by Brianna Crandall — March 14, 2012—A group of international organizations and government and businesses leaders has taken the initiative to launch an ambitious award and collaboration focused on promoting a sustainable society. Launched in Geneva, Switzerland, the “Sustainia” initiative aims to develop the world’s first realistic model of a sustainable world in 2020—and identify the companies and persons who can make it real.
Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will serve as Honorary Chair for the Sustainia Award alongside European Union (EU) Commissioner Connie Hedeggard, Chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Dr. Rajenda K. Pachauri, and former Prime Minister of Norway and former Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Gro Harlem Brundtland, who is said to have founded the global sustainability agenda 20 years ago at the first Rio conference on sustainable development.
The Sustainia award and initiative is intended to help people see and feel what a sustainable society is in order to help them convince decision makers to make the changes necessary. The collaboration says that sustainable private and public solutions must be recognized and scaled up to give a tangible idea of how it will improve quality of life for people and communities around the world.
Sustainia is a virtual model of the world we could create if we implemented ready and available solutions to our existing cities, homes, energy systems and transportation, say the developers, who have started the process of building Sustainia. In the coming months, everyone with Internet access can visit, inhabit and help build the new world on a virtual construction site.
The vision of Sustainia is presented in the book Guide to Sustainia, which was developed by Scandinavian think tank Monday Morning in a collaborative effort with 20 global companies (including Microsoft, GE, DNV, Philips Lighting, DONG Energy, Tetra Pak, Cisco and others) and sustainability experts.
Since the launch in October 2011, a consortium of Scandinavian companies and founding partners (DONG Energy, Realdania, DNV and Novo Nordisk), UN Global Compact, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new climate initiative R 20—Regions for Climate Action—has seen the potential of further developing Sustainia into a new global innovation and communication platform.
The key elements in the collaboration between Sustainia and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s R20 initiative consist of the following:
- To identify, design, implement, measure, report and verify the actions undertaken by regions and their positive impacts for a sustainable world;
- On an annual basis, to identify the most successful sustainable solutions and award the solution with the most potential to be implemented and disseminated; and
- To establish a new, powerful global forum for ambitious action and commitment to sustainable development that will provide an innovative and creative annual platform for gathering global leaders.
- On an annual basis, to identify the most successful sustainable solutions and award the solution with the most potential to be implemented and disseminated; and
Sustainia will be presented to world leaders in June this year, at the Rio+20 Summit in Brazil, alongside an inspiration catalogue called Sustainia100 containing 100 concrete solutions and technologies intended to help make Sustainia real.
