Genesis - How and why GreenFacts was created

GreenFacts was founded in 2001 by individuals from different environment and health backgrounds, which shared two common concerns:

They thought that reliable scientific information should be the basis for constructive debates between stakeholder and for informed decisions on health and environment issues.
They realized that the scientific information available on these issues is often unreliable, because it is usually provided,

either by stakeholder organizations (businesses, NGOs...), which tend to defend their own financial or political interests,

or by individual experts, which are often tempted to put forward their own personal views.

The founders agreed that the current state of scientific knowledge on these issues is best provided by scientific consensus reports, produced by large panels of scientific experts under the authority of international organizations, such as WHO, FAO, IARC, UNEP, and the European Commission.

However, these reports are usually difficult to find, and hard to read because they are long, complex, and written in expert jargon. To be understood by non-specialists, they need to be summarized, faithfully and in plain language.

To ensure that these reports would be communicated in an impartial manner, the founders created GreenFacts as a truly independent non-profit organization with a multi-stakeholder governance, whose publications would be controlled by an independent Scientific Board.

Two of the founders were employees of the SOLVAY Group and obtained from their management the initial funding for the creation of GreenFacts. SOLVAY committed to support us for three years, a period after which we would have acquired sufficient recognition to diversify our income sources.