COORDINATOR:
Pamela Paquin Hall

SoL ESG Newsletters
Spring 2007
2006 End of Year
Spring 2005
Autumn 2004
Summer 2004
Spring 2004

3rd annual SoL ESG Sustainability and Innovation Workshop

• Our third Annual Sustainability and Innovation gathering will be held in Bryrup Denmark at the idyllic Hall Organic Farm. We will focus on building understanding and skills to cultivate conditions of thriving adaptive resilience in our organizations.
• Contributors include, Project members working with Industrial Symbiosis in communities across Denmark, some of which are beginning, and some which are 25 years old. A Danish Design firm who has won the coveted Golden Lion Award for Architecture with their Sustainable City for China. The Alexandra Institute who hosts creative alliances between business, research, and government when business wants partners for R&D.  And Lund University's International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics.

• In addition, the Tallberg Foundation is hosting it's annual Forum June 28th to July 1st 2007 and if you are traveling to Scandinavia a combination of the two events may interest you.

slides and photos from Brussels meeting in November

OUR MEMBERS:
:: ARC systems research GmbH, Austria
:: Dialogos Partners, Hungary
:: Edna Pasher & Associates, Israel
:: The Edge International School for Leadership & Spirituality, Netherlands
:: The Environment Agency, UK
:: European Climate Forum
:: HEC, France
:: London School of Economics, UK
:: Nature Academy Learning Lab, Sweden
:: Natuurlijk Leren, Netherlands
:: Politecnico di Bari, Italy
:: Portland International Consulting Group Ltd, UK
:: Royal Ahold
:: Schlumberger
:: Solvay, S.A.
:: TNO, Netherlands
:: Unilever
:: Universitat Duisberg-Essen

OUR PURPOSE
We are a diverse group of organisations researchers and consultants in Europe who are actively working to create a sustainable world, through creatively learning together, sharing insights and developing practical capacity for sustainability in ourselves and in the organisations we work with. Click here for the SoL European Sustainability Group (SoL ESG) membership brochure

BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIP

• Invitations to two or three meetings in Europe each year, at preferential rates
• Participation in monthly teleconferences for members
• Recieve the SoL European Newsletter for news from the region 
• Newsletter three times-a-year
• Opportunities for: networking; forming and joining projects on different aspects of learning and putting sustainability into practice; exploration of sustainability themes and models of sustainability, learning and change; and developing capabilities for sustainability
• Invitation to a “Sustainability in Action” core course, with preferential rates for members

SoL European Sustainability Group Membership 2005 Information

SoL's European Sustainability Consortium aims to expand its membership, especially of medium and large companies and, ideally, some smaller and not-for-profit organisations. We believe that the benefits of sharing experience and learning together will flow well with a good range of company members, supported and enhanced by the active presence of both researchers and consultants.

HISTORY OF THE SOL EUROPEAN SUSTAINABILITY GROUP (SoL ESG)
Prof. Eve Mitleton-Kelly, the Executive Co-ordinator of SoL-UK , and Penny Kennington began some initial work on a European Sustainability Group in late 2002 and early 2003. They decided to launch the group at the SoL Global Forum in Finland , and to see if there was sufficient interest to get the group started. At the launch meeting, Brigitte Tantawy-Monsou of Unilever expressed strong interest, and there was also interest from a number of others. Joe Laur and Sara Schley, the stewards of the SoL Sustainability Consortium , offered their support, as did Peter Senge. As a result, a meeting was held in London in December 2003, hosted by Eve and facilitated by Penny, and attended by 15 people. Brigitte, Eve and Penny agreed to form a small steering group, and monthly telephone conferences and regular meetings were also agreed upon. There was enthusiasm to establish some projects, and to learn from the well-established SoL Sustainability Consortium.

From the start, it was clear that establishing a mixed, European group was going to be quite difficult. The needs and interests of researchers, practitioners and consultants are somewhat different. There were various views on the scope of "sustainability". And, of course, there were many cultural and linguistic differences. In addition, there are many existing groups and consultancies focussing on sustainability and corporate social responsibility. We decided to focus on what is distinctive about our group, namely its interest and capacity in practical application of organisational learning practices to sustainability.

We started by producing some materials - an information sheet and newsletters - explaining our approach and its importance.

STEERING GROUP

SoL ESG is managed through its meetings and monthly teleconference,s and by a small steering group, whose current members are Brigitte Tantawy Monsou (Unilever), Penny Kennington, and  Pamela Paquin Hall (Convenor). These meetings have been very valuable for discussing a wide variety of issues, especially finances, planning meetings, recruitment of new members, production of information for potential members and newsletters.

Related Materials:
SoL European Sustainability Group Information Sheet

Recent Meetings
Since the launch meeting in Finland in June 2003, we have held a total of four meetings for SoL ESG members and potential members.

Stakeholder Engagement at Solvay, Brussels Nov. 2006

2nd Annual Sustainability and Innovation Workshop June 2006

Roadmaps meeting at Shell, London - Feb. 2006

Our first meeting of the year was hosted by Johan Breukelaar at Shell in London in February. Our thanks to Johan, who has been our most regular host, and who also participated in all three of our meetings this year.  The meeting was the third in our series of meetings on Roadmaps, although during the meeting we concluded that the word journey has a less prescriptive and more organic connotation. We heard about experience at Shell, Unilever, RWE and Crystal Faraday (who created roadmaps for the green chemical industry).  We also heard from Brigitte on the Sustainability Consortium's Social Sustainability Project, and from Gerard Zwetsloot on Corporate Vitality. On day two, we looked at potential future activities - on sustainability journeys, visualisation tools, and potential for developing projects.  

1. SoL's 2nd Global Forum in Vienna
SoL ESG hosted three sessions at the Global Forum in Vienna: A Plenary Session, a Lunch & Learn and a Learning Lab (jointly with SOL ESG member the European Climate Forum). For details of these sessions, please see:

Brigitte Tantawy-Monsou's Slides from the 2nd SoL Global Forum in Vienna Austria

John Vienna Slides

Plenary session summary description for the 2nd SoL Global Forum in Vienna Austria

Flip chart images from the Lunch & Learn session on Sustainability at the 2nd SoL Global Forum in Vienna Austria

Posters for Vienna

2. Bari, Italy, 21 - 23 March 2005 Forum with Peter Senge on 22 March
Announcement
Registration
Travel & Hotel
Maps of Bari
Shuttle Schedule

3. Paris in March 2004
Irene Dupoux-Couturier hosted a meeting in Paris on 25 March, attended by Peter Senge and many people from SoLs in Europe and from SoL ESG. The theme was sustainability, leadership and innovation. Several of those who had attended in London or Finland came, and several others who had learned about us in the meantime - some through steering group member contacts and some following the SoL Greenhouse meeting in January. SoL ESG had an all-day meeting, hosted by Unilever, on 26 March. This was a good, consolidating meeting. We built on the purpose and values that we had arrived at in December. In addition, we had a substantive conversation about sustainability and the value of the group. It was decided that the group would spend about half of its time in discussions on topics of mutual interest and in learning together, and devote half of its energy to projects.

4. Budapest in June 2004
This meeting was hosted by Agota Ruzsa. We met for dinner on the initial evening (definitely a good way to start). On day 1, Eve Mitleton-Kelly presented a seminar on complexity thinking and its applicability to sustainability. The second day was devoted to a wide variety of presentations from SoL ESG members and local SoL Hungary members. The third day was a smaller meeting on more administrative matters for members of SoL ESG. We made some progress on the future direction of the group and on projects. Overall, the format worked well - especially the second day, when we began the day with a member of the Cabinet Office giving a fascinating talk, followed by a most interesting discussion.

5. Netherlands in November 2004
This meeting was held at De Kleine Aarde, an ecological centre in the Netherlands, and hosted by Johan Breukelaar of Shell (who had joined the SoL ESG steering group in June). Again, we started with dinner on the first evening. The first day was devoted to a wide variety of sessions - on the "U" process from the book " Presence", to long sessions sharing the work on sustainability done in Shell and Unilever, leading to a session from Edna Pasher on the World Cafe and using the process to clarify questions arising from earlier sessions. This led to an important development in future work for group members - a meeting was arranged for February 2005 (hosted by new member Ahold) to work on some of the questions that arose. The second day was again more administratively focussed. We had a session on ecological footprints (we each completed a questionaire to reveal our individual footprints), and a projects carousel and exploration session, which resulted in some progress. We decided that focussing on administration on the final day is not ideal, and that it is better to do most administration in the steering group or the monthly calls, as the time working productively as a group is so precious.

6. CHANGE THE DREAM SYMPOSIUM in Friday 1 December 2006
Centrum de Roos Amsterdam*
A One-day Symposium about the most critical issue, and greatest
opportunity, of our time - and what you can do about it.
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