About Us
Our vision is a world where people and nature flourish together in harmony and care.
How We Support Our Vision
The Reimagining Sustainability Institute acts as a catalyst, convener, and companion to individuals, communities, and institutions who are building this new future. We support:
Changing the sustainability conversation
Through publications, campaigns, and events that interrogate and transform dominant narratives
Enabling reimagination in practice
Via fellowships, hackathons, innovation hubs, and community experiments
Building coalitions for systems change
Linking grassroots efforts with national and international policy and advocacy
Our Mission
We reimagine sustainability to drive just, transformative change where people thrive and nature regenerates.
Our Question
Why are environmental degradation, GHG emissions, and biodiversity loss accelerating, even as we witness more sustainability policies, green businesses, protected areas, and many others?
Our Answer
At RSI, we argue that many prevailing dominant socio-economic, political and epistemic approaches treat symptoms, not causes. Sustainability has been reduced to metrics, markets, and management tools while the underlying systems of extraction, inequality, and colonial legacies go unchallenged. Therefore, we believe that sustainability must be reimagined. This requires a fundamental transformation of views, structures, and practices. This reimagination should do the following:
Confront destructive growth models and extractive economies.
Put decolonial approaches at the centre of sustainability interventions.
Foster relational approaches to governance, nature, and community.
Move beyond metrics to meaning, well-being, and planetary care.
Our Approach
Co-Design for Transformative Change
We use co-design to ensure communities are leaders and partners in creating sustainable solutions. Our approach is guided by the four core principles of co-design developed by McKercher (2020):
1
Prioritise relationships
Trust and social connection are the foundation of meaningful collaboration.
2
Share Power
Decisions are made together, ensuring all voices shape planning, design, and implementation.
3
Use participatory methods
Everyone has multiple ways to contribute, from visual and oral tools to hands-on activities.
4
Build Capability
Co-design fosters learning and growth, empowering participants and facilitators alike.
Through this approach, we move from consultation to true co-creation, turning reflection into practical, community-led action
Our Values
Adaptive Learning
We remain a learning organisation. We experiment, evolve, and adapt as challenges and opportunities shift.
Pluralism
We embrace diverse worldviews and knowledge systems — from indigenous to scientific — as essential to reimagining futures.
Justice
We place justice at the centre of sustainability and ensure that marginalised voices and communities lead in defining solutions.
Service
We are committed to serving people and the planet. We prioritise impact over recognition and act with humility, care, and responsibility in all we do.
Join us in co-creating a new sustainability, one rooted in justice, care, imagination, and life.