Creating Conditions for Collective Adaptation

The Sustainability Incubator works with diverse partners to understand new challenges and create pathways where adaptation becomes possible.

Changing oceans, economic pressures, inequality, and evolving expectations for responsible business spell uncertainty for communities, workers, governments, and organizations around the world.

Founded in 2012 in Honolulu, we listen. We connect. We investigate. We build tools and coalitions that enable people and institutions to respond to change with greater resilience and integrity.

Many of the challenges we face today exist because systems have evolved in ways that create tension between important needs:

Livelihoods and environmental sustainability,

Economic efficiency and worker dignity,

Global markets and local communities,

Everyday access to food and respect for human rights.

Profit for markets and earnings for producers.

The challenges facing people and the planet are interconnected but people have different stakes.

We work with people and institutions to understand the tensions they face and identify practical pathways forward to adapt for a more resilient future.

Why is this work important? Conflict and exploitation occur when people with different stakes are pit against one another’s interests. Peace happens when people with different stakes find they have a shared objective worth working for (in parallell not lockstep).

After the pandemic for example, markets pit food producers against one another to lower wholesale prices (raise market margins) at a very vulnerable time for producers. We investigated the impacts and learned that the pressure was being passed on to producers and workers and environments and was undercutting recovery.

In such moments, we listen to the most vulnerable people to see the future.

We listened to shrimp workers and tuna fishers and investigated prices and earnings at every level of the supply chain. The numbers showed the status of food workers and producers was falling steeply.

So we worked for ASEAN, IOM, UN-FAO and governments in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand to identify policy gaps and build oversight.

We worked for supermarkets and large distributors to screen risks and their suppliers in 42 countries to build capacity for human rights due diligence.

We led investigative research into rightswashing and the relationship between declining working conditions and growing supermarket purchasing power. Our results were distributed by the Financial Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, all major US networks, Swiss broadcaster RTS, and across Asia.

We have also built significant capacity in the global seafood sector for ocean stewardship. As the early leader on industry-led Fishery Improvement Projects, we served 30 projects worldwide and reduced the incidental capture and death of animals accidentally caught in fishing gear. Currently we are implementing the ocean stewardship investment of SYM PAC International, Fong Hsiang Enterprises and Sprouts Farmers Market.

Our work is stewarding the system.

Resilience does not come from one organization, one sector, or one perspective. It emerges when systems grow stronger because people with different experiences, responsibilities, and stakes are learning, innovating, and responding in their real world.

Not directing change, or needing people to agree with one another, our work is creating conditions for collaborating to adapt.

People experience the world through different sightlines shaped by their responsibilities, histories, and hopes. We help reveal where different sightlines intersect—and where shared pathways become possible.

We work where interests collide. Producers and buyers have different pressures. Workers and employers have different interests. Governments and industries have different responsibilities. Yet without resilience no-one can sustain their interests.

Our track record is reflected in decisions and actions taken by our clients, like ASEAN’s leadership for a regional fishing labour policy and a mandate for multidisciplinary inspection to detect forced labour at ports in General Santos City.