Simplicity without reduction: Thinking upstream towards the sustainable society

The natural-step framework is used by over 100 organizations, including man y global corporations in Europe and the United States, to provide strategic direction for their sustainability initiatives. The framework is built on the concept of simplicity without reduction. Out of respect for complexity, we designed it to provide a compass, a guide for strategic direction. The framework consists of a backcasting planning process for sustainable develo pment based on four principles (system conditions) for sustainability. The framework does not prescribe detailed actions. Once an organization underst ands the framework, it identifies and specifies the detailed means by which to achieve the strategy, because it knows its business best. The steps in the planning process are understanding and discussing the system conditions for sustainability, describing and discussing how the company relates to t he system conditions in today's situation, creating a vision of how the com pany will fulfill its customers' needs in the future while complying with t he system conditions, and specifying a program of actions that will take th e company from today's situation to the future vision.