Las Gaviotas Offset Partners
ZERI (www.zeri.org www.zerilearning.org)
Focuses on issues related to water, food, health care, shelter, energy, education and jobs. It has initiated some 50 projects around the world and operates 25 project centers on five continents in very diverse climates and cultural settings. These projects demonstrate that it is possible to respond to people's needs with what they have, implementing production and consumption systems which not only emulate nature, but implement systems that are more competitive, increasing productivity while generating jobs. The work is based on the "Five Kingdoms of Nature" (plants, animals, fungi, algae and bacteria) and the observation that no species on Earth - but the human species - wastes waste.
The Marion Institute (www.marioninstitute.org)
The Marion Institute seeks to empower individuals with knowledge and insight and exposure to ideas all in an effort to pollinate communities with the desire and capability to move toward sustainable behavior in all aspects of human life.
The Marion Institute seeks to mimic Nature and Her systems in an effort to sustain itself through a process of reflection on and adaptation to changing circumstances whereby a more dynamic, diverse, resilient and abundant result may be achieved. To this end, all of the initiatives of the Marion Institute share a connection with one another that allows for each to be creatively informed and stimulated by the others.
The Marion Institute is an organization devoted to the identification of the root causes of the ills that plague human society, and to seeking innovative solutions to these ills that relieve the symptoms by focusing on the underlying cause.
The Marion Institute is an autopoietic organization that is committed to evolve into an evermore efficient and effective catalyst for deep, positive and lasting change and to embody the joy inherent in such an effort.
The people behind Las Gaviotas Offsets Project
Paolo Lugari was born in 1944. He is a visionary and the founder of the Center for Environmental Investigations at Las Gaviotas. The eco-village Las Gaviotas can be thought of as a town that embodies the desire to reclaim the land, the ecosystem and a sustainable life from a formerly desolate environment.
His projects are an inspiration for the zero emissions concept. He has balanced the concept of forestry with the generation of quality drinking water, employment, industrial production and the recovery of biodiversity. In 1971, he created El Centro Ecologico at Las Gaviotas, in the eastern part of Colombia in la Orinoquia where poverty just exists in the mind.
The United Nations has called his project a model for the world, and most especially for the developing countries.
Paolo does not consider himself to be an ecologist. He searches for a sustainable future for poor communities using all that the ecosystem is able to produce. Paolo has proved and has scientifically documented that in this part of the country it is possible to convert the Colombian savannah back into the tropical rainforest it used to be 100 million years ago.
GUNTER PAULI
(1956) is an entrepreneur who was trained as an economist with an MBA from INSEAD, Fontainebleau. He established 9 companies (2 went under) and has dedicated the past 10 years to translating innovative scientific insights into projects that address the pressing problems of communities. He is director of several companies including Biomimicry KK in Japan and Biosignal in Australia.
He is the founder and CEO of Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI), an international network of scholars, business people, government officials, and educators. ZERI includes academic networks with members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Third World Academy of Sciences, and the World Academy of Arts and Sciences of which he is a fellow. He holds an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau and a State Honorary Doctorate from Italy.