1. What is Sustainability?

A sustainable organisation is one that can continue its activities into the future.

Before any activity is started, the NGO has to ask “How long can we continue?” Not how long we would like to continue, but how long we definitely can continue – to provide, supervise, motivate, train or do what the project needs.

Once you are clear about the lifespan that you can guarantee, then you can fit your activities to the time you have. There may be pressure to plan long-term projects even when the money is not around: your colleagues will be optimistic and assume that funding will appear; and they hope that their jobs and salaries will continue into the future. But it is not that easy.

2. Sustainability for projects

If you have projects which help your beneficiaries, then:

• either these activities should have a limited life, for example a one-off heath promotion action;

• or they should be able to survive on their own if and when you stop your financial and supervising support.

  So you should have built a degree of community participation and/or contribution in cash and kind in order to guarantee a minimum level of ownership. Income-generating activities should be making a real income for the target groups and therefore be more than just social schemes. The management of the money involved should follow the same rules as money management within your NGO.

Example: In Puntland, a Health Centre had been set up by a European NGO and had provided health care. But after six months the NGO lost it source of funding and withdrew. A Micro credit programme, recently started with a remit to help women, decided to keep funding the Health Centre out of its own profits to continue a minimum package of vaccinations and family planning.

3. Sustainability and people

There are important issues of sustainability if you train people to do a job at village level. Be very careful of, for example, training people in health matters, unless the Ministry of Health or someone else are going to take over responsibility for the trainees and supervise them.

Why? Look at Water and Sanitation projects, where projects need a Hygiene Education component and often train village people in health matters. Then the project ends; the trainees have a certificate, little training and no supervision. They may buy a white coat, start giving injections – perhaps knocking out the teeth of children with diarrhoea or branding them with red-hot bicycle spokes. They can do harm. The same thing happens when NGOs start so-called Primary Health Care projects, train community health workers but disappear after a year. So:

! Be careful of creating a group of workers. Either they should have a future, can be rewarded and supervised; or their task should be self-limiting

4. Financial sustainability

It is possible to ensure financial sustainability but for most NGOs it demands a lot of work. You funding can come from:

• many tiny donations from community supporters;

• fewer but larger donations or legacies;

• one or more National or International funders;

• income from savings;

• income-generating projects.
  EXAMPLE: In west Kenya, where HIV/AIDS is endemic, one NGO has a hearse that is hired out to carry bodies to the graveyard – a small but regular income.
• If you have one or more donors, remember that the building of a relationship of trust with your donor(s) is just as important as the amount of money you ask or receive.

EXAMPLE: A WORKSHOP ON FUNDRAISING FOR A HUMAN RIGHTS NGO IN LESOTHO

This NGO (CLRAC) organised a Workshop on Fund-raising for both staff and Board Members. Together, over three days, the participants worked through the following:

• a brief evaluation of fund-raising by CLRAC in the past years: conclusions;
• how to plan the funding needs for CLRAC and set realistic objectives for the period 2000-2002;
• development of a fund-raising strategy, including: planning/timing of projects and CLRAC organisational costs in need of funding;
• capacity assessment in CLRAC to conduct fund-raising; how to build in fund-raising capacity: human resources development and organisational development;
• how to target donors, local and international – and what their requirements are;
• how to write a proposal for project funding;
• an outline for financial reporting;
• a plan to write a Strategic Planning document for implementation of fund-raising by CLRAC;
• a meeting with a Maseru-based donor representative.

Because the Board members and staff followed the Workshop together, a feeling of commitment and co-working also developed; the Strategic Planning Document got written and some money has been raised.

Accepting the mind-set that will help you succeed:

Non-profit organisations in the South are steadily becoming more professional. For NGOs seeking grants, one of the most important steps is a mental one. They accept that there are no quick fixes, no magic shortcuts. The steady, regular work of your organisation – your board members, your staff responsible for funding – all this will develop an effective strategy through many small steps.

Part of the process is to be clear about what you are – each of you, each a very special NGO – and to make that clear in the documents that go to the possible funder. A Mission Statement that is enthusiastic, imaginative and creative will help a lot.

Can you answer the following questions clearly and directly?

1. What is the unique purpose of your organisation?
2. What are the basic needs that this organisation fills? (the target group it serves and how this organisation meets the needs of the beneficiaries)

» For more in-depth guidance, download folder A Guide to Fundraising

5. Organisational and Institutional Sustainability

Organisational sustainability:

An organisation is like a plant. There is a part of it that is above ground – stem, leaves, fruit. These are the organisational aspects that an outsider can see – the projects, the administration, the capacity building. But there is also the part below the ground – the roots, or institutional aspects of the organisation. This part is strong if the NGO is serious about its purpose, has strong objectives and convictions. If the boss and staff have lost their vision, the roots are weak but may still be rescue-able and a guarantee that the NGO can survive. If the roots have been eaten by pests, no matter how well the office is run, the NGO will die.

Institutional sustainability:

An NGO which is concerned about long life might choose to do a SWOT – Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, Threats. For details see The purpose of doing a Swot is twofold; firstly it enables the NGO to find the issues which everyone agrees are strengths, weaknesses etc. The next step is to work with these issues, establish the relationship between them, select the ones which are priority and then transform them into policy issues or Things-to-be-Done.

EXAMPLE: A PROBLEM OF INSTITUTIONAL SUSTAINABILITY

An Asian NGO had the stated aim of improving the skills of farmers throughout the country. However there was also an unwritten aim, held by the boss and most of the Board; that was to spread the culture of the majority ethnic group into minority areas. This aim had changed the nature of services for the worse. There was no serious decentralisation and all training was in the majority language even where the farmers could not understand it. Project workers were becoming increasingly demoralised.

This kind of Institutional problem is fundamental, is corrupting and would probably sabotage any attempt to build a good strong NGO. To bring the problem into the open and make the organisation an honest one would be very difficult – but it could be done in the future.

» Information can also be found in Chapter 12 of folder How to Build a Good Small NGO.

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Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have played a major role in pushing for sustainable development at the international level. Campaigning groups have been key drivers of inter-governmental negotiations, ranging from the regulation of hazardous wastes to a global ban on land mines and the elimination of slavery.

But NGOs are not only focusing their energies on governments and inter-governmental processes. With the retreat of the state from a number of public functions and regulatory activities, NGOs have begun to fix their sights on powerful corporations – many of which can rival entire nations in terms of their resources and influence.

Aided by advances in information and communications technology, NGOs have helped to focus attention on the social and environmental externalities of business activity. Multinational brands have been acutely susceptible to pressure from activists and from NGOs eager to challenge a company’s labour, environmental or human rights record. Even those businesses that do not specialize in highly visible branded goods are feeling the pressure, as campaigners develop techniques to target downstream customers and shareholders.

In response to such pressures, many businesses are abandoning their narrow Milton Friedmanite shareholder theory of value in favour of a broader, stakeholder approach which not only seeks increased share value, but cares about how this increased value is to be attained.

Such a stakeholder approach takes into account the effects of business activity – not just on shareholders, but on customers, employees, communities and other interested groups.

There are many visible manifestations of this shift. One has been the devotion of energy and resources by companies to environmental and social affairs. Companies are taking responsibility for their externalities and reporting on the impact of their activities on a range of stakeholders.

Nor are companies merely reporting; many are striving to design new management structures which integrate sustainable development concerns into the decision-making process.

Much of the credit for creating these trends can be taken by NGOs. But how should the business world react to NGOs in the future? Should companies batten down the hatches and gird themselves against attacks from hostile critics? Or should they hold out hope that NGOs can sometimes be helpful partners?

For those businesses willing to engage with the NGO community, how can they do so? The term NGO may be a ubiquitous term, but it is used to describe a bewildering array of groups and organizations – from activist groups ‘reclaiming the streets’ to development organizations delivering aid and providing essential public services. Other NGOs are research-driven policy organizations, looking to engage with decision-makers. Still others see themselves as watchdogs, casting a critical eye over current events.

They hail from north and south and from all points in between – with the contrasting levels of resources which such differences often imply. Some are highly sophisticated, media-savvy organizations like Friends of the Earth and WWF; others are tiny, grassroots collectives, never destined to be household names.

Although it is often assumed that NGOs are charities or enjoy non-profit status, some NGOs are profit-making organizations such as cooperatives or groups which lobby on behalf of profit-driven interests. For example, the World Trade Organization’s definition of NGOs is broad enough to include industry lobby groups such as the Association of Swiss Bankers and the International Chamber of Commerce.

Such a broad definition has its critics. It is more common to define NGOs as those organizations which pursue some sort of public interest or public good, rather than individual or commercial interests.

Even then, the NGO community remains a diverse constellation. Some groups may pursue a single policy objective – for example access to AIDS drugs in developing countries or press freedom. Others will pursue more sweeping policy goals such as poverty eradication or human rights protection.

However, one characteristic these diverse organizations share is that their non-profit status means they are not hindered by short-term financial objectives. Accordingly, they are able to devote themselves to issues which occur across longer time horizons, such as climate change, malaria prevention or a global ban on landmines. Public surveys reveal that NGOs often enjoy a high degree of public trust, which can make them a useful – but not always sufficient – proxy for the concerns of society and stakeholders.

Not all NGOs are amenable to collaboration with the private sector. Some will prefer to remain at a distance, by monitoring, publicizing, and criticizing in cases where companies fail to take seriously their impacts upon the wider community. However, many are showing a willingness to devote some of their energy and resources to working alongside business, in order to address corporate social responsibility.

To learn more about what these partnerships look like, go to ‘Opposites attract’ using the menu on the left. There, NGO-business relations expert Jem Bendell explores several NGO-business relationships and explains how the new wave of partnerships differs from old-style corporate philanthropy.

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A sustainable NGO is an organisation that plans ahead. First of all, if you are about to set up an NGO make sure to build a strong argument for the reasons why such an organisation is needed. In fact the future of an NGO highly depends on its capacity to address real problems of a community as well as to collaborate with other actors and agencies working within the area, which may strengthen your organisation’s impact. Accordingly the first rule for sustainability is to have a clear vision, which is consistent with existing needs. As such it is important to complete background research and to develop a long-term plan capable of tackling problems and offering concrete solutions. By proposing sound ideas to tackle existent socio-political and economic problems you will also enhance your potential to get funded by relevant agencies working in your field of action.

Secondly, to guarantee a future to your NGO, it is crucial to develop a strong financial plan; without resources no projects can be developed. Do extensive research to define the ways in which you could finance your activities in the long term. Start by understanding who your potential donors are, what their financial priorities and strategies are, and also how to successfully become one of their partners. Whereas it is important to draft a strategic plan with a list of all the donors at the beginning of the activities, it is also important to keep this information filed and systematically updated in order to explore all the existing possibilities to apply for funding.

Thirdly, it is important to develop a long-term plan that is able to manage the NGO staff in a way that maximises each individual’s potential and meets their own expectations by supporting their professional development. It is crucial to establish collaboration and good communication among members of staff in order to strengthen their sense of belonging and thus their commitment to shared causes. Additionally, an NGO should develop strategies that are able to gather new staff members on occasional and voluntary bases. Salaries are to be kept at minimum as this could affect your capacity to hire new members when needed (for instance on a project-to-project basis). If you develop a volunteering scheme, you will be able to count on the work force of additional staff members when required. Needless to say that volunteers could become a vital resource because of how they represent your chance to learn from other people’s experiences and to draw on their personal and professional networks to expand your own.

Fourthly, your sustainability plan must be realistic. It is good to cultivate ambitious plans, but it is essential to establish a realistic agenda when it comes to proposing a project. Each project should be doable, which means that it should be able to engage with a specific problem and able to work towards its resolution in a set time frame and within the financial limits of your budget. When proposing a new project, it is important to stress the ways in which it contributes to the fulfilment of more ambitious goals in the long-term. For instance, if your NGO’s main goal is to improve employment skills of your community’s members, each of the proposed projects will target a specific layer of the population while enhancing the employability potential of the community at large. This point is of vital importance and potential donors will assess your capacity to elaborate small projects that contribute, in their totality, to wider goals.

Fifthly, while designing a new project think about what could happen after its implementation and imagine how its main outputs could become starting points for new projects. Also consider how you might collaborate on specific projects with new partners, which could present you with a way to establish new networks that are able to fundraise and together strengthening each member’s financial capacity.

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Using NGOs to Further Your Studies

When educational institutions talk about nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), they often focus on the roles that NGOs play in society, but seldom discuss how NGOs can help students enhance their studies. Not only can NGOs support a sustainability-related major; a sustainability-related NGO can help a student add a component of sustainability to a major in any field. Some colleges have recognized the value of work in NGOs and offer students opportunities to work directly with them; on the flip side, NGOs often encourage institutions of higher education to send students to work with them. In addition, students themselves can seek out opportunities to deepen their learning through involvement with NGOs.

Giving Your Studies NGO Power

Working with NGOs or even referencing them can lend legitimacy to sustainability studies; for example, the personal experience that a student can gain through work in an NGO can give that student’s essays depth and provide “proof” that his or her assertions are valid. The following are ways in which students can enhance studies in sustainability with NGOs.

SEARCH UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

University libraries are a good place to start if you’d like to learn more about NGOs and their resources for sustainability students. You can identify NGOs that you’d like to work with, find sustainability studies to deepen your understanding of the subject and reference NGOs and their findings in your own research.

Search university libraries for sustainability studies to:

• Identify an NGO you’d like to work with or study.
• Learn from and reference research studies completed by NGOs.
• Find quotes from other students’ studies.
• Compare original theories about sustainability with current practices.

RESEARCH SUSTAINABILITY NGOS ONLINE

Research sustainability NGOs online to:

• Familiarize yourself with leading-edge sustainability work. NGOs usually envision solutions to problems before anyone else does.
• Find a thesis topic or enhance term papers with descriptions of NGO projects and results.
• Use your reaction to the purpose and work of each NGO to help you determine which sustainability degrees and career paths might be a good fit for you.

VOLUNTEER AT AN NGO

Volunteer your time at an NGO to:

• Test theories being taught in school.
• Gain personal experience that allows you to add anecdotes to essays, theses or dissertations.
• Help you determine if you value sustainability work enough to switch to a sustainability major or to add a sustainability component to the major you’re already pursuing.

How could you invest your time at an NGO? Here’s just one example. In 2013, Namita Shete, an MBA student at Kent Business School in England, collaborated with the NGO Rare to conduct a market viability study to determine if a social media workshop could improve public support for this NGO’s conservation programs. Her studies showed that the organization’s staff both wanted and needed such a workshop, which Rare subsequently developed.

How to Get Involved with NGOs on and off Campus

Many universities do not have programs that allow students to work with NGOs, but most are open to suggestions. There may be a way to help your school set up a program if one does not already exist.

If your institution doesn’t have an NGO program yet, find a university that does have such a program and do some research. Or find a NGO you are particularly drawn to, ask if they work with university students and have them give you tips on how to approach your school. Here are some resources to help you.

• NGO Café: This online cafe lets you hang out with people working with NGOs and learn what it’s like. You can ask questions and may be able get tips on connecting your university with a NGO student program.
• University of Berkeley’s NGO Library: This extensive list of NGOs includes descriptions and contact information, and allows you to conduct custom searches.

Universities that have established programs include:

• Duke University (Durham, North Carolina) has a program called DukeEngage that gives undergraduates immerse summer service experiences in local, national and international NGOs. Projects include installing clean-burning stoves in Peru, working on environmental issues with grassroots NGOs in India or Jordan and working with women’s social justice and advocacy organizations in New York City.
• Northwestern University’s (Chicago, Illinois) Global Engagement Studies Institute sends students to work with the Foundation for Sustainable Development in Bolivia, India, Nicaragua and Uganda. Student receive training, then collaborate with an interdisciplinary team to design and implement a sustainable community development project. When they return, they take part in a reflection summit where they process their experiences.
• The University of Maryland’s (College Park, Maryland) Global Philanthropy Program connects students with the Grameen Foundation’s “Bankers Without Borders” projects, which help connect the poor in India to their potential.

Enhancing Your Education with NGOs

These suggestions and resources can help you get started on what could be one of the most valuable experiences of your life. NGOs tend to dominate the field of sustainability, so working with them can help you decide whether to continue with a sustainability major, or choose a different major with a sub-focus on sustainability. Either way, your exposure to NGOs will be worth the time you spend.

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Sustainability is a broad discipline, giving students and graduates insights into most aspects of the human world from business to technology to environment and the social sciences. The core skills with which a graduates leaves college or university are highly sought after, especially in a modern world looking to drastically reduce carbon emissions and discover and develop the technologies of the future. Sustainability draws on politics, economics and, philosophy and other social sciences as well as the hard sciences. Sustainability skills and environmental awareness is a priority in many corporate jobs at graduate level and over as businesses seek to adhere to new legislation. Therefore, Sustainability graduates will go into many fields but most commonly civic planning, environmental consultancy (built and natural environment), agriculture, not for profit, corporate strategies, health assessment and planning, and even into law and decision making. Entry-level jobs are growing and over the coming years, bachelors graduates can expect more and more options and opportunities.

Sustainability is one the newest degree subjects that attempts to bridge social science with civic engineering and environmental science with the technology of the future. When we hear the word “sustainability” we tend to think of renewable fuel sources, reducing carbon emissions, protecting environments and a way of keeping the delicate ecosystems of our planet in balance. In short, sustainability looks to protect our natural environment, human and ecological health, while driving innovation and not compromising our way of life. Because of this growing requirement, a master’s will not necessarily be required for most jobs as bachelor’s programs (and in some cases lower than this) prepares people for a career in sustainability. Read more about the various sustainability degrees and education.

What is Sustainability?

The definition of “sustainability” is the study of how natural systems function, remain diverse and produce everything it needs for the ecology to remain in balance. It also acknowledges that human civilisation takes resources to sustain our modern way of life. There are countless examples throughout human history where a civilisation has damaged its own environment and seriously affected its own survival chances (some of which Jared Diamond explores in his book Collapse: How Complex Societies Choose to Fail or Survive ). Sustainability takes into account how we might live in harmony with the natural world around us, protecting it from damage and destruction.

We now live in a modern, consumerist and largely urban existence throughout the developed world and we consume a lot of natural resources every day. In our urban centres, we consume more power than those who live in rural settings and urban centres use a lot more power than average, keeping our streets and civic buildings lit, to power our appliances, our heating and other public and household power requirements. That’s not to say that sustainable living should only focus on people who live in urban centres though, there are improvements to be made everywhere – it is estimated that we use about 40% more resources every year than we can put back and that needs to change. Sustainability and sustainable development focuses on balancing that fine line between competing needs – our need to move forward technologically and economically, and the needs to protect the environments in which we and others live. Sustainability is not just about the environment, it’s also about our health as a society in ensuring that no people or areas of life suffer as a result of environmental legislation, and it’s also about examining the longer term effects of the actions humanity takes and asking questions about how it may be improved.

The Three Pillars of Sustainability

In 2005, the World Summit on Social Development identified three core areas that contribute to the philosophy and social science of sustainable development. These “pillars” in many national standards and certification schemes, form the backbone of tackling the core areas that the world now faces. The Brundtland Commission described it as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. We must consider the future then, in making our decisions about the present.

Economic Development

This is the issue that proves the most problematic as most people disagree on political ideology what is and is not economically sound, and how it will affect businesses and by extension, jobs and employability. It is also about providing incentives for businesses and other organisations to adhere to sustainability guidelines beyond their normal legislative requirements. Also, to encourage and foster incentives for the average person to do their bit where and when they can; one person can rarely achieve much, but taken as a group, effects in some areas are cumulative. The supply and demand market is consumerist in nature and modern life requires a lot of resources every single day; for the sake of the environment, getting what we consume under control is the paramount issue. Economic development is about giving people what they want without compromising quality of life, especially in the developing world, and reducing the financial burden and “red tape” of doing the right thing.

Social Development

There are many facets to this pillar. Most importantly is awareness of and legislation protection of the health of people from pollution and other harmful activities of business and other organisations. In North America, Europe and the rest of the developed world, there are strong checks and programmes of legislation in place to ensure that people’s health and wellness is strongly protected. It is also about maintaining access to basic resources without compromising the quality of life. The biggest hot topic for many people right now is sustainable housing and how we can better build the homes we live in from sustainable material. The final element is education – encouraging people to participate in environmental sustainability and teaching them about the effects of environmental protection as well as warning of the dangers if we cannot achieve our goals.

Environmental Protection

We all know what we need to do to protect the environment, whether that is recycling, reducing our power consumption by switching electronic devices off rather than using standby, by walking short journeys instead of taking the bus. Businesses are regulated to prevent pollution and to keep their own carbon emissions low. There are incentives to installing renewable power sources in our homes and businesses. Environmental protection is the third pillar and to many, the primary concern of the future of humanity. It defines how we should study and protect ecosystems, air quality, integrity and sustainability of our resources and focusing on the elements that place stress on the environment. It also concerns how technology will drive our greener future; the EPA recognized that developing technology and biotechnology is key to this sustainability, and protecting the environment of the future from potential damage that technological advances could potentially bring.

What are the Primary Goals of Sustainability?

The sustainable development professional network thinks, acts and works globally. In 2012, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development met to discuss and develop a set of goals to work towards; they grew out of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) that claimed success in reducing global poverty while acknowledging there was still much more to do. The SDG eventually came up with a list of 17 items which included amongst other things:

• The end of poverty and hunger
• Better standards of education and healthcare – particularly as it pertains to water quality and better sanitation
• To achieve gender equality
• Sustainable economic growth while promoting jobs and stronger economies
• All of the above and more while tackling the effects of climate change, pollution and other environmental factors that can harm and do harm people’s health, livelihoods and lives.
• Sustainability to include health of the land, air and sea

Finally, it acknowledged the concept of nature having certain rights – that people have stewardship of the world and the importance of putting people at the forefront of solving the above global issues through management of the environment and of consumption (for example, reducing packaging and discouraging food waste as well as promoting the use of recyclable materials).

History of Sustainability

Humans have, since the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution and maybe even before then, been a consumer rather than a replenisher of environmental resources. From hunter-gatherer societies that moved into an area to use up its resources in a season before setting up camp or moving on, only to return the following year to do the same, the development of a surplus economy saw permanent settlements. Slash and burn farming replaced natural wilderness often with uniform crop plantation and camps gave way to settlements, then eventually villages, towns and cities which would put pressure on the environment.

Sometimes, the environmental pressures forced people into making these changes in the first place (growing human population being one of those pressures) and often eventually they had to move on to somewhere new where the environmental could better sustain them and their practices, or make further changes to their existing environment. There was no real concept of sustainable living, even if the people of the distant past understood that soil had a maximum fertility that could be exhausted and replenished with livestock.

It is widely acknowledged that many societies collapsed due to an inability to adapt to the conditions brought on by these unsustainable practices. Whether that was introducing alien species that upset the balance of the ecosystem, cutting down too many trees at once or even a failure to adapt to natural fluctuations in the climate, we are far more aware in the modern world about the potential damage caused by human action. Cultural change often led to survival of those societies beyond what might have been expected under the circumstances.

Though some Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophers would express concern about resources and over-population and whether these were sustainable in the long term, these people were not taken seriously at the time other than as a hypothetical question. It would take until the 20^th century before we would understand the impact that we could have on our environment. Environmental damage, pollution, destabilising soils by cutting down trees, fossil fuels and other environmental issues led to a growing concern about the environment and whether we were or could damage our own ecosystem. The United Nations was founded after World War II and in 1945, UNESCO was established to promote the importance of human culture and of science. Today, their remit is “to contribute to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information”.

By the late 20^th century, the science of climate change was firmly established. We knew by the 1980s about the problems of the greenhouse effect and the destruction of the ozone layer and coming very late in the century, an awareness of the notion that some of our resources – particularly fossil fuels – were finite and that we should make efforts to move to renewable methods of power. It was then that we saw the the social, economic and scientific birth of the environmental movement.

A Sustainable Future

It is not yet clear what our sustainable future will look like but with emerging technologies and the improvement of older cleaner fuel sources, many people now look to a post fossil fuel world – including businesses. Since the 1950s, we have experienced unprecedented growth including intensive farming, a technological revolution and a massive increase in our power needs putting even greater pressure and strain on the planet’s resources. We are also far more aware of the plight of the developing world and that facing our planet as we now observe both natural and human-caused disasters and the effects that these can have on the ecosystems and on human population. It’s vital that we develop new, cleaner technologies to cope with our energy demands but sustainability is not just about the environment.

The biggest social activism movement related to the social development side of sustainability, has been programs such as Fair Trade and the Rainforest Alliance in encouraging good farming practices while ensuring farmers who produce luxury goods such as coffee and cocoa receive a decent living wage. Activist and sustainability professionals hope to remove trade barriers in future so that they may benefit everyone, contributing to the economic and social development core of sustainability while promoting good environmental practice.

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