Golden Gate Club, San Francisco, CA, January 9, 2004 – In November 2003, The Natural Step hosted a two-day work session investigating the future of sustainable food, fish, and fiber. With 30 business, NGO, government, and academic leaders participating, the event focused on designing ways to catalyze more sustainable shifts in natural resource markets and to weave sustainability concepts into business practices more rapidly.

Through over a decade of work with large companies, The Natural Step has grappled with the real-time challenges of implementing true sustainability efforts. Complex supply chains, lack of consumer demand for sustainable products, fragmented NGO campaign agendas, and under-supported sustainability efforts at many companies stymie most efforts. The two-day session explored these issues and pathways to address them.

Top practitioners and thinkers in the field attended—representing groups as varied as Corporate Ethics International, McDonald's, Marine Stewardship Council, Sustainable Cotton Project, and USDA.

Regardless of sector or issue focus, participants found similarities in the challenges they face. Key ideas of what is needed to move the field forward include:

• Creative cross-sector problem solving collaborations
• Better examples of the benefits for businesses
• Greater public understanding of sustainability
• Metrics, measurements, and tools that capture important information and promote individual accountability
• Incentives for sustainability (especially financial)
• Increased funding for sustainability initiatives

Building off the relationships and insights developed at the event, The Natural Step is exploring creative, collaborative approaches to addressing some of these issues in 2004 and beyond. Heather Sarantis, research associate at The Natural Step, described the outcome of the workshop as “the beginning of a new approach to chipping away at the complex challenges so many of us face in working for a healthy, vibrant, respectful, sustainable society.” One immediate area of exploration includes building a roadmap to transition toward a more sustainable fiber industry and catalyzing a coalition effort to promote this vision.A pre-event paper, proceedings and event summary are available at http://www.naturalstep.org/research/f3_event.php.

For a participant’s perspective on the event see:
http://www.pcffa.org/fn-dec03.htm

For more information, contact:
Heather Sarantis
Research Associate, The Natural Step
hsarantis@naturalstep.org
415-318-8170 *318

About The Natural Step
Since 1989, The Natural Step has been guiding companies and governments onto an ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable path. An international advisory and research organization, The Natural Step works with some of the largest resource users on the planet to create new models of sustainable enterprise and tools designed to accelerate global sustainability

For more information: www.naturalstep.org