Pedro Oliveira, scientific coordinator of the Paradigm Shift programme and holder of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Chair for Impact Economics, talks a little about the initiative that will take place in November and December. The Paradigm Shift is a programme that seeks to transform organisations towards a sustainable future.

Residents of Canada's Fogo Island have depended on cod for centuries as a primary source of income. In 1992, the Canadian government announced a moratorium on cod fishing in the northern Atlantic Ocean as a way to bolster a dwindling stock. However, this measure generated a wave of unemployment that forced many residents of Fogo Island to leave the industry and the community, significantly decreasing the island's population.

Al Gore recently stated that sustainability is "the greatest investment opportunity in history" [1] and that "impact investing has the scale of the industrial revolution and the speed of the digital revolution". But how can companies change their business to this new paradigm without compromising their present?

The last few years have been paradoxical.

Recent times have been fertile in events, decisions, movements, positions taken and deliberations that not long ago we did not imagine possible. Even though, deep down, we believed in change, we did not believe it would unfold at this pace.

Twenty years ago, as a consequence of the definition of recycling targets by the European Commission, numerous awareness-raising campaigns on the subject emerged in Portugal. Currently, it has been possible to prove the positive impact of communication on the population, generating a change of habits.

Evidence of a growing problem, which we insisted on ignoring, has led in 18 months to measures and various initiatives that are beginning to change the status quo: I am referring to marine litter.