The Natural Step framework for sustainability. It is founded on the principle that businesses and organizations can reduce their impact on the environment while enhancing their overall efficiency and effectiveness. The Network seeks to align business and government practices with natural cycles that support the web of life.

Professor Karl-Henrik Robèrt, M.D., Ph.D., is one of Sweden's foremost cancer scientists who, in 1989, initiated an environmental movement called "The Natural Step." Dr. Robèrt received his M.D. in 1975, his Ph.D. in 1979 and in 1981 he became an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine.

While heading a research laboratory, Dr. Robèrt authored more than ninety scientific publications concerning leukemia, lymphoma, lung cancer and their clinical implications, and was a frequent and well known keynote speaker at international conferences on these issues.

His research on damaged human cells provided a platform for his interest in environmental questions. Later, he was leading a scientific consensus process that arrived at the development of a unique way of systematic planning towards sustainability—'backcasting from first order principles, the "system conditions".' Together with a growing network of scientists and decision makers in business and politics, this new approach has been developed into a concrete framework for planning: The Natural Step. The framework and its application for concrete planning as well as for the selection and design of cohesive tools for sustainable development, are described in a number of scientific publications and doctoral dissertations around the world.

At the launch of The Natural Step, Dr. Robèrt edited educational material and distributed it to every household and school in Sweden. Thereafter, he initiated a number of independent professional networks to test the relevance of the framework for their respective fields, for example groups of business executives from major Swedish companies. Today, many companies, including IKEA, Starbucks, Nike and CH2M Hill are applying the TNS framework in their organizations. Ten TNS offices around the world are now serving as a dialogue-bridge between scientists on the one hand, and decision makers in politics and business on the other.