Year-end message from the GIN Cooordinators
December 18, 2007

Dear GIN members, colleagues, friends,
     
     Approaching year-end, thoughts often turn to what has happened the past 12 months, and what do we look forward to in the coming year?

     Taking it a bit further, thinking back to the early days of the Greening of Industry Network, let’s say 1990, ideas and activities that seemed radical to many then are commonplace, accepted, and expected today. For example, back then, US companies were grappling with the requirements of Community-Right-to-Know (provisions of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act), wondering what it meant to disclose so much information to the public. Today, disclosure is fully expected and engaged in competitively, an industry in itself. ‘Way back then, it sounded radical to propose that a business might find competitive advantage in going green. These days, companies are shouting out their green claims. In Boston, it took a lawsuit by an NGO to force the electric utility company to give away CFLs and conduct home energy audits instead of building new coal-fired power plants. Now CFLs are common in stores (and selling for as little as $1, formerly $15 in the early ‘90s) (and the push for more capacity is still with us).
     
     Back then it would have been revolutionary to suggest that NGOs and businesses join forces, but that is just what we have seen many times. The experience of Shell with the Brent Spar triggered this major shift, but examples can be seen everywhere. Only last June the Coca-Cola Company announced a multi-year partnership with WWF for the protection of drinking water resources. On a local scale, there are many examples, too. A nature conservation association in the Netherlands engaged in a partnership with a project developer. The result will be a new housing area, integrated into the landscape, with room for water retention and new natural area created nearby.
     
     Yet questions remain on what these developments mean for sustainable development. Over the past year we have re-emphasized the question of what we have learned so far: Do we now understand what changes are necessary to realize sustainable development? Are we any closer to realizing these changes or at least developing strategies for them? Which actors, partnerships, and strategies are the most successful, and why? Or are the only tangible results new jobs for researchers and consultants?
    
      So, the challenge for GIN remains: How can we create positive change toward sustainability? Where does innovation come from? Who is responsible? Which greening and sustaining ideas and practices that are seen as radical today can we expect to embrace as commonplace tomorrow, by the end of 2008, or in 2025? We invite you to think and plan and work with us in 2008 and in the coming years to accelerate progress toward a sustainable society.

Best wishes for the holidays!  Best wishes for the New Year!

... from the GIN Coordinators — Somporn, Theo, and Kurt

At the GIN2007 Conference, left-to-right: Ada Krooshoop, GIN Europe Office Manager; Christine Daly, GIN2007 Conference Manager, Wilfrid Laurier University; Theo, Kurt, and Somporn, GIN Coordinators; Sanjay Sharma, GIN2007 Conference Chair and Host.