PAUL HAWKEN AND THE NATURAL CAPITAL INSTITUTE ANNOUNCE THE LAUNCH OF WISEREARTH (www.wiserearth.org)

The wiki-enabled database, WiserEarth, sets out to catalog and network the “largest and fastest growing movement in the world.”

Sausalito, California (May 8, 2007) – After a two year effort by a global team of researchers, students, volunteers, and open source software experts, Paul Hawken and the Natural Capital Institute announced the launch of WiserEarth today. Designed as a networking forum as well as an international community directory, WiserEarth helps the hundreds of thousands of organizations and individuals working on environment, social justice and indigenous issues connect, collaborate, share resources and build alliances.

According to Natural Capital Institute’s (NCI) Project Director, Peggy Duvette, “WiserEarth will establish a means for NGOs, individuals, social entrepreneurs, institutes, coalitions, foundations, and citizen-based organizations to leverage their experience, knowledge and resources in new ways, helping them to move towards alignment and collaboration with one another.”

NCI’s Executive Director, Paul Hawken recognized the need for WiserEarth when garnering research for his most recent book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, and Why No One Saw It Coming (Viking/Penguin, 2007). Hawken recalls, “I knew that if we could understand the connections and visualize the breadth of global efforts on behalf of social and environmental justice, we would recognize the largest movement the world has ever seen. WiserEarth is where this movement can begin to see itself.”

WiserEarth already includes an extensive international directory of over 100,000 organizations based in 243 countries, sovereign islands, and territories. It contains a detailed taxonomy of the organizations that compose global civil society, as well as global resources, event listings, and job postings. All information on the site can be freely used, modified, and repurposed on other online sites or publications.

“The success of WiserEarth does not depend on garnering a complete database of all the environmental and social justice organizations worldwide,” says Hawken, “but on our ability to create a network that takes on a life of its own — one that is wholly owned and grown by the global community.” 

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