ABOUT US – history in brief

1992, the year of the Rio World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD), also saw the establishment of ECO Gesellschaft für sozialökologische Programmberatung GbR. Founded in the spirit of WSSD concepts, yet based on the managing directors' twenty years' experience in bilateral cooperation,ECO made a headstart as contractor of German official development assistance in the applied sciences ("Technische Zusammenarbeit").

The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, as one of the implementing agencies for the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development's development assistance, long remained the company's prime commissioning body – later seconded by KfW Entwicklungsbank, AfDB, the World Bank and non-governmentals.

Founded by experts in temperate/tropical forestry and in social sciences, ECO sought new ways to "combine human and natural resources for sustainable development", in the area of natural resources management, namely forestry and silviculture. Solutions for forestry-related challenges were integrated and proved fruitful in rural development, food security and obvioulsy, poverty reduction programmes.

Intersecting services in capacity building and public relations were continually extended and partly cast into branches of their own (cf. ECO Nature Edition, ECO Expo). With ECOG, ECO established its own Agadir-based office in the Maghreb. ECO Education was founded in 2005, to cover services for the public education sector. ECO REISEN , founded in 2004, developed from a service provider in sustainable tourism into a fully fledged business-to-consumer travel agency based on ECO sustainability standards.