Sustainability is a journey. Let us be your co-pilot.

How can Sustainability be integrated in your personal or professional activities? From business and technology to social engagement, which options might make the most difference for your case? Which opportunities and risks should be considered in today’s context?

We assist organisations and individuals in identifying the best options for their case and in implementing them. Our goal is to help you make a successful, long-lasting change.

Services

We provide external support in the areas of Sustainability and IT, dedicated and adjusted to your needs. Our focus is particularly on smaller organisations and individuals, where sporadic or regular support might be needed to successfully achieve a turning point or overcome a critical obstacle.

We like to take each individual case into account when crafting solutions. This enables us to ensure a good fit, identify hidden opportunities and minimise risk of failure. In addition, we focus on solutions that are light and – when relevant - can be streamlined across an organisation. This helps to lower effort and costs. It also makes it easier to evaluate and adapt over time, as experience grows.

Our areas of focus:

Our approach integrates technical know-how with an interdisciplinary expertise, covering sustainability, IT and work management aspects.

Sustainability know-how: conservation and management of natural resources; system approaches and integration with socio-economic systems and technological solutions; corporate sustainability, reputational issues and stakeholder management; sustainability investing; NGOs in the Swiss context.
Matching IT solutions with individual needs: oriented towards basic to mid-level users, with a focus on balancing ease of use and budget with data security and best practices. Normal activities range from the selection and troubleshooting of software and hardware, development and management of websites, development of tools for data handling, internal controlling and reporting (e.g. Excel or web-based), and internal training.
Organisation of work: structuring work processes and indicators to achieve goals efficiently and with the capacity to evolve. Planning and managing the organisational setup, from strategy to execution, according to growth stage and available resources.

Strategy + Tools for Sustainability

Depending on the need, support can be given at 4 different levels:

Strategy and planning: evaluating choices, defining goals and main activities to follow. We look for a coherent result, with indicators that enable continuous learning and improvement.
Analysis of work processes: we look for the obstacles to remove and the opportunities to nurture. All so you can improve internally and in your connection to external stakeholders or service providers.
Development of tools: supporting your internal work processes or the reporting and communication to external parties.
Extra capacity: to assist with shortages in capacity, we can conduct or coordinate well-defined work tasks and projects, either alone or as part of a team. If needed, we can bring in additional capacity through our network of contacts.

Profile

Oikonaut GmbH is a consultancy firm based in Zurich but available throughout Switzerland.

Paulo Morais Zulliger

Founder and Managing Director

Msc Env. Sci ETHZ, Lic. Marine Biology and Fisheries Univ. of Algarve
Languages: English, Portuguese, German, French and Spanish.

Paulo’s experience in the past 20 years has touched several areas of sustainability, often working as a bridge between different stakeholders within the corporate, philanthropic and investment spaces. More recently, he has been focused on ecosystem restoration projects that balance the best mix of science, cultural realities and high/low tech solutions for greater effect. His work usually combines technical elements, like the incorporation of data streams and web tools, the dissemination and scaling-up of best practices with innovative models, and a strong focus on the human factors of sustainability initiatives.

Based in Zurich, Paulo has worked in the past 10 years as an independent consultant for NGOs, small firms, foundations and private individuals. Prior to that, he was extensively involved in the development and application of sustainability-assessment methodologies in different industries, from the larger conceptual framework to the technical and operational details. This included the development of tools to incorporate ESG data flows into multi-stakeholder business processes, linking the user-side and IT-side. Examples include running the yearly DJSI global corporate sustainability survey at SAM (now part of S&P Global), including the incorporation of reputational risk data, provided by RepRisk or the implementation of a sustainable supply-chain framework for a Swiss company handling a USD 10 billion/year volume from a global network of suppliers. Paulo also conducted ecological research in the field of fisheries and marine resource management, with projects in several countries.

He is currently the managing director of Reforestation World, a NPO dedicated to forest restoration with a global network of project members. He is and also one of the founding members of SUSTINOVA, a NPO devoted to supporting the development of sustainability projects and organisations.

The application of know-how in the corporate and academic areas has covered the following topics:

Methodologies for systematic evaluation of sustainability in well-defined contexts (e.g. natural resource management, business environment).
Project management and development of business processes, with an emphasis on the articulation between user-side and IT-side.
Development and application of business tools for data handling, product development and reporting (e.g. Excel or web-based).

Oikonaut

Sustainability in practice