The Natural Step

Launched in 1989 the Natural Step is an international organization and a framework for understanding the conditions for sustainability.  Dr. Carl Henrik Robért, a Swedish pediatric oncologist, noted that 80% of the children he saw had cancers that were directly environmentally related.  Robért developed the Natural Step to address the causes of the cancers, achieving consensus on its principles among 50 Swedish scientists.  Several Swedish businesses, convinced of the effectiveness of the framework, produced a 44 page, full-color pamphlet that was sent to all households and schools in the country.   

In Sweden, 70 municipalities and over 60 businesses including Electrolux, Ikea, Scandic Hotels and McDonald’s of Sweden have adopted The Natural Step to guide their operations.   The Natural Step as an organization has expanded to include Natural Step affiliates in eight other countries—the United Kingdom, the United States, South Africa, Australia, Israel, Canada, New Zealand and Japan.  Additional large companies including Interface, Nike and Home Depot, have adopted it as a guide for their business.

While not expressly religious in its nature or origin, TNS inherently provides both a critique of religion that does not recognize the importance of the physical basis of life and an articulation of underlying physical principles that govern all life.   The four guiding principles and their scientific basis grow directly from an understanding that all life has its source in the processes of the universe and must live according to these processes or face the prospect of destroying itself.  Hence TNS articulates an unavoidable natural framework for creating any form of society and its artifacts including religious expressions.

A base of four scientific principles underlies the Natural Step.   First, matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, the first law of thermodynamics. Therefore, nothing disappears.  Second, matter and energy tend to disperse, the second law of thermodynamics.  Therefore, everything introduced in society is eventually everywhere in the natural world.  In the dispersion process matter and energy degrade in form and structure, the principle of entropy.  Third, matter and energy have quality and are more useful as they have more form and structure or form has value.  Fourth, essentially the only net gain in the quality of matter comes from green plants and the process of photosynthesis.

Four basic conditions for sustainability outline the Natural Step framework:  1) What we take from the earth -The earth is not sustainable if the biosphere is subject to increasing concentrations of material drawn from the earth’s crust. 2) What we make -The earth is not sustainable if the biosphere is subject to increasing amounts of synthetic material.   3) What we do to the earth -The earth is not sustainable if its ecosystems and biodiversity are subject to continual degradation through human action.  4) How we use resources - The earth is not sustainable unless resources are used efficiently and fairly to meet basic human needs.

The context of the Natural Step is a funnel representing the increasingly narrow path we need to follow to become sustainable.  The top line of the funnel, slanted downward, represents the resource contribution of the earth’s ecosystems that are all in decline.   The bottom line, slanted upward, represents the increasing demand for ecosystem services by a growing population.  The point where the lines cross represents unsustainability.   The Framework envisions that each line needs to be flattened and eventually turned in the other direction, decreasing the demand on ecosystem services and increasing the ability of ecosystems to supply those services.   The resulting increased space between the lines represents the area of sustainability.   The Natural Step framework calls for an organization or company to envision itself in the area of sustainability and work backward to develop a plan to reach that point.  

Additional Resources

www.naturalstep.org is the primary source for information about The Natural Step.

Brian Natrass and Mary Altomare.  Dancing with the Tiger: Learning Sustainability Step by Natural Step,  Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada: New Society, 2002. 

Brian Natrass and Mary Altomare.  The Natural Step for Business.  Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada: New Society, 1999.   

Carl Henrik Robért, The Natural Step Story: Seeding a Quiet Revolution, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada: New Society, 2002.

See Natural Steps for Living Within the Universe--A Power Point Presentation

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