The Institute believes that information is a powerful tool of social change.
Human behavior shifts either in response to new information or new experiences.
The Institute seeks to provide the information to bring about the changes needed to build an environmentally sustainable economy. In a sentence, the Institute's mission is to raise public awareness of global environmental threats to the point where it will support effective policy responses. The Institute's outlook is global because the most pressing environmental issues are global. Given the earth's unified ecosystem and an increasingly integrated global economy, only a global approach to issues such as climate change, depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, the loss of biological diversity, degradation of oceans, and population growth can be effective.