Two universities, one foundation,
one long-term commitment.

The Chinese idiom 兼容並蓄 (jiān róng bìng xù) means to take in all manner of different things. We swapped its last character, 蓄 (“to store”), for the homophone 續 (“to continue”). The new name says what we set out to do: embracing every field, sustaining what lasts, so that sustainability itself can carry on.

Our English name, Ecotone, comes from ecology: the transition zone where two ecosystems meet, such as a riverbank, a tidal flat or a forest edge. Conditions there are the least stable, yet these are often the places richest in species, the so-called edge effect. Knowledge works the same way. The most interesting ideas are rarely born at the centre of a discipline.

Climate change is a scientific problem, and a problem of language. Urban greening is a question of design, and of ecology. A hospital’s carbon emissions are a matter of management, and of ethics. Yet the way universities are built often means these people never sit at the same table in their lives.

Ecotone is that table. The two universities bring academic depth and breadth; SOS Foundation brings the energy to cross borders and act. Together we regularly invite speakers from different disciplines, often people with several identities at once, so that conversations about sustainability truly cross-pollinate.