Overview

Strategic Alliances for a Viable Earth (SAVE) aims to reduce the risk of crossing ecological and social tipping points by having a systemic approach on the interconnected crises that are present today. This is done by connecting actors who have the power to reduce these risks with experts and organizations who know how to reduce these risks by using the networks in SAVE.

SAVE is composed of diverse, highly networked, impact-driven, experienced policy advisors; climate activists; management consultants; representatives from large and small/medium enterprises (SMEs); lobbyists; journalists; and employees from NGOs, ministries, parliaments, think-tanks, and leading scientific institutions. SAVE is connected to hundreds of heterogeneous actors from all relevant societal spheres: politics, science, (social) media, civil society, economy.

At the moment the CEO, Johnny Stengel, is the only one with a paid position at SAVE. For 90 000 USD, SAVE would hire two people for one year, who would connect experts and organizations in global catastrophic risks with politicians, policymakers and other people with the ability to reduce those risks. These people use their networks and experience to connect the dots that can make evidence-based ideas become reality. 

Why SAVE?

• No existing actor combines sector-crossing strategic networking (from the energy to the agricultural sectors; from politics to media), multi-crisis root-solution knowledge (from climate crisis to democracy crisis), and comprehensive advisory services (from cooperation guidance to policy advice) in the way we do.
• We always prioritize collective impact over organization-logics, and try to fill neglected gaps, to ensure additionality.
• The polycrisis demands sector-spanning collaboration & strategic capacity building, we connect people in the right moment for the right cause areas.
• By combining advisory services, knowledge sharing, and networking among high-level decision-makers as well as high-impact experts, we generate sustainable, systemic, and rapid impact.
• Because our team and supporters are part of many networks and high-level gatherings, we have easier access to top decision-makers than most people. 

What does SAVE do?

Actor mapping: SAVE is mapping the experts and the people in power and is trying to connect those two - so the best organizations, policymakers and researchers have the chance to affect politics and policies at a global and national level. The actor mapping is in different cause areas like pandemic preparedness, climate change, great power conflicts, social justice and many other areas. 

It essentially answers the question "who does what where with whom?". 

Furthermore, our Collaboration Consulting Services establish relationships between actors who should be working together but are not yet doing so. We conduct this work proactively, data-driven and with a strategic perspective on the polycrisis.

Advocacy and tipping point workshops: Serve to pass on the considerable knowledge in the SAVE team to other organizations about conversations with politicians and the political process. We emphasize the need for increased international cooperation in order to avoid tipping points or to overcome tipping processes together. To initiate this process, we are advocating for a Global Tipping Point Summit which aims to convene leaders to boost positive & avoid negative tipping points.

Examples of what SAVE has done

• Influenced over 100 policymakers.
• Several advocacy workshops given or initiated.
• Prepared over 100 briefings in over 10 countries.

On SAVE’s initiative, German ministries, in cooperation with SAVE, invited three lead authors of the Global Tipping Points Report 2025 to brief staff from German ministries on key findings and policy recommendations. Without this SAVE coordination, many decision-makers wouldn’t even have known the report existed. Now they’re beginning to understand what planetary and social tipping points mean for their daily work.

Desired long-term outcomes

• A global alliance for tipping points governance with commitments from at least 50 countries
• An investment pledge for tipping point technologies (legally enforceable).
• A global early warning system for negative tipping points.
• Ten concrete cross-sector flagship initiatives (e.g. in energy, mobility, food systems, social tipping points).

Why it matters                                                   

There are 35 times more resources going to causes that destroy our planet than supports our nature (and 25 trillion in unaccounted costs). 7 of 9 planetary boundaries are already crossed: Climate Change, Biosphere Integrity, Land System Change, Freshwater Use, Biogeochemical Flows, Novel Entities, and Ocean Acidification. The two that haven’t been crossed are: Stratospheric ozone depletion and Atmospheric aerosol loading. The ozone layer was close to becoming a tipping point disaster, but today it shows that tipping points can be averted.

14% of all coral reefs died between 2009 and 2018. At 1.5°C temperature rise, 99% of coral reefs are expected to be dead by 2050. 44% (48 million km2) of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. 33% of all soil is already degraded and 90% is estimated to be degraded by 2050. Only 4% of world mammal biomass consists of wild mammals, 34% consists of humans and 62% consists of livestock. Vertebrate populations have declined by 73 % between 1970 and 2020 and insect populations have seen a 75% decline in biomass. In 1970 the resource use was 30 billion tonnes (23 kilograms of materials used on average per person per day). In 2020, the number was 106 billion tonnes (39 kilograms per person per day) and there is a projected 60% growth in resource use by 2060. 90% of land-related biodiversity loss and water stress comes from extraction and processing of biomass.  4.4 billion people in low and middle income countries lack safe drinking water and this might worsen because of the tipping-points mentioned… And the list goes on.

If you have any questions or want to collaborate, you can write a comment here or email: info@saveadvise.org