NRDC's Partnership for the Earth will dramatically scale up our work over the next decade in order to catalyze progress toward six objectives with the greatest potential to protect both the environment and human health for generations to come:

Although NRDC has been addressing all of these issues for years, their complexity, contributing causes, and interrelated impacts are only now becoming clear. Armed with this new knowledge, NRDC's Partnership for the Earth is realigning our team of 300 environmental professionals to respond with transformative solutions. This new and unique approach is built on three key components: integrated expertise, integrated solutions, and integrated strategies.

Integrated Expertise

We have marshaled the know-how of lawyers, scientists, and policy experts from across the institution to collaborate on strategies for propelling far-reaching change. This holistic approach has resulted in exciting breakthroughs, like our plan for revamping Chinese environmental policies, which draws on NRDC's deep experience in the areas of global warming, energy efficiency, toxics, and forestry.

Integrated Solutions

We are attacking the interconnected, root causes of problems in order to craft solutions that will begin resolving multiple problems at once. By cutting America's oil dependence and transforming the global automobile market, for example, we can simultaneously curb global warming, protect human health from toxic pollutants, save treasured wilderness from oil drilling, improve our nation's security, and shift the Chinese economy to a less environmentally destructive path.

Integrated Strategies

We will turn NRDC's far-reaching solutions into reality by employing a full array of strategic tools -- from the legal to the political, from the scientific to the economic. While NRDC is renowned for its effectiveness in court, Congress, and federal agencies, our success will now hinge on winning the support of critical new constituencies and advocating our cause on a variety of new fronts. As a result, we must invest heavily to:

Our 10-year strategy to reduce global warming pollution, for example, calls for mobilizing grassroots support for a law limiting such pollution; expanding alliances with national security experts, agricultural groups, and religious coalitions to promote alternative fuels; forging corporate partnerships to bring next-generation products to market; applying cutting-edge science to advance clean energy technologies; and pioneering state policies to pave the way for national global warming controls.

Our comprehensive strategies for defusing environmental problems may be ambitious, but they are firmly rooted in what is politically and economically possible. We have designed NRDC's Partnership for the Earth to be as pragmatic as it is visionary. NRDC is gearing up to pursue critical long-term objectives, but we will generate real and measurable progress along the way -- in the form of better policies, tougher laws, greener technologies, and more sustainable markets.

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