#policy-durability

Stopping new ocean disposal is upstream of every other facet: the 200,000+ drums on the abyssal plain exist because deliberate sea dumping was accepted practice for decades. The priority now is keeping the ban in force, extending it to adjacent proposals, and ensuring it is actua

A company founded for social or environmental purposes is structurally fragile: founders age out, investors demand returns, and acquirers can buy the mission away. Without a binding ownership structure, purpose is the first thing cut when money or control changes hands.

Brazil's lesson: forest-protection gains are reversible on a political timescale. The same laws and satellites saw an 80 percent cut, a 60 percent surge, then a halving, driven by executive choices that defunded the agency and froze the fund. Institutions hollow out fast.

A treaty regime that first moratoriumed (1983) then permanently banned (from 1993) the dumping of radioactive waste at sea, shifting from case-by-case permits to blanket prohibition. It is the approach that actually stopped new drums entering the ocean.

When a sale can't be stopped, negotiate an independent 'social mission' board into the acquisition agreement—with defined authority over values, advocacy, and brand integrity held separately from the parent's commercial control. Only as strong as courts will enforce it, but bette

Sell a tiny veto share (~1%) to an independent purpose foundation that holds no economic stake but permanently blocks two actions: selling the company for owners' personal gain, and extracting profits as dividends or capital gains. Founders keep full operational control; the lock

The regulatory action that ended radioactive-waste sea dumping. Under the London Convention framework, parties adopted a voluntary moratorium on radioactive-waste dumping in 1983, which was converted into a permanent, l…

Ben & Jerry's was sold to Unilever in 2000. Co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield could not block the sale (shareholders voted to accept), so they negotiated an independent board into the share-purchase agreement w…

In October 2018 Ecosia GmbH (Berlin, founded 2009) adopted steward-ownership via the veto-share ('golden share') model, with the Purpose Foundation as the independent holder of approximately 1% of shares. The founders p…