NEW – Indicators, MDGs, SDGs, and GDP
On Thursday 16 May, I attended an excellent public seminar on the power of indicators and numbers in the context of sustainable development. Hosted by UNDP and the Dag Hammarsköld Foundation, in Stockholm, it featured two powerful women speakers: Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, former director of the UN’s Human Development Index and now a professor at the … Read more
Knowledge and Sustainability: The Global State of The Art
Recently I had the honor — and the amazingly complex challenge — of preparing a report for the new United Nations Office for Sustainable Development (UNOSD), based in Incheon, Korea. The title of the report signals its state-of-the-art global breadth: “Knowledge, Capacity Building, and Networks for Sustainable Development: A Review.” This report has been published … Read more
A Year of Work in Sustainability
As 2012 comes to a close, I plan to reflect back on the year in sustainability and write think-piece about it. There is a lot to reflect on at the global scale: there was Rio+20 and the Doha climate conference, there was the impact of a US election and a lot of new sustainability science … Read more
What the ISIS Academy Master Class is like …
In February, ISIS Academy will be coming to the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University for our next Master Class in Change for Sustainability, and our first such course in the United States (click here or click the image to download the brochure). What is that? you may be wondering. What is a … Read more
Report from OECD: What Winning Looks Like
Here’s a letter I sent out to my friends in the Balaton Group from New Delhi, India, where I was recently attending an OECD World Forum and moderating a panel on sustainability. I never thought attending a meeting on national statistics could make me so happy. /Alan Dear friends, I am reporting to you now … Read more
Letter to a Struggling Business Change Agent
This letter was written to a student who approached me for advice on how to engage a company that was just not showing any interest in sustainability … Dear ______ Thanks for your patience, it’s been a terribly busy time … kids starting school, me starting work … but I am happy to have this … Read more
Pyramid 2012: The Story of Building a Shared Dream
This is the personal “back story” on the origins of the Pyramid 2012 campaign, which published its final report on 18 June 2012. For the official story of this two-month-long “global workshop,” in which well over a thousand people participated, spread across twenty countries, please visit the campaign website to read the press release, 14-page … Read more
Is “Sustainable Development” Dying?
This short article’s title does not refer to the upcoming Rio+20 summit, which even Ban Ki-moon is publicly worried about (see my piece about managing expectations for the summit, link below). But of course, it could. Nor does it refer to the general, spreading sense of malaise felt by many sustainability activists and professionals — … Read more
Subject: Sustaining happiness (or, Why I didn’t go to a meeting on Happiness)
[Copy of Facebook Status Update] Friends, if you follow my Twitter feed, you’ll see a note from friend Kristin Vala Ragnarsdottir saying she missed seeing me at the High-Level Meeting on Happiness hosted by the Prime Minister of Bhutan at UN headquarters in NY. This is a very significant meeting, and I was pleased and … Read more
Life Beyond Growth—download free report
New report traces revolution in how we think about “progress” Is there Life Beyond Growth? The new report by that name declares decisively yes, citing more and more countries that are seriously questioning the “Gross Domestic Product” (GDP) and traditional economic growth as their default definition of “progress.” Despite all the economic and political turmoil … Read more
