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Launched in 1999, the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes are the first global indexes tracking the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide. Based on the cooperation of Dow Jones Indexes, STOXX Limited and SAM they provide asset managers with reliable and objective benchmarks to manage sustainability portfolios.

The mission of The Pelican Web is to collect and analyze knowledge on obstacles to sustainable development, and to publish the monthly, free subscription, open access PelicanWeb Journal of Sustainable Development. The e-journal provides a monthly digest on current research pursuant to human solidarity, ecological sustainability, and both secular and religious non-violence.

The current research agenda is to examine all the significant dimensions of sustainable development in order to integrate the resulting multi-dimensional knowledge and make it available in a form suitable for use sustainable development groups.

Appropedia is the site for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development. Appropedia helps us sustain our world.

I also contend that thrivability goes beyond sustainability by including social justice. It is not enough to find ways to sustain life and human life on the planet. Real thrivability means no one gets left behind in poverty, exposed unfairly to disaster, or suffers at the hand of corrupt governments.

I am pleased to announce the release of Issue II of Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development. Our current editorial board of 32 undergraduate and graduate students worked with this issue's 23 authors to present to you an inspiring collection of written experiences and novel ideas of individuals passionate for the advancement of sustainable development.

The focus of this month's issue moves from the individual to the community. Sustainable development requires communities in which people consciously and continuously attempt to balance individual self-interest with the common good. Surely, this is not the kind of ethos that induced the current financial crisis that, starting in New York, has already spread to all regions of the world. It is a financial pandemic, fueled by a greed virus that makes governments willing to sink trillions of dollars into failed financial institutions at the expense of millions of human beings that lack the resources to meet the most basic human needs.

This proposes and calls for expressions of interest in developing an international, voluntary, public register of risks to sustainability and of their causal paths - including those which are indirect, remote or transnational in nature.

Dreamfish helps change makers to connect in order to collaboratively create a sustainable future.

A new Species-Environment Relations (SER) modeling approach depicts key ecological functions (KEFs) and key environmental correlates (KECs) of terrestrial plant and animal species, as part of a regional assessment of the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project. Assessing KEFs of species is one facet of understanding management effects and ecological integrity of ecosystems. A relational database was developed that ties species' KEFs with their key habitats, KECs, and distribution maps. In this way, potential management activities can be evaluated for how they influence: habitats and environmental correlates; associated plant, invertebrate, and vertebrate species; the array of ecological functions associated with those species; geographic functional ecology; and potential effects on ecosystem productivity, diversity, and sustainability.

Solving the "digital divide" in Africa will not put food in mouths, knowledge in heads, clean water in households, or make healthcare accessible to those who need it most. Leveraging knowledge, skills, and capacities holds out the possibility of doing all of these things. This is what extending knowledge infrastructure is about: building robust and sustainable networks and communities that mobilize a broad range of information practices, institutions, and technologies (old and new) - and put these in the service of locally-defined needs, aspirations, and broad developmental goals. This report summarizes current thinking and action around African knowledge infrastructures.

The Budapest Open Access Initiative arises from a small but lively meeting convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute (OSI) on December 1-2, 2001. The purpose of the meeting was to accelerate progress in the international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the internet. The participants represented many points of view, many academic disciplines, and many nations, and had experience with many of the ongoing initiatives that make up the open access movement. In Budapest they explored how the separate initiatives could work together to achieve broader, deeper, and faster success. They explored the most effective and affordable strategies for serving the interests of research, researchers, and the institutions and societies that support research. Finally, they explored how OSI and other foundations could use their resources most productively to aid the transition to open access and to make open-access publishing economically self-sustaining. The result is the Budapest Open Access Initiative. It is at once a statement of principle, a statement of strategy, and a statement of commitment.

Full online book. Reader feedback forms.

A future in saltwater: ways to adapt to a world with dwindling freshwater

The raw truth is that the economy has grown faster when taxes were higher, but how can we explain that phenomenon?

The Coffee Shop as Social Gathering-Place: Chris Corrigan picks up on an idea in Architect Magazine on how coffee shops might morph into the business and community gathering places of the future. I recently predicted the end of offices, and with their demise will come a need for such f2f gathering spots, equipped with videoconferencing and screensharing and other social tools to allow others who can't attend to be part of the conversation.

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?

Research about the highest potentials of local communities in the age of digital technology and virtual cooperation.