Giving Compass' Take:

• Stanford Social Innovation Review discusses a new model for environmental solutions: collaborating with nature in what's called "Public-Planet Partnerships."

• The purpose is to generate "win-win" scenarios for both us and our ecosystem, rather than exploiting natural resources for short-term gains. How can those in the sector encourage more PPP action?

• Here's how climate leaders are taking cues from nature to inspire optimism.


The Public-Planet Partnership (PPP) framework was developed in partnership between 3BL Associates and SoScience to help create new solutions that solve specific challenges linked to the SDGs or to improve existing solutions within an organization. Given the limitations of public-private partnerships — in that they don’t consider the planet as a stakeholder or collaborator — we believed there was a need for eco-inclusive “Public-Planet Partnerships,” and launched the first pilot PPP workshops during the UN COP 22 Climate Conference in Morocco, with the support of Ashoka and the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

Comprised of tools, case studies, and links to technical resources, the framework starts with inviting innovators to engage in an ethos dialogue, with the goal of understanding the ethics and values required to guide the rest of the process. This is the basic understanding that we are looking for mutually beneficial, win-win collaborations, rather than exploiting nature’s resources for the primary purpose of human gain. Popular circular economy initiatives embed other species into solutions, but in certain cases, they offer little mutual value to our planetary partners and don’t fully harness their eco-system potential. The Cardboard to Caviar initiative is one example. It focuses on feeding worms composted waste, which are in turn fed to sturgeon fish, which are later killed to harvest caviar, but there is no regenerative or net positive benefit to nature.

Read the full article about public-planet partnerships by Mélanie Marcel, Tariq Al-Olaimy, and Leena Al-Olaimy at Stanford Social Innovation Review.