After a year of rising impact for the Climate Interactive (CI) program of Sustainability Institute (SI), the board of SI and the staff of CI are pleased to announce that the program is “spinning-off” from Sustainability Institute. More (+)

HARTLAND, VERMONT, USA (APRIL 2010) The fourth cohort of Donella Meadows Fellows recently completed their yearlong journey together; a process designed to strengthen each Fellow’s ability to be a leader for sustainability during this time of global change. More (+)

As part of the Foresight India symposium taking place March 25-26 in New Delhi, Sustainability Institute's executive director Bas de Leeuw will be presenting his text on applying a systems approach to resource scarcity. More (+)

HARTLAND, VERMONT, USA (March 12, 2010) The fourth Cohort of Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows completed their final weeklong workshop together in February, embarking into the world with enhanced leadership skills and a dynamic, supportive network. The 20 Fellows hailed from Thailand, India, Pakistan, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, and the USA, representing the civil society, media, government, philanthropy, and business sectors. By design, 75% of the group is women. Read the workshop report here: More (+)

BERLIN, GERMANY (March 2010) How to understand complex systems and how these have an impact on our life, how to recognize when we reach the limits of our intellectual thinking, how to go beyond these limits and use that for contributing to a more sustainable world – these are the messages of Dana Meadows’ latest book: “Die [...]More (+)

(February 4, 2010) With January 31st as the 'soft' deadline for countries to submit to the UNFCCC their proposals for greenhouse gas emissions reductions under the Copenhagen Accord we've been hearing the question from colleagues and the press: do these submissions bring the world any closer to the goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5° or 2°C? We've 'run the numbers' and our most recent analysis shows essentially the same results that we reported December 19th at the close of the Copenhagen Summit: if current proposals were fully implemented average global temperature would overshot the 2° goal and would in fact increase by approximately 3.9°C (7.0°F) by 2100.More (+)

WORCHESTER, MA, USA (February 4, 2010) Global warming in your backyard. That is the motto of a new interactive exhibit that illustrates how climate change is impacting the landscape. This traveling exhibit, which uses the Sustainability Institute's C-ROADS simulation, has started a tour through New England, a region in the Northeast of the USA, close to the border with Canada.More (+)

JAKARTA, INDONESIA (January 20, 2010) A shift away from economic growth towards a development model based upon quality of life is one of the elements of an emerging sustainability strategy of the Indonesian province of Papua. SI's Phil Rice conducted a training workshop for officials of the Papua Planning Department (BAPPEDA) as part the 4th of a six-workshop planning process on sustainable development.More (+)

(January 19, 2010) The Climate Interactive team, led by Sustainability Institute, delivered big results in Copenhagen at the UNFCCC's COP15 climate conference.More (+)

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK (January 5, 2010) “We are prepared to give all we have as long as there is the possibility of saving our planet. We expect the same courage from you.” - closing words of the “Our World, Our Future - Children’s Climate Forum Declaration 2009.” The Children’s Declaration was one of the key results of the Children's Climate Forum, held in Copenhagen in the lead up to the official climate negotiations. Sustainability Institute’s Dominic Stucker was one of the two Lead Facilitators of this event, which was organized by UNICEF and the Danish government.More (+)

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK (December 8, 2009) Bas de Leeuw, Executive Director of the Dana Meadows Sustainability Institute in the USA pointed to the untapped potential of systems thinking for better achieving the sustainable consumption and production agenda. Individuals need to be empowered to “be the change in the world they want to see", he said. More (+)

The mission of SI’s Fellowship Program is to accelerate the shift to global sustainability by increasing the effectiveness of well-positioned sustainability leaders.  Fellows learn to address social, economic and environmental issues at their root causes while benefiting from a national and international network of talented and supportive colleagues. More (+)

"In Dana Meadows's brilliantly integrative worldview, everything causes everything else; cause and effect loop back on themselves. She was the clearest thinker and writer co-creating the art and science of systems dynamics, and Thinking in Systems distills her lifetime of wisdom. This clear, fun-to-read synthesis will help diverse readers everywhere to grasp and harness how our complex world really works." —Amory B. Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute More about the book (+)

“Systems thinking can lead us to the edge of what analysis can do and then point beyond - to what can and must be done by the human spirit.”    -Donella (Dana) Meadows More Archives (+)