Kicking off the David Suzuki Foundation’s Strategic Sustainability Roadmap
Kicking off the David Suzuki Foundation’s Strategic Sustainability Roadmap
The David Suzuki Foundation is committed to sustainability, and has implemented several ambitious internal initiatives over the years. These include reducing energy usage and waste, selecting green buildings for two of its offices, partnering with Cisco to adopt communication technologies that reduce air travel, tracking and offsetting its greenhouse gas emissions, choosing green suppliers, and so on. Building on this work, the Foundation now wants to evolve and demonstrate the best of its internal activities through a more strategic organizational approach to sustainability.
The Response
The David Suzuki Foundation is developing its internal sustainability plan with guidance fromThe Natural Step Canada. The plan will use The Natural Step Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development to address all aspects of the organization, from governance, employee well-being, operations, and beyond, and will align with other strategic planning processes underway in the organization. Key deliverables will include a compelling sustainable development vision, strategic goals, and an organizational sustainability roadmap.
The Process
From May to September, 2012, Green Team members from the Foundation will work with experts from The Natural Step Canada to develop a series of transition strategies and milestones to guide organizational development in support of sustainability. At the outset, The Natural Step Canada will facilitate workshops with the Green Team to build a common definition of sustainability to ensure everyone is working toward the same goal, identify key challenges, develop strategic goals that define success for the organization’s sustainability performance, brainstorm methods of closing the gap between its current reality and desired future, and develop a draft timeline for implementation.
By early fall, emergent themes will be compiled and a draft sustainability plan will be submitted to The Natural Step Canada. Thereafter, recommendations and reflections will be sent back to the Foundation about a final implementation plan, helping staff adopt best practices, and drive further innovation for sustainability.
For information on the Foundation’s sustainability initiatives, please visit: www.davidsuzuki.org/about/sustainability-at-dsf.
The Feedback
“The David Suzuki Foundation is a leading voice in Canada on sustainability, but it’s also important to us that we do everything we can to get our own house in order. We chose to work with The Natural Step Canada because their rigorous, science-based framework will allow us to examine every aspect of our organization through the lens of sustainability.”
-Peter Robinson, CEO, David Suzuki Foundation
Learn more about The Natural Step Canada’s Service Path for Sustainable Business and how we can help your business develop a bold sustainability vision, strategy, and action plan. Please contact us to discuss your unique needs or join our next FREE Introduction to Strategic Sustainability for Business in Canada webinar.
