China-US Center for Sustainable Development - US Secretariat, Oregon

The China Secretariat is housed within China’s Administrative Center for Agenda 21, while the Portland,OR-based International Sustainable Development Foundation houses the US Secretariat. The Chairmanship of the China Secretariat is taken up by Deng Nan, Deng Xiaoping’s daughter, and in 1999 the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology. Deng is complemented on the US-side by architect and designer William McDonough. Following the principles set forth in the book McDonough wrote with chemist Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things, the CUCSD argues that sustainability should be viewed as an issue of design. Unlike in China, in the US, the Center would not be a government office, and so would have to raise its own funding as a not-for-profit. The solution was to create a Founder’s Circle, formed of corporations that make multi-year commitments of $50,000 per year to sit on the US Board of Councilors for the Center. As of the groundbreaking at Huangbaiyu, 17 corporations sat on the Board. Of these, Vermeer, BP, Intel, BASF, Wildwood Mahonia, and Ecoworks Foundation have taken an active interest in the “sustainable development demonstration village”. After the Joint Board decided to take action to design a “sustainable development demonstration community,” what has been called by the US Secretariat as a RFP, or Request for Proposals, was distributed nationally through provincial and city level Ministries of Science and Technology in October, 2002. By January 1, 2003, 10 proposals from 6 different provinces and municipalities came in to the Ministry.