Sustainability Principles Online Dialogue

Testing the Gossamer Albatross - NASA Photo Dryden Flight Research Center ECN 12604 © 1980

"If you wish to fly and want to successfully construct an aircraft in order to do so, you need to understand the basic principles of aerodynamics. Similarly, if we are serious about ensuring a sustainable future, we need to be guided by a set of principles which underlie sustainability as an enduring state." — Michael Ben-Eli

You are about to join an inquiry into the Principles of Sustainability. The dialogue is hosted by the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) and began on July 10th. Due to the sustained quality and level of interest we are extending it through August 18th. It is organized as an open forum for the ever growing BFI network. We greatly appreciate your willingness to contribute your ideas and insights to this important discussion.

Below is a brief overview of the dialogue and how to get started:

• Introduction to the Dialogue
• Dialogue Facilitiator & Principles Author
• Use of Results
• Plan and Structure
• How to Participate
• Privacy Policy

Introduction to the Dialogue

BFI is hosting this dialogue out of our commitment to further Buckminster Fuller's legacy and vision of delivering complete sustainable success for all humanity. In his own quest, Fuller always insisted on a rigorous inquiry into first principles as a first step. With some scientific principles, such as the laws of thermodynamics, universal acceptance and a high degree of operational clarity has been achieved.

But do we have the equivalent clarity with the challenge of sustainability and lacking it, can we hope to achieve sustainability as a prevailing state?

Here at BFI, we think this is a critically important question that must be explored.

Without sound principles to guide us, we risk having our well intended actions actually exacerbate the sustainability crisis instead of solving it. We are excited by the opportunity to join with you in examining a fresh set of rigorously developed sustainability principles!

The principles we invite you to engage were developed by Michael Ben-Eli, a former student and close collaborator of Buckminster Fuller. They are informed by several existing frameworks and inspired, in particular, by Fuller’s work. Ben-Eli's principles were developed in order to advance the intellectual basis for implementing breakthrough sustainability practices.

Michael will actively participate and facilitate the dialogue.

Our intention is to use the dialogue to help refine this new framework and offer it as an open source resource. Michael will work closely with BFI Staff to synthesize the outcomes and post the results to BFI's homepage.

In addition to facilitating this online discussion, we at BFI, are particularly interested in using the insights gained in the process to help shape the design of our own edcuational programs and to inform the way we evaluate their results.

• The online dialogue will be open to participation 24/7 for several weeks commencing July 10, 2006

The dialogue is structured to include several discussion forums:

• A forum for general discussion on the framework as a whole
• A forum for discussion about the definition of sustainability
• Five themes, each related to one of the five key domains:
  I. The Material Domain
  II. The Economic Domain
  III. The Domain of Life
  IV. The Social Domain
  V. The Spiritual Domain
• A set of three discussion forums for each domain to include:
  • The Underlying Premise
  • The Principle
  • The Policy and Operational Implications
• Michael will spend time each day reviewing and responding to inquiries and suggestions.
• To help you get up to speed on the dialogue's progress, there will be a running summary of discussion highlights posted by Carl Frankel, former BFI Board member and author of In Earth's Company, Business, Environment, and the Challenge of Sustainability and Out of the Labyrinth: Who We Are, How We Go Wrong, and What We Can Do About It. Carl Frankel's summaries will commence on August 1st.

1. The first step is to complete the 'User Login' process. This involves choosing a Username and a case-sensitive password and then validating your identity using your email. Click here to begin or click here to read detailed instructions on how to create an account.
2. Read through Sustainability Principles - Complete Text. The 'Complete Text' document contains the neccessary material you need to participate in the dialogue.
3. Once you have read the document, you can enter the discussion forums by clicking on the Dialogue Forums link in the top menu. From there you can jump into any forum that seems interesting and begin discussing the text. As you will see, the discussion forums are closely aligned to follow the complete text document. To post discussion topics or comments simply click on a forum of interest and then click on the 'Post new forum topic' link. You can also read existing topics and leave comments. Click here for more information on how the discussion forums work.
4. Or you can also click on "Join the Dialogue Now" to view and access all the discussion forums.

Information you have posted during login and in the personal profile section will not be shared with anyone. BFI will only use this information to communicate with you about:

• Issues concerning this particular dialogue while it is in session
• Future postings about the results of this dialogue
• Future BFI online discussion events relevant to Sustainability Principles

Please always provide proper attribution (name of forum, name of author, and date) when using excerpts or quotations from topics and comments posted to this public forum.