Lenfest Ocean Program
Established in July 2004 by the Lenfest Foundation at The Pew Charitable Trusts.  The program supports research on marine issues with a focus on fisheries and research that is directly relevant to marine policy decisions.  The Lenfest Ocean program is unique in that it seeks to promote its research to policymakers and the general public through communication and outreach strategies. The Program focuses its support for research in four broad areas: the ecosystem impacts of fishing, the social and economic impacts of fishing regimes, sustainable fisheries management, and sustainable marine aquaculture.  Lenfest has partnered with many scientists, universities, and organizations on research from the efficiency of fishery management initiatives to the impacts (more)...

Institute for Society Landscape and Ecosystem Change
The new Institute for Society, Landscape and Ecosystem Change, directed by Colorado State University researchers Christopher Fisher and Kathleen Galvin, will provide a forum through which faculty on campus can address questions centered on the critical connections between human societies and environmental change. The new institute will focus on how people both cause and respond to environmental problems. The institute will involve faculty from across campus to bring together researchers from many disciplines and combine their knowledge to address social and environmental dimensions of problems such as deforestation, climate change, urbanization, (more)...

Alliance for Global Sustainability (AGS)
The Alliance for Global Sustainability (AGS) is a unique, international partnership between four of the world's leading science and technology universities: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETHsustainability) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT/AGS) University of Tokyo (UT) Chalmers University of Technology (Chalmers)Created in 1997, the AGS today brings together hundreds of university scientists, engineers, and social scientists to address the complex issues that lie at the intersection of environmental, economic, and social goals. Together, we seek to meet these challenges through: Improving scientific understanding of global environmental challenges; Developing technology and policy tools to help societies reconcile ecological and economic concerns; and Educating of a new generation of leaders committed (more)...

Ecological Society of America (ESA) Sustainability Science Initiative
The ESA Sustainability Science Initiative, supported by the Science Office, is intended to develop a series of activities to examine and articulate the intellectual foundations for a new sustainability science. It began formally with a special session, “Ecological Sustainability in a World of Constant Change: Developing a New Research Agenda for ESA,” organized by Vice President for Science Gus Shaver, President Nancy Grimm, and Science Director Cliff Duke at the 2005 Annual Meeting. A Steering Committee led by Gus Shaver and including Terry Chapin, Cliff Duke, Ann Kinzig, Debra Peters, and Osvaldo Sala planned an NSF-sponsored workshop “Ecological Foundations of Sustainability in a Constantly Changing World” held at Woods Hole, (more)...

Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
Established in 1998, the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) is an independent, non-profit think tank, based in Japan, that goes beyond research to provide practical solutions. While the outlook of IGES is global, the principal geographical scope of its activities is Asia and the Pacific region. In order to realize sustainable development, our current socio-economic activities themselves should be reviewed and redirected. Thus, the ultimate goal of IGES is to create a new paradigm for the global community so that the unsustainable production and consumption patterns currently observed can be changed into sustainable ones. IGES currently carries out its (more)...

Integrated Research Systems for Sustainability Science (IR3S)
IR3S aims to promote and develop the newly emerging field of "sustainability" through collaboration with other leading groups around the world and thereby to establish a more integrated and holistic inquiry that we call "sustainability science." For this purpose, IR3S will establish leading international research platforms in this field. IR3S is a collaboration of the University of Tokyo, Osaka University, Ibaraki University, Hokkaido University, and Kyoto University.

Millennium Project
At the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000 world leaders placed development at the heart of the global agenda by adopting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set clear targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women by 2015. In support of these goals, the Millennium Project was launched to recommend the best strategies for achieving the MDGs. Over a period of 3 years the Millennium Project will work to devise a recommended plan of implementation that will allow all developing countries to meet the MDGs and thereby substantially improve the human condition by 2015. The Millennium Project's research focuses on identifying the operational priorities, organizational (more)...

Resilience Alliance
The Resilience Alliance strives to address perceived gaps in the understanding and resolution of complex issues involving people and nature: the conceptual gap created by partial theories and concepts inherent in scientific disciplines; the knowledge gap between science and policy or between understanding and action; and the communication gap, created by limitations of existing media for scientific discourse. They are working to address the first gap by seeking consilience; the second by creating a virtual (more)...

Science and Technology for Sustainability Program
The U.S. National Academies have established a Science and Technology for Sustainability Program (STS) to encourage the use of science and technology to achieve long term sustainable development - increasing incomes, improving public health, and sustaining critical natural systems. The first two projects under the STS program are the Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability and a workshop series entitled "Strengthening Science-Based Decision Making." The Roundtable provides a forum for dialogue among leaders from the communities of research, government, business, and environmental protection with a view toward strengthening strategic connections between scientific research, technological development, and action-oriented efforts to achieve sustainable (more)...

Sustainability Science Project
Appropriate mobilization of science and technology is essential if society's developmental goals are to be reconciled with the planet's environmental limits over the long term. The Sustainability Science Project seeks both to carry out research on fundamental questions arising from the interactions of complex human-environment systems, and to understand how such research can be targeted on key decisions and problems of practice. The (more)...

* The Sustainable Development (SD) Gateway, http://sdgateway.net, integrates the online information developed by members of the Sustainable Development Communications Network. In addition to over 1,200 documents available on SD topics, it provides services such as a calendar of events, a job bank, the Sustainability Web Ring, a roster of mailing lists (listservs) and news sites dealing with sustainable development.