Beginning with a focus on cooperative energy security, a move to sustainable development encourages a longer-term perspective that also expands the picture to include regional and local ecosystems as well as other aspects of development such as the varieties of cultural ideas about nature, community and identity. Since development depends on the products of many ecosystems, cooperative energy security for sustainable development implies a long-term balancing of energy, environment and economic development. Only a tripartite strategic alliance embracing publics as well as governments and industry can bring to bear the distributed knowledge required to accomplish these tasks