Joint Statement
The Joint Statement represents the collective commitment of the signatories to addressing the sustainability needs of the world through our professions.
Joint Global Statement on Sustainability from Professional Bodies for Coaching, Coaching Psychology, Mentoring and Supervision
Updated Joint Statement published in April 2025
Introduction
The Sustainability Coaching Coalition represents a collective of global professional bodies in the areas of coaching, coaching psychology, mentoring and supervision who are collaborating for a sustainable future.
Humankind and the other-than-human-world face major challenges in the current climate and biodiversity crisis, and the systemic sustainability needs confronting the world. These challenges have been building for decades. We are now faced with a very limited window of opportunity to address the changes needed to slow down andstabilise the worst-case scenarios of runaway climate change, biodiversity loss, and socio-economic inequities before an irreversible tipping point is reached. Indeed, some now feel we need to focus on mitigation, believing it too late to prevent life changing shifts in our ecosystems. Others stay in a place of active hope and focus on the sustainability of healthy ecosystems and the regeneration of damaged ones.
As signatories of this document, we hold a position of radical hope in cultivating optimism and inviting action to drive systemic sustainability, taking bold steps toward a resilient, thriving future.
Broadening Our Horizons
In our original joint statement, as professional bodies we committed to reviewing the Joint Statement and continuing to evolve. As a collaboration of diverse bodies, we are proud to have held space for dialogue and reflection and modelled the cooperation we seek to promote. Now, as we take stock and re-energise our work, it feels timely to update our Joint Statement and expand our scope beyond climate change to include the broader sustainability issues in the world.
There are several laudable attempts to address systemic breakdown in a holistic way. The UN Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, states ‘the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people’. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, offer interconnected priorities for action, a blueprint for collectively addressing the global needs of people and planet. If we accept that delivering against these goals demands a fundamental change in mindset, we need to critically appraise what tools or approaches we can utilise to shift societal thinking and norms. Coaches, coaching psychologists, mentors and supervisors are well placed to coordinate collective action in this space.
An Evolving Identity
The original 2020 statement was written in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. We have emerged into a new understanding of our landscape, where the interconnectedness of our global challenges is clear and widely accepted. We recognise that the climate crisis cannot be viewed in isolation. It is, in part, a symptom of the global influence of an individualistic approach to living, where an extractive mentality and excessive consumption have become the norm. Our challenges are related to power and inequity and are complex and entangled: solutions are not to be found in a single domain.
In parallel to a fundamental reframing of this statement, we have rebranded the partnership, to highlight both sustainability and collaboration, and created a recognisable logo to give our collective action a descriptive and more impactful name: The Sustainability Coaching Coalition (SCC). We use the term Coalition in a broad and collective sense. As a coalition of professional bodies, our intention is not to dictate to the member-bodies, but instead to provide a forum for discussing best-practices, sharing tools/resources/research, and facilitating cooperative effort and intentional, strategic development in the areas of sustainability.
The Compelling Evidence
The facts of the ecological crisis are compelling and can be seen in reports by organisations such as the United Nations IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Hundreds of organisations, including governments, have acknowledged and declared a climate emergency. The WHO (World Health Organisation) has estimated that between 2030 and 2050, climate change will cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year. The loss of biodiversity is accelerating, and a 2021 World Wildlife Fund report has estimated a 68% loss of mammal, bird, fish, reptile, and amphibian populations since 1970. The annual UN-Sustainable Development Goals report shows that while significant progress is being made, we are far behind the pace required to reach the goals by 2030 due to the lingering effects of the pandemic, regional conflicts, geopolitical tensions, and the accelerating effects of the climate crisis.
For most communities, the reality of climate change has hit home, whether this is extreme weather patterns across the globe, wildfires or large-scale flooding, drought, crop failure, and famine. Climate degradation comes with significant socio-political challenges, and the poorest communities are disproportionately impacted.
As global conflicts escalate and communities face widespread destruction, holding onto active hope becomes increasingly difficult. Yet, we remain committed to the belief that as coaches, coaching psychologists, mentors and supervisors, we are uniquely positioned to support the reframing needed to turn hope into meaningful action.
The Role of Coaches
Coaching, coaching psychology, mentoring and supervision are focused on developing the potential of human beings, of raising awareness to enable people to take responsibility for their ethical position and their actions, and ownership for their contribution. We have a significant role to play in fostering new ways of being in service to a healthy human society, in balance with all living things, and a healthy planet. Inquiry and attention to ethical aspects of modern life can enter our conversations in so many valid and vital ways. Many have the experience and skills required to hold a bigger space, different spaces, to facilitate informed and deeper thinking, that is inclusive of the other ways of knowing. This wider work is appropriate to the needs of these times.
In addressing coaches, coaching psychologists, mentors and supervisors, we invite you to play your part in facilitating new narratives; ones which accept current realities but shift the focus from breakdown to breakthrough. Our profession is one filled with good intentions, with people who care, respect others, listen, collaborate, foster curiosity and inquiry and who want to contribute to a better world. How might we apply these skills and intentions to the knotty challenges facing our world and all its inhabitants – human and more-than-human?
Our Commitments
As professional bodies who are dedicated wholly or in part to the role of coaching, coaching psychology,mentoring and supervision, to develop individuals, teams, organisations, and to create social value, we havecommitted to work together to play our part in addressing our ecosystemic emergency.
As we approach this work, we consider our role in five dimensions:
- As individual human beings
- As individual coaches, coaching psychologists, mentors and supervisors
- As beings interconnected to all living things; not separate, but a part of nature
- As individual professional bodies
- As a coalition of professional bodies
It is in this fifth dimension, as a coalition of professional bodies, that we refresh the previous jointcommitments and reaffirm our intention to collaboratively strive for positive impact.
Our collective commitments are based on two principal acknowledgements: that learning at pace is nowcritical, and that well informed professionals, building on core skills of raising awareness and responsibility, envisioning and cultivating positive mindset, are well placed to make a significant contribution in this area.
To address the global ecosystemic challenges and sustainability needs of the world, the members of the Sustainability Coaching Coalition commit to:
- Meeting as a collaborative body of global associations to co-create ways to use our professions to address the climate, biodiversity and ecosystemic crises and their links to the sustainability needs of the world
- Raising awareness and knowledge in the members of our professional bodies through sharing information and research regarding the ecosystemic crises and positive ways to engage with sustainable practices
- Creating safe, brave and accountable spaces for coaches, coaching psychologists, mentors and supervisors to reflect on and reconsider their role and their practice in this area
- Raising awareness of the systemic nature of world challenges, making connections and promoting eco-centric and ecosystemic mindsets and approaches
- Educating the members of the professional-bodies on how to support their clients in enablingthem to focus on sustainability, regeneration, mitigation and other ecosystemic-enhancing processes – as foundational to their success
- Promoting and facilitating the self-work required to create human system change by providing opportunities for reflection and development
- Collaborating to share knowledge between professional bodies, pooling resources for free access by all practitioners, members and non-members alike, modelling the behaviour we seek to promote collaboration, not competition
- Equipping our member-bodies to be able to work with training providers to ensure practitioners have access to ongoing professional development to equip them to work confidently in this more systemic way, striving to ensure all training providers include content which introduces sustainability and regenerative practices
- Developing our collective thinking and research to further consider how coaching, coaching psychology, mentoring and supervision can serve to support society’s transformation
We remain committed as global bodies to collaborating for a sustainable future.
PDF Versions of the Current and Former Joint Statements
The first frame below displays the updated 2025 statement, where the Signatories express the collective dedication to the broadened scope of addressing all areas of sustainability.
The second frame displays the initial 2020 statement where the focus was on Climate Change, thus providing a point of reference to show the evolution of the group’s work.
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The above Joint Statement serves as our guidepost for the work of the coalition.
Initial Joint Global Statement 2020
Note: The 2020 Joint Statement seen below is now superseded by the 2025 Joint Statement but provided here as reference to understand how the group was born and what provided the driving force for the first five years of the groups existence.