in the most vulnerable areas, where illegal activities and community exploitation often go undetected. Engaging local people as key participants in all activities, Upper Amazon Conservancy focuses on preparing community members to engage in and benefit from conservation activities as a means to protect their lands and strengthen adjacent protected areas. Successes include:

Leading several indigenous land title efforts, including helping deliver title to the Ashéninka community of Saweto in 2015, the first indigenous community to be titled in the department of Ucayali in the previous decade. Most recently, Upper Amazon Conservancy supported the successful titling of three Asháninka communities in the Yurua region totaling 169,000 acres.
In 2016, helping create the La Novia Alliance, the region’s first every conservation partnership between indigenous tribes and mestizos, which is designed to promote sustainable resources use in the La Novia River watershed, a threatened tribute of the Alto Purús.
In October 2018, authoring a feature story in National Geographic that tells the story of threats to indigenous tribes living in isolation in the Amazon headwaters.
In December 2019, helping indigenous tribes document the invasion of coca farmers in their traditional lands and raising awareness by authoring an article on Mongabay.com.
In 2020, providing 160 indigenous families with emergency food, medicines and cleaning supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

Urban Ocean Lab View Project Urban Ocean Lab Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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Urban Ocean Lab

The Challenge: Climate change is causing sea level to rise, putting our safety, economies, food security, and communities at risk. Globally, due to burning fossil fuels, average sea level has risen 11 to 16 centimeters since 1900. Even with immediate and dramatic reductions in carbon emissions, sea level is projected to rise up to two meters by 2100. Approximately 32% of Americans live in coastal cities and we are unprepared for oncoming rising seas and storms. Over time, rising seas, storm surges, and floods will lead to considerable loss of life and billions of dollars of damage, which will disproportionately impact historically-disadvantaged communities.

What can be done: While coastal cities have implemented a variety of resilience and adaptation strategies, no overarching framework or entity exists for 1) identifying best practices, 2) assessing and monitoring the efficacy of policies implemented, and 3) screening decisions to ensure they are grounded in climate justice. The development of rigorous, creative, equitable, and practical policy proposals could provide a massive benefit for lives and livelihoods, for economies and ecosystems, and for climate justice.

How Urban Ocean Lab is meeting the challenge: As a policy think tank, Urban Ocean Lab seeks to change the rules of the game, designing a “Blue New Deal” policy framework—an ocean climate action plan—for coastal cities. Urban Ocean Lab will compile, evaluate, and develop policies and practices that enable coastal cities to adapt to a climate-changed future while attending to the needs of communities at the greatest risk. Additionally, they will develop recommendations for city-level actions to include the ocean more fully in climate policy. Model policies and best practices for restoring coastal ecosystems, managing sea level rise, scaling offshore renewable energy, building resilient infrastructure, and educating communities about coastal resilience will be gathered and refined from case studies of coastal cities around the world. Urban Ocean Lab will work with committed city governments, scientists, policy makers, designers, and community organizations to develop a community of practice for coastal cities in the U.S. working toward climate justice for all residents. Urban Ocean Lab’s highly collaborative process will result in a community of leaders who embrace and implement these approaches to advance climate-ready coastal cities.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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WaterNow Alliance View Project WaterNow Alliance Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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United States
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WaterNow Alliance

The challenge:

Essential for all life and survival on this planet, water is one of our most precious resources and is vital for human needs, both in our natural and built environments. Across the globe, we are facing more frequent and severe droughts, increased fire risk, decreased snowpack, and escalating pressure on the natural systems that generate water supply for our communities. A recently released joint report by the United Nations and the World Bank estimates that 40 percent of the world’s population is affected by water scarcity, placing food security, energy sustainability, and public health at risk.

What can be done?

We can achieve water security, and ecological integrity, by investing in and growing sustainable approaches, rather than falling into crisis-driven decision making. In the United States, local decision makers hold the keys to our water future. At least 85% of water infrastructure spending occurs at the community level, and 87% of people nationwide are served by public water utilities. While Federal and State agencies have a vital role – the policies, strategies and priorities established by local leaders have the power to fundamentally shift how we think about and use water. By treating all water in communities – drinking water, stormwater, wastewater – as part of a unified and integrated system (“One Water”), we can design methods of providing water to urban areas with using up or destroying water resources, while also anticipating and preparing for the need to adapt and have a mechanism to respond to changing conditions.

How WaterNow Alliance is meeting the challenge:

WaterNow Alliance brings a clear path to action to fix our water infrastructure. WaterNow Alliance is a forum for local water leaders in the U.S. who want to champion sustainable, affordable and climate resilient water strategies. Working with businesses, community leaders, and water and finance experts, WaterNow Alliance advances innovation, breaks down barriers, and drives change. WaterNow Alliance strategies include:

Engaging WaterNow’s network of decision-makers and connecting them to ideas, resources and one another.
Championing a sustainable water future by eliminating barriers and advancing solutions through policy change.
Demonstrating success by showcasing strategies that work and that communities can replicate and scale.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

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Working Lands Conservation View Project Working Lands Conservation Sustainable, Equitable Economies Healthy Planet & People Resilient Communities Secure Natural Resources

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Northern Utah
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Working Lands Conservation

The challenge:

Working lands are the rangelands, farms and forestlands used to support livelihoods. Their value, however, extends beyond a dollar amount. Working lands are also recognized as homes to wildlife, areas that protect open space, and landscapes that provide local people with a sense of place. These extra conservation values are growing in importance as the wildlands that are traditionally seen as harboring these values are increasingly threatened and fragmented by expanding human activities. Because of this, working lands are valued not only by the people who earn their livelihoods from the land, but also from a broader society who recognize the value of working landscapes to protect nature.

Because working lands are valued by many different stakeholders, people are often divided about how these areas should be managed. For example, in Northern Utah, where Working Lands Conservation currently focuses its work, cattle grazing is common on many public lands. In addition, these landscapes serve as key habitat for species of ecological and political interest, like the greater sage-grouse, and are relied upon for recreation and clean water. This dynamic creates tension between ranchers, conservationists and government agencies who all have distinct interests, organizational cultures, and operational constraints. Ultimately, such tension and division blocks development of innovative and effective management strategies for working lands by preventing stakeholders from advancing common objectives, sharing knowledge, and leveraging resources.

What can be done?

With an ever-growing population, maintaining diverse ecosystems on the working lands that support both nature and human livelihoods is vital. Well managed working lands provide interconnected landscapes where nature and local communities can thrive. A key element to conserving these areas is building partnerships and creating a shared management vision among the diverse groups that manage and care for working lands. Partnerships that develop trust between ranchers, private and public land managers, and scientists are key. Once trust is developed, partners can start to understand each other’s values, needs, resources, and goals. This is when innovative solutions start to emerge and lasting solutions are formed.

How Working Lands Conservation is meeting the challenge:

Working Lands Conservation works to balance human-use of working lands with conservation objectives by bringing science to collaborative partnerships. Working Lands Conservation works in partnership with stakeholders to identify gaps in scientific knowledge, and then develop research that fills these gaps. Working Lands Conservation then works with partners to test unique management solutions on working lands that lead to durable working lands management that benefits nature. While the work is research based it also involves building deep collaborations and relationships with the stakeholders who have the most interest in the land. These relationships allow for easy flow of ideas that help better inform the research and, ultimately, as in Working Lands Conservation’s current Utah projects, improve sage-grouse habitat, water quality and relationships among working lands stakeholders.

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals

About the Sustainable Development Goals

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Areas of Focus

All We Can Save Project

All We Can Save Project

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All We Can Save Project

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Alter Eco Foundation

Alter Eco Foundation

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Alter Eco Foundation

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Animal Agriculture Reform Collaborative

Animal Agriculture Reform Collaborative

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Animal Agriculture Reform Collaborative

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Azul

Azul

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Azul

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California Water Library

California Water Library

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California Water Library

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Canopy Collective

Canopy Collective

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Canopy Collective

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Catch Together

Catch Together

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Catch Together

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cChange

cChange

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cChange

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Center for Transformative Technology

Center for Transformative Technology

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Center for Transformative Technology

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Certifications and Ratings Collaboration

Certifications and Ratings Collaboration

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Certifications and Ratings Collaboration

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ChangeScale

ChangeScale

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ChangeScale

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Climate Resilience Fund

Climate Resilience Fund

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Climate Resilience Fund

This project aligns with the following Sustainable Development Goals