"Sustainable development . . . is the emerging operational framework for activity organization in the 21st Century".

21^st Turtle Media . . an international cooperative platform of concepts, approaches and capabilities linked by state-of-the-art communications and group work technologies, brought together in order to put the concept of sustainable development to work. This simple Web site has been developed to provide a quick low tech introduction to 21^st Turtle, with a handful of supporting materials and references to which you can link directly from this page.

"Sustainable development?" Define it as you will, but until something better comes along our (heavy) working definition is: "a more efficient allocation of resources taking into account environmental, social and even economic considerations that reach well beyond the very short term values that are currently being relied on to drive many of the decisions which today are shaping our society and planet". To be very brief about it, the main difference between our concept and the rest is not that we are proposing to give up efficiency (or the market or technology or innovation or quality of life) -- but rather that we intend to put all these enormously powerful tools to work.

If you are an economist or the like, you may think of this in terms of some form of adjustment of the decision frame (prices?) to take into account more fully all those pesky 'externalities' that are not at present brought into the decision calculus, whether at the level of the big decisions of government or industry, or of those countless small decisions that all six billion of us make in our daily lives and that really shape the planet. But rest assured, 21^st Turtle is not one more research activity. Nor are we setting out to define what the decision frame of sustainability must eventually look like if it is ultimately to be 'optimal and correct". Rather, we are simply ready to proceed with this admittedly rudimentary, obviously incomplete conceptual framework and see what can usefully be achieved working on this base… with a sharp eye, energy and a good feel for what is possible. And a certain impatience for concrete results.

The activities of 21^st Turtle divide into two main streams:

1. The first is to mobilize more effective international communications and media support for the very important (if often poorly stated and misunderstood) concept of sustainability. The end objective here is to create a much broader base of public support for the concept -- not only in "surface education" and rhetorical terms but also right down to the ultimately critical level of individual awarenesses, choices and behavior in daily life. Based on the assumption that in the final analysis sustainability is, and must be, the sum of all these individual decisions and resultant actions.

2. The second stream of activity is to see what can be accomplished by presenting our underlying thesis that 'sustainable development is the emerging operational framework for activity organization in the 21st Century' to entrepreneurs and decision makers in both private and public sectors -- to determine if we can thereby set off a "benevolent spiral" of projects and actions which will lead not only to more responsible performance on the part of those concerned, but also increased profits and satisfaction. And to powerful new role models and templates of behavior that, once they are understood and appreciated, will add momentum to the move to sustainability.

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How Does @21st Turtle on the Web Work

@21st Turtle on the Web gains its power as a group work tool through quite an impressive array of carefully linked information and communications tools. The Menu bar just to your left provides a first set of indications and means of access to the site's contents. How all this works may appear to be reasonably clear at first glance; however we suggest that before going into the site and its various specialized programs, you first take a moment to familiarize yourself with the terrain. Probably as good a way to start as any is to work your way right down through the first set of links on the opening menu to your left. Once you have familiarized yourself with these and in particular with the Help Desk (see, it's just there, at the top of the menu to your left) and the @Toolkit, you will see how all of this can be put to work. You may be pleasantly surprised at how much 21^st Turtle has to offer.

If you like what you see thus far, you may want to turn next to
21^st Turtle in Brief

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