WiserEarth

WiserEarth helps the global movement of people and organizations working toward social justice, indigenous rights, and environmental stewardship connect, collaborate, share knowledge, and build alliances.

All tools and content are free to use. The site is commercial-free too.

There are more than one million organizations and many millions of us around the world who are actively working toward ecological sustainability, economic justice, human rights protection, political accountability and peace -- issues that are systemically interconnected and intertwined.

Our effectiveness to prevent harm and institute positive change is undermined by our lack of collective awareness, duplication of efforts, and poor connectivity.

What has been missing is a map and directory of our network that includes the resources for communication and cooperation; in essence, an infrastructure through which to coordinate our efforts. WiserEarth provides this infrastructure. It provides a way for us to become better connected and more effective at working together.

WiserEarth is a core program of the Natural Capital Institute (NCI), an organization committed to the restoration of the earth and the healing of human culture. As of January 2011, the Natural Capital Institute has been renamed WiserEarth, so the nonprofit and program are one and the same.

WiserEarth's vision comes from NCI’s Founder, Paul Hawken, who recognized its need when researching his latest book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, and Why No One Saw It Coming.

“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 was launched on Earth Day, April 2007. Initial funding for WiserEarth supported the critical phase of building the platform, populating the site with a base of content, and listening to the needs of partners and community members.

In the Spring of 2008, WiserEarth went "open source", meaning its technical code was released to the world. Other projects can now customize a full scale website based on this WiserPlatform code without relying on NCI’s financial leadership.

Since its release, WiserEarth's functionality and tools have co-evolved with its users. Starting out as a directory, WiserEarth now offers social networking tools and groupware for people to connect and collaborate around issue areas. We invite you to read about WiserEarth's Principles.

WiserEarth will always be a work in progress. We hope WiserEarth community members will donate their time and intellectual property to help make WiserEarth a true global resource. The history from this point onward is collaboratively written by all of us - the community.

Here you will find: