Unlocking the Potential for Inclusive Sustainable Economic Development

The IEC founders and team have had extensive experience with climate-smart inclusive best practices over the past two decades. After the strong call-for-action from the community that gathered at the Climates Extremes Forum, we decided to systematically document and analyze best practices from around the world. They have been invited to present these findings at several conferences, both local and international. The summary findings and CAISE Model can be found below and the detailed finding will be documented in an upcoming book.

The world is changing more rapidly than the ability of many to adapt. Despite economic growth, large segments of the world’s population, including an increasing number of Americans, are unable to participate in new economic opportunities.  

Globalization and technological advancement represent forces of disruption and transformation, with climate change creating new and unfamiliar risks as well as  urgency. The convergence of these forces is compounding their complexity and contributing to an increase in inequality, working poverty and challenges to adapt. The U.S. and countries around the world face the risk of inequality undermining their economic performance and societal cohesion while exacerbating political polarization.

Fortunately, many innovative solutions and approaches exist with the capacity to tackle these challenges.  While solutions that work elsewhere cannot, and should not, be simply replicated in most cases, there is a lot to be learnt from the experiences of others especially since the drivers behind the problems are global forces effecting many around the world.  Therefore we set out to document and analyze best practices from around the world to identify key patterns.  

What is clear that perhaps more so than any other time in history, the private sector has a critical role to play in scaling social and environmental solutions.  We find that It is the disruptive collaboration, that appear to have the best chance to lead to  sustained and transformational impact.

The CAISE model, that documents the key patterns we observed across best practices from around the world, also illuminate key components necessary for transformational impact.  The aim of our work is to demystify the climate-smart inclusive economic paradigm for a broad audience and offer actionable steps that change makers can take. The ultimate goal is to empower collective action through accessible tools and support from a diverse network of stakeholders to foster inclusive sustainable economic development in Dallas-Ft.Worth and beyond.