The S&S Guide focuses on organizations, and thus serves as a portal. But many of these organizations are also portals to information about security and/or sustainability matters. And thus the Guide serves as a “portal to portals.”
There are two types of portals. In-House Portals assemble information produced by organization staff or members only. Scanning Portals collect information from outside of their organization. Nearly all organizations listed in the S&S Guide provide information of some sort: books, reports, newsletters, blogs, etc. This collection of portals focuses on organizations generally providing more than 200 items of information. It must be emphasized that looking at the larger portals creates a bias toward large and well-established organizations. Smaller and newer organizations have less to offer in a quantitative sense, but may nonetheless provide some important offerings. To correct for this bias, be sure to consult Part 1B on “100 Notable Books and Reports,” the Part 3 Organization Listings and, especially, the Part 4 Subject Index.
Where should one begin? There are no clear and easy answers, but plenty of options to explore. No single option covers all aspects of security or of sustainability, let alone both in concert. Useful portals depend on whether one is seeking hard scientific information, brief introductions, leading-edge thinking, popularized news, activist groups, etc.
Arguably, there is far too much readily available information about many aspects of security and, especially, all aspects of sustainability, notably climate change and energy. In contrast, many billions of dollars are spent by government intelligence agencies to ferret out very specific information about terrorists and military capabilities. If the publicly-available information were better organized and communicated, would it improve policy-making in the long term, and thus lessen the need to collect clandestine information?
In order to facilitate access to this chaotic cornucopia of information, a “Quick Index” of selected topics is provided here. Portals are listed by their primary themes, but many have numerous themes that are summarized generically as “security” and/or “sustainability.” Information on some items is still incomplete, and several dozen additional portals—at least—are likely to be added. As suggested here, the marketplace for security and sustainability ideas is huge, but unorganized—a major barrier to pursuing both essential global goals.
