The GSSD Consortium

The Mission

The core mission of the GSSD Consortium is to reduce knowledge gaps between industrial and developing countries in decision-making for sustainability by:

• Contributing to global policy formation through a range of targeted knowledge-based stakeholder deliberations
• Creating a virtual "knowledge-bank" on sustainable development drawing on the powerful but disparate and unconnected knowledge bases worldwide.
• Encouraging "knowledge-brokerage" as well as networking and transaction facilities to help close the gap between "demand" and "supply" of knowledge, and between prevailing "problems" and potential "solutions" and
• Enhancing potentials for implementation and feedback through knowledge-based policy dialogues at all levels and in all contexts
• Helping to help drive policy on sustainable development, based on shared knowledge, new technology frontiers, and the consolidating efforts of partners

The 3 C’s

Since knowledge is power, the guiding principle of GSSD Consortium is this: Empowering people and institutions by strengthening the 3 C’s and targeting decision and policy.

In practice this means reinforcing Connectivity, improving Content, and building greater Capacity and mobilizing these for decision and policy

The Decision Focus

The Consortium is designed to facilitate inputs into the policy process and shape the formulation, and implementation, of policy on environment and sustainable development at all levels -- global, regional, national and local -- consistent with the participants’ interests.

Reducing the gap between knowledge for sustainability, on the one hand, and inputs into policy deliberations, on the other, is a natural extension -- a necessary corollary -- of the core mission.

The Organization

As an MIT-led initiative, the GSSD Consortium, will be shaped and directed by it’s founding members representing the three elements of the Technology Triangle, namely:

• Governmental Institutions: consisting of select sponsors of the MIT Symposia on Global Accords for Sustainable Development
• Business & Industry Partners: drawn from the range of current collaborators
• Research Institutions: Project-based affiliation targeted to focused research, policy analysis, or strategic thinking

Jointly they are responsible for the operational strategy and its implementation, as well as the development and deployment of its knowledge assets.

The Knowledge Assets

The Consortium builds on the existing GSSD multidisciplinary knowledge base and on its meta-knowledge network, which consists of roughly 200 institutions whose holdings are in the GSSD database. Central among these are institutions that serve as:

• Leading Knowledge Providers: that represent "best" quality, reliability, and coverage in specialized areas
• Hubs of Specialized Networks: that focus on the science and policy of specific global problems, such as the loss of biological diversity, for example
• Leaders of Regional Networks: that represent key stakeholders in the private or public sectors.

The Process

• Facilitating access to knowledge through the consolidation of meta-networking systems on a global basis
• Strengthening enabling mechanisms for knowledge development and access on a global basis
• Engaging in the Leadership Dialogues of high level representatives forums of leaders across international institutions in order to highlight (and facilitate) areas of synergy and common response
• Contribute to the GSSD Partnership highlighting innovative products, processes, or initiatives
• Providing direct inputs to the Consortium’s Policy Driven Model.