WiserEarth is a core program of the Natural Capital Institute (NCI), an organisation committed to the restoration of the earth and the healing of human culture.
WiserEarth's vision comes from NCI’s Executive Director, 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.
View the timeline of WiserEarth's evolution as a major force in the sustainability movement.
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. WiserEarth is today a community of 47,061 people around the world who are connecting, collaborating, and sharing knowledge. And growing every day!
