Our Story

RESOLVE was established in 1977 with the original mission: to mediate solutions to environmental problems and promote the effective use of consensus-building tools in decision-making on public policy. We incorporated public health issues into our mission in 2000.

From our beginning, we developed dispute resolution techniques and pioneered their use in policy making. We helped create a new field, environmental and health mediation, which today includes thousands of practitioners and a history of successful outcomes. For example, our work on the U.S. National Wetlands Policy Forum resulted in consensus recommendations culminating in the “no net loss” wetlands policy. We helped three federal advisory committees focused on safe drinking water negotiate new regulations that shaped public water system investments in the U.S. and reduced health risks. We also successfully mediated a dispute between DuPont and local communities over a proposal to mine for titanium adjacent to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. Today, we facilitate the Missouri River Recovery Implementation Committee, whose consensus recommendations have informed the Missouri River Recovery Management Plan, which guides government agencies as they work to advance endangered species recovery.

With growth in our international work, greater focus on sustainable development, and diversification of our network of partners, a new idea and framework emerged: RESOLVE as a home for solutions-focused programs. In 2010, we expanded our mission to highlight this: RESOLVE builds strong, enduring solutions to environmental, social, and health challenges. We help community, business, government, and NGO leaders get results and create lasting relationships through collaboration. We launched the Solutions Network to mobilize leaders in business and civil society to incubate and test ideas and turn them into self-sustaining environmental, social, and health solutions. The Solutions Network is home to many of RESOLVE’s programs and offers our partners access to our experts, strategists, innovators, and mediators.

As examples of our Solutions Network successes, we helped technology companies—including Intel, HP, Motorola, and Apple—and human rights and development nongovernmental organizations develop programmatic responses to the challenge of conflict minerals (such as ethical sourcing pilots, the Conflict-Free Smelter Initiative, and the Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade) to support responsible trade and the conditions enabling it in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa. We also designed and launched ReGrow West Africa to promote ethical investment and enterprise development in response to the Ebola crisis. Inaddition, our Biodiversity and Wildlife Solutions program puts technology into the field to help communities challenged by wildlife conflicts in Africa.

As our mediation and solutions-focused programs succeeded, we saw the potential for some projects initiated with donor funds to become self-sustaining social impact enterprises—for-profit businesses created and managed to solve social and environmental problems. We created impact@RESOLVE, a subsidiary of RESOLVE, in response to the need for a collaborative platform to identify, design, organize, finance, and govern impact enterprises. In 2018, using the impact@RESOLVE platform, we launched our first impact enterprise, WildTech, to develop durable, high-technology devices that protect and monitor wildlife. In 2019, WildTech announced its first product: TrailGuard™ AI, a cryptic anti-poaching camera system designed to stop poachers before they kill. TrailGuard AI is the first of many opportunities for RESOLVE and our partners to utilize impact@RESOLVE.

In 2018, we marked our fortieth anniversary. At this milestone, we expanded our organizational vision: We envision a less polarized world with a shared commitment to transforming ambitious ideas into real benefits for people, communities, and ecosystems. And we reframed our mission once more: We forge sustainable solutions to critical social, health, and environmental challenges by creating innovative partnerships where they are least likely and most needed.

Today, new and long-standing partners and clients continue to come to RESOLVE for our unique set of expertise: mediation and conflict resolution, as well as training and support in these areas; designing and implementing solutions through the Solutions Network and as partners in our programs; and the creation of enterprises for greater social, environmental, and health impact through impact@RESOLVE.