Giving Compass' Take:

• Solutions Journalism Network interviews Fast Company reporter Adele Peters, who reveals what inspired her to focus on stories around sustainability and innovation.

• Peters' work attempts to reveal the progress being made on issues such as climate change and the solutions that show promise. How can we put her knowledge share into action?

• Here's an example of strong piece by Peters: Why African farmers need more investment.

Every month, the Solutions Journalism Network highlights a journalist doing excellent solutions-focused reporting. This month, we are featuring Fast Company’s Adele Peters as our Member of the Month. Peters has written extensively on sustainability and innovation across the world. We talked to her about her reporting process and what it takes to tell a good solutions story.

"While I was a journalism student, I happened to read a book called Cradle to Cradle, which talks about how products and systems can be redesigned to operate sustainably throughout their entire lifecycle. Until that point, I hadn’t thought of environmental issues as a design problem. If traditional environmentalists might try to change behavior  —  trying to convince people to drive less, for example, by making arguments about pollution  —  looking at the problem through a design lens might mean creating a better system for public transportation or better bike lanes. Reading the book sparked my interest in creative problem solving.

"On a personal level, I’m particularly interested in potential solutions to address climate change. We’re at a unique moment in history. We’re already seeing the impacts of climate change, and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the highest it has been in at least 800,000 years. But there’s a small window of time  —  maybe a decade, according to some research  —  in which humanity can reshape the systems we live in to avoid the most catastrophic impacts."

Read the full interview with Fast Company's Adele Peters on sustainability by Meera Vijayann at Solutions Journalism Network, via Medium.