The global ecosystem is finite and fixed; economic activity transforms natural products into wastes that nature must then absorb. Nature’s capacity to absorb wastes is now being pushed to, and in some cases well beyond, its limits. In her 2010 book The Positive Deviant: Sustainability Leadership in a Perverse World, Sara Parkin refers to five ‘symptoms’ of unsustainable development caused by current practices. These are summarised below (facts and figures used here provide a macro-picture; local statistics could be compiled for a micro-perspective):

1. Persistent poverty, injustice and inequality of opportunity for many people. The number of people classed as living in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.25 per day, is 1.29 billion or approximately 22% of the world population (World Bank Development Research Group, 2012). A quarter of children are undernourished. UNHCR 2011 statistics show rising numbers of people forcibly displaced worldwide at 43.7m people, the highest number in 15 years, with the number of refugees at 15.4 million to the end of 2009.

   The next symptom of unsustainable development points to competition for scarce resources as an increasingly important factor in provoking and perpetuating violence, one of the drivers behind these statistics.

2. Mineral depletion including platinum, phosphorus, nickel, lead, indium, gold, copper, zinc, silver, aluminium, uranium, chromium, etc. : Many minerals are already in short supply or hard to extract; extraction also adds to CO2 emissions. Minerals are used in everyday items such as digital and telecommunications and renewable energy technologies. Stocks of fossil fuels including coal and oil are also diminishing. Parkin (2010) raises the point that violent conflicts over mineral resources are on the increase (the conflicts in eastern Congo, where fighting has continued over 15 years driven by the trade in valuable minerals, are an example) and part of an overall picture of shortages of non-biological and therefore non-renewable resources worldwide.
3. Biological resource depletion including minerals, oil, water, soil fertility, forests, grass and wetlands. The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) on the state of the global environment found that 15 of 24 ecosystem services (60%) are being degraded or used unsustainably, including fresh drinking water.

   Changes in ecosystems due to human activity have been more rapid and extensive in the last 50 years than in any comparable period of time. Resources have been used to meet rapidly growing demand for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel. This activity has contributed to substantial gains in human well-being and economic development. However, it has also resulted in a significant and often irreversible loss of the diversity of life on Earth. If the problems are not addressed now, future generations will experience a sizeable loss in benefits from ecosystems. The World Wide Fund for Nature calculates that we are exceeding the planet’s ability to regenerate by about 30%..

4. Waste generation. The natural environment has its own efficient recycling system. However, it is overloaded by alien substances: visible rubbish such as plastic, packaging, rubble, etc. and invisible air and waterborne pollutants including man-made chemicals and fertilisers, excessive CO2, etc. Consider just one example of waste: plastic bags represent a fraction of 1% of waste generated, but cause much greater damage. Sean Poulter and David Derbyshire when launching the campaign to banish plastic bags in 2008 highlighted that:
   

   Typically they are used for only 20 minutes before being thrown out. But they will take up to 1,000 years to rot away. During their long decay millions linger to pollute our streets, the countryside, parks, rivers and seas. Britain’s coast is washed with a toxic ‘plastic soup’ carried on the tide which threatens our seabirds, turtles, whales and other wildlife. Gannets off Cornwall suffer a long painful death, unable to feed or fly after getting entangled. Dolphins scoop up plastic bags and carry them around, risking strangulation and suffocation. And some 8% of the world’s seal population has reportedly been harmed by plastic bags.

   Three other side effects identified by Parkin (2010) from waste generation include:

   • A quarter of ill health caused by environmental hazards is due to waste and pollution. .
   • For each tonne of consumables bought by UK adults, an average of 10 times that weight of material (rock, water, energy, etc.) has to be moved or used to make that purchase possible. It’s 540,000 times for gold; expressed another way, 5.4 tonnes of material have to be mined for a wedding ring. .
   • Roughly 40% of the food we buy we throw away.

   Cutting out waste, being thrifty and using fewer resources saves on materials and drastically reduces CO2 emissions. This is central to a low carbon economy.

5. Fossil fuel burning. Small amounts of greenhouse gases are essential; greenhouse gases help retain in the atmosphere enough infrared radiation from the Earth to keep the temperature required for life. CO2 forms the biggest proportion of the greenhouse gases. Normally CO2 moves in continual chemical interaction between the air, sea and earth. However, due to human activity (burning carboniferous fossil fuels, changes to land use from deforestation and agriculture) CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased dramatically. The earth and sea components of the global carbon recycling system have become overwhelmed, leaving a growing proportion of the gases in the atmosphere. The unnaturally high levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are causing excessive heating of the Earth’s atmosphere; as well as changing the climate it is making the sea more acidic. Climate change is a symptom of unsustainable development.

   A few years earlier the Stern Review (2007) reported similar findings. The report explained that:

   Scientific evidence suggests that the stocks of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides and a number of gases that arise from industrial processes) are rising, as a result of human activity.

   The report stated that in 2005 the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere was equivalent to around 430 parts per million (ppm) CO2, compared to 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution. These concentrations have caused the world to warm by more than half a degree Celsius and would lead to at least a further half a degree warming over the next few decades. It went on to say that the annual flow of emissions is accelerating and unabated there was likely to be a global average temperature rise exceeding 2% by 2035, and a 5% rise in the subsequent century. We are now only 5 degrees Celsius warmer than the last Ice Age, and such changes would transform the physical geography of the world.

The Stern Review warned of disastrous consequences if action is not taken to mitigate the effects of climate change. Three of their headline findings were:

• Climate change threatens the basic elements of life for people around the world – access to water, food production, health, and use of land and the environment. Severe impacts included: reduced water supplies threatening one-sixth of the world population; declining crop yields leaving millions without the ability to produce or purchase sufficient food; increases in deaths from cold, heat, malnutrition and diseases; flooding and droughts; and around 15–40% of species potentially facing extinction after only 2 degrees Celsius of warming.
• The damage from climate change will accelerate as the world gets warmer: this could take the world outside the range of human experience.
• The poorest countries would suffer earliest and most and if and when the damage appears it will be too late to reverse the process; thus we are forced to look a long way ahead.

The recommendation of the Stern Review was that the benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs. They estimated that the impact of uncontrolled climate change would be like losing up to 20% of world GDP now and forever in the future; however, stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations would cost around 2–3% of global GDP. Mitigation must be viewed as an investment to avoid the risks of very serious consequences in the future: ‘policy must promote sound market signals, overcome market failures and have equity and risk mitigation at its core’.

In 2009, the senior economist on the team that produced the Stern Review, Alex Bowen said that ‘the Review was based on science available up to 2005; revisions of the impact of unrestrained climate change would be substantially higher’.

Parkin and Stern have painted a bleak picture of the consequences of unsustainable development. Parkin has pointed to: depletion of biological resources on which life depends and depletion of mineral resources central to modern life; an irreversible loss of diversity of life and substantial loss of ecosystems; increased waste and increasing ill health from the resulting pollution; poverty and an increase in wars and violent conflict resulting from scarcity; and finally, increasing greenhouse gas emissions creating climate change as a result of exponential increases in resource use. On top of all this the global population is set to almost double by 2050.

Only 50 years ago the world population was 3 billion people. Today it is 7 billion and projected to grow to 9 billion by 2050, as Martin Rees described in his 2010 Surviving the century lectures on BBC Radion 4. Whilst the UK population is projected to increase by 10 million by 2033, the majority of the population growth is in the developing world. An example is India’s population, which is expected to overtake China’s and reach 1.5 billion, and there could be a billion more people in Africa in 2050 than there are today. This will magnify current struggles around providing clean water, sufficient food and preventing soil degradation. The debate on population growth merits particular focus on the oppression and marginalisation of women, especially in the third world, and the causal relationship held. The scientist and author Vandana Shiva examined this topic in detail in her 2002 book Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development.

Martin Rees draws two main conclusions with regard to population growth: first, there needs to be enhanced education and empowerment for women; and second, a higher population would aggravate all pressures on resources – especially if the developing world narrows the gap with the developed world in per capita consumption.

Debates around population are both sensitive and political. In the UK, for example, about a third of pregnancies are unplanned and this offers potential for political initiatives to provide free contraception.

Clearly, the solutions to all the issues raised include government action.

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• A world you like; with a climate you like
• The emergence of sustainable development
• The changing profile of corporate climate risk

How much of a difference can changes in individual behaviour make? Isn’t climate change – and the challenge of sustainability more generally – just too big a problem for individuals and communities to worry about? Why focus on the behaviour of ordinary people when political agreements and technological advances will do more to tackle climate change than anything an individual could achieve?

These are all critical questions for anyone interested in promoting sustainable behaviour – whether at home or in the workplace – to ask themselves. After all, if it were possible to wave a magic low-carbon wand and solve climate change overnight through new technologies, the strict regulation of high-polluting industries, or a binding political agreement that all the world’s countries signed up to, wouldn’t that make more sense than focusing on everyday attitudes and behaviour?

The problem, of course, is that there is no magic low-carbon wand – but even if there were, it would be waved by a person as susceptible to the quirks, biases and pitfalls of human judgement as anyone else. While it is comforting to draw sharp distinctions between politics, technology and individuals, the reality is that human behaviour underpins it all. Political parties will not pass legislation that is patently unpopular among the electorate. Technological advances can provide low-carbon alternatives like electric buses, but a zero-emissions bus will have zero passengers unless people decide to use it. And even the most carefully planned policy interventions can backfire if they don’t take account of how people – the wildcard in any equation – will respond.

For example, if a driver who replaces their car with a fuel-efficient model takes advantage of the cheaper running costs and drives further and more often, then the amount of carbon saved is clearly reduced. This is what’s known as a ‘rebound’ effect – one of many pitfalls that plague well-intentioned campaigns to promote sustainable behaviour. Rebound effects like these – where people take two steps forward and one step back – occur because no single behaviour takes place in a vacuum.

Consider campaigns in other areas of life. If the end-result of a television advert to promote the use of seatbelts was that drivers felt safer and drove faster, the ad would only be considered a partial success. If a drive to end teenage obesity resulted in an increase in the number of adolescents with self-image problems and eating disorders, this undermines the value of the campaign. And sustainable behaviours are no different – they have to be seen as small parts of a bigger picture, not isolated and separated from their wider impacts.

Studies have found that on average, only about two-thirds of the calculated carbon reductions for a given household action (e.g. lowering the thermostat or reducing food waste) are likely to be achieved in reality. This is because money saved on the heating bill is (potentially) money available for a flight abroad, or some other high-carbon activity. Promoting sustainable behaviour is not necessarily as easy as it first appears, but this is where simple, easy-to-apply and practical advice about ‘what works’ comes in. The aim of the a short and practically focused book Promoting Sustainable Behaviour is to show how to make the most of campaigns to promote sustainable behaviour – in households, when commuting, in the workplace and beyond.

Simple and painless?

Generating long-lasting and meaningful changes in sustainable behaviour is a huge challenge. When first confronted with this issue, many people assumed that the problem was simply a lack of information – that once people knew how environmentally damaging their actions were, they’d soon start making changes. Unfortunately, the ‘pamphlet approach’ to sustainable behaviour has only had limited effectiveness – public information campaigns need more than just a clever slogan and the right information in order to succeed.

Many sustainability initiatives over the past half a decade have responded to this by targeting low-hanging fruit – so-called ‘simple and painless’ behaviour changes like unplugging phone chargers, switching to energysaving light-bulbs, or re-using plastic bags. The idea – which makes intuitive sense – is that these simple changes provide a ‘way in’, and may act as a catalyst for more substantial changes (in terms of energy saved) in the future.

Unfortunately, there is only limited evidence that starting with simple and painless changes is necessarily the best way of catalysing further changes – and there is a risk that people will feel they have ‘done their bit’. There is a huge difference in the carbon-saving impact of different behaviours, but seldom is this reflected in sustainable behaviour initiatives.

These examples illustrate an important point: that it is possible to ‘do behaviour change’ in better or worse ways. Focusing on activities that have only a tiny payoff in terms of energy use can only be justified if they are the first step on a ladder that leads to more significant energy savings, something that the evidence presented in this book can help with. If low-impact changes (including things like switching off a few lights around the office) become an end in themselves, then the effort expended is probably not worth it. But if a strategy for promoting sustainable behaviour is as evidence-based as possible, engages with people at a deeper level than single behaviours, and gives thought to how people’s personal values and social identities shape a wide range of behaviours, then there are important – in fact, essential – gains to be made in terms of building a sustainable society.

Behaviour change matters

In both the private and public sectors, it is now widely accepted that reducing energy consumption is a key battleground for tackling carbon emissions. The UK government – although falling well short of its claim to be the ‘greenest ever’ – is pushing ahead with ambitious plans that should (if they are successful) see significant changes in energy use among householders. ‘Smart’ energy meters are gradually being rolled out, and the flagship ‘Green Deal’ aims to insulate millions of homes by 2020.

Installing wall or cavity insulation might seem like a good example of a change in people’s living arrangements that is purely technical – something that doesn’t require thinking about people’s attitudes or behaviours. But as the sustainable behaviour specialists Alexa Spence and Nick Pidgeon from Cardiff University have argued, changes in household insulation depend on some key assumptions. In particular, the overheating of residential buildings has to become socially unacceptable, and people will have to be motivated to make changes to their home heating routines if they are not to fall into the ‘rebound’ trap. These are behavioural issues, not technical ones.

So promoting sustainable behaviour matters and ensuring that any sustainable programme is based on the best available research and practical case studies is an essential piece of the puzzle. Many people are wary of committing themselves to changes in their personal behaviour when it seems as if bigger gains can be made elsewhere. But unless people can identify with and understand climate change and sustainability at a personal level, those political and technological shifts will simply never happen. It is not a choice between technologies, policies and changing behaviour – the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon society requires all three.

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• Working with faith networks to encourage green behaviour

Living Resources

The aim of the World Conservation Strategy is to help advance the achievement of sustainable development through the conservation of living resources.

‘Sustainable development’ is an expression coined by conservationists. It was launched into the wider world on 5 March 1980. On that day, a text stretching to barely five pages entitled ‘World Conservation Strategy’ was presented simultaneously in 35 capital cities. The subtitle was ‘Living Resource Conservation for Sustainable Development’. This was the first time that ‘sustainable development’ had been used as a consciously chosen and clearly defined composite term. The introduction stated that:

“humanity’s relationship with the biosphere . . . will continue to deteriorate until . . . sustainable modes of development become a rule rather than an exception.”

Almost 1,000 experts had worked on this ‘world conservation strategy’: conservationists, ecologists, foresters and development specialists. The coordinators were the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Its beginnings went back to the year of the Moon landing.

In 1969 the General Assembly of the IUCN met in New Delhi. The closing statement of the conference begins by considering the cosmos, nature and humankind, and declares that:

“the splendour of this earth derives from its sunlight, its beautiful green cover, its interdependent fauna and flora, and from the diversity of its landscapes”;

and that

“since the beginning of its existence, the people of this earth even when poor in material possessions have found life richly worth living because of these natural assets”;

and finally that

“man, himself a product of the evolutionary system, is dependent on the stability and self-renewing properties of his environment.”

Rethinking development

Another pioneering report appeared in February 1980, at the same time as the World Conservation Strategy. It bore the title North-South: A Programme for Survival. The contributors, under the leadership of Willy Brandt, were for the main part politicians involved in peace and disarmament policy and experts in development policy and the fight against poverty. From their own particular perspective they also looked at the ruination of the biosphere. The Brandt Report contained a new definition of development.

The word sustainable is used at several points in the text of the Brandt Report. It speaks of sustainable biological environment and of sustainable prosperity. But above all the report introduces a radically new definition of ‘development’, and for this it goes back to the original meanings of the word.

Brandt writes in his foreword that “One must avoid the persistent confusion of growth with development.” A development strategy which aims simply at expanding production, at growth in GDP or the standard of living (however measured) can no longer be the guiding principle. Rather, the idea that the whole world should be modelled on the highly developed countries should be dropped. The first and overriding aim must be that of an equitable distribution of income. Brandt opposes cultural imperialism and makes a plea for cultural and political diversity.

“There is no uniform approach. There are different and appropriate answers depending on history and cultural heritage, religious traditions and economic resources, climatic and geographic conditions, and political patterns of nations.”

When the focus is on the quality of growth, then “the creation of jobs and the basic needs of the poorest sections of society” are taken into account. “A people aware of their cultural identity can adopt and adapt elements true to their value-system and can thus support an appropriate economic development . . . We strongly emphasise that the prime objective of development is to lead to self-fulfilment and creative partnership in the use of a nation’s productive forces and its full human potential.” Development, Brandt says, means the “unfolding of productive possibilities and of human potential”. Here development is finally uncoupled from the imagery of brute, capital-intensive industrialisation, of the production and consumption of goods, of purely economic growth. The concept is aligned once more – as it was for the philosophers of the early Enlightenment – with unfolding, and with personal growth.

A stunning definition of development was introduced in 1980 by the International Foundation for Development Alternatives, a network of activists mainly from the South, cooperating with the Brandt Commission:

Development is the unfolding of people’s individual and social imagination in defining goals, inventing means and ways to approach them, learning to identify and satisfy socially legitimate needs. Development, thus defined as liberation of human beings and societies, happens, or better, is lived by people where they are, that is, in the first instance, in the local space. . . There is development when people and their communities. . . act as subjects and are not acted upon as objects; assert their autonomy, self-reliance and self-confidence; when they set out and carry out projects. To develop is to be, or become. Not to have.

Willy Brandt, too, communicated a vision of the future which he expressed as follows in the second report from his Commission three years later: “A new century nears, and with it the prospects of a new civilisation.” At the minimum this will be a civilisation in which no child will have to starve any longer, and “no one will have to see uncomprehending panic in . . . the clear, radiant eyes of children.” In the reports of the North-South Commission the idea of sustainability begins to acquire a clear outline. It is more than an environmental policy concept, more than a development policy strategy, more than a plea for technological innovation. It is conceived of as a new model of civilisation.

The Brundtland Formulation

In the autumn of 1983 the leadership of the UN appointed the Norwegian politician Gro Harlem Brundtland to head a new commission, to be called the World Commission on Environment and Development. Its mandate would be to investigate how:

“at a time of unprecedented growth in pressures on the global environment … to build a future that is more prosperous, more just, and more secure because it rests on policies and practices that serve to expand and sustain the ecological basis of development”

The Brundtland Commission was to continue and to extend the work of Brandt’s North-South Commission. It should integrate further the concepts of environment and development and formulate ‘Earth politics’ in the language of diplomacy to make it capable of securing international consensus.

In December 1986, the negotiations over the report’s conclusions reached their decisive phase during a meeting in Moscow. “We agreed”, Gro Harlem Brundtland writes in her memoirs, “about how to describe the principal content of the concept ‘sustainable development’.” The Commission went back to the formulations used in the World Conservation Strategy of 1980. Nitin Desai, an Indian economist who was one of the leading thinkers at the Geneva administration of the Commission, set to work with a small team on the editing of the final report. After four months the 400-page document, Our Common Future, was ready. On the 27th April 1987 the Brundtland Report was presented to the global public at a formal ceremony in London.

The key sentence in the original English text reads:

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

This is the now famous and often-cited Brundtland definition. Its substance comes to life only in the context of the report. The report begins from the widest possible perspective – the planetary one.:

“In the middle of the 20th century, we saw our planet from space for the first time. . . . From space, we see a small and fragile ball dominated not by human activity and edifice but by a pattern of clouds, oceans, greenery, and soils.”

This arresting image is followed by an analysis of a threatening crisis:

“Humanity’s inability to fit its doings into that pattern is changing planetary systems, fundamentally. Many such changes are accompanied by life-threatening hazards. This new reality, from which there is no escape, must be recognised – and managed.”

The root of the crisis is identified as contemporary human civilisation and its destructive impact on the planet’s ecosystems. Humanity is confronted with the task of making the carrying capacity of the global ecosystems the measure of its actions.

Sustainable development overcame the rigid thinking which dominated world politics. It was no longer a matter of ‘conservation’ and ‘environmental protection’ understood as a system of prohibitions, regulations and controls by means of which humankind was shielding the environment from the effects of its activities. Nor was it a matter of ‘development’ in the sense of a catch-up industrialisation of all of the regions of the world, nor of mere ‘peaceful coexistence’ between the blocs. Sustainable development is about the search for a new balance between humankind and nature, between the cultures of the world, and between people – it is about a new model of civilisaton. It would require a prompt and decisive mobilisation of all of the creative powers of humanity.

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In an oddly moralising way, many people seem to feel that something that does good can’t also bring economic benefits.

But it does. At Green Alliance we have conducted an extensive analysis of the data surrounding the green economy. According to government data (pdf), last year we exported £121 million more green goods and services to Germany than we imported from them, as well as £183 million more to India and £330 million more to China. We now export more green products and services to our competitors than we import from them, and we have become the green financing capital of the world.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills tots up almost twice as many low carbon and environmental jobs – just under a million – than we have in motor trades.

Benefitting from the Green Economy – now

We are often told of the benefits that come from creating a greener economy and the advantage that will come from being a first mover. It is now clear that we don’t need to wait for these benefits. The UK has moved and we are seeing the advantage.

Our low carbon and environmental sector has shown that it’s not just for the good times, but that it has continued to grow steadily even whilst broader economic activity slows.

Market incentives and investor confidence

This is the outcome of setting ambitious environmental targets and creating long term market incentives for green goods and services. It has given the private sector confidence to invest billions of pounds in these markets.

In contrast, the UK’s high carbon infrastructure projects now have much lower leverage on private capital and are being propped up by greater proportions of public spending. According to the Treasury, in this financial year alone 88% of our top 20 infrastructure projects are low carbon, and are worth £23 billion, compared to just £3.1 billion for high carbon projects. Some 63% of this represents entirely private sector money. If you include what Treasury defines as public/private then the figure leaps to 94%. By contrast, our high-carbon spend for this year was 61% dependant on the public purse.

A UK success story

Quietly and without fanfare, green business has become a UK success story, at home and abroad. This success should be celebrated. With greater public recognition and stronger confidence green businesses can help secure a faster and more resilient economic recovery.

However, some still feel that we should not continue to promote this kind of economy and would prefer to incentivise a reliance on fossil fuels. Even the most optimistic commentators acknowledge that a reliance on gas will leave us dependent on imports in a seller’s market. In fact, the Office for National Statistics sees this as key to why we’re still doing so badly.

Green Alliance argues that we can’t, as a nation, afford such a compromised infrastructure strategy, the equivalent of Disraeli ripping out train tracks because they threaten canals. We should follow what we need, not what we needed, or we risk condemning this country to a policy of “Who needs the future when we have had the past?”

Further reading

• Green economy: a UK success story: Green Alliance report

Scientists have called for a near-term reduction in global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) of more than 70% to stabilize the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Meanwhile global CO2 emissions, as well as emissions of the other so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs), continue to increase. While a political consensus exists for the view that exceeding 2°C of global temperature change would constitute ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’ (the avoidance of which global governments are committed to through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), that amount of warming is already almost inevitable. More importantly, there is no global action plan in place to prevent much more dramatic temperature rises in coming decades.

Even as climate science has solidified, companies have been hearing for years that they don’t need to know much about climate change science, they just need to recognize that ‘the climate policy train is leaving the station, and you want to be on it’. This ‘policy paradigm’ of climate risk assumes that policy and regulation are the primary contributors to corporate climate risk, rather than climate change itself, and encourages policy-oriented risk responses. Correspondingly, the primary focus of corporate risk management activities has been to be at the policy table (rather than ‘on the menu’), to measure and commit to reducing corporate carbon footprints, to anticipate the timing and magnitude of a future price on carbon, and to use carbon offsets to voluntarily reduce corporate or product-based emissions. Hundreds of corporate footprint reduction commitments and a slew of ‘carbon-neutral’ products and services have sprung up as a result.

Some 25 years after initial calls for broad-based GHG emissions reductions, agreement on climate change policy to accomplish these reductions has proven an almost impossible nut to crack through domestic legislation or international negotiations. It’s not for a want of trying; numerous policies intended to help reduce GHG emissions, and reduce or adapt to climate change are in place or being developed around the world. The problem is that these measures are unlikely to do more than scratch the surface of what scientists have said is necessary in order to materially reduce climate risk.

With the failure of national climate change legislation in the US, and the anticipated failure of international efforts to extend a meaningful version of the Kyoto Protocol, many companies are asking themselves: Climate risk? What climate risk? Companies should question, however, whether the ‘policy paradigm’ that underlies this conclusion, and that has guided corporate thinking for more than a decade, is actually the right risk management paradigm.

For example, does the growing disconnect between societal climate change risk and climate change policy have risk implications for business? How material to business is climate change itself, including all of the associated supply chain and brand risks? Is it reasonable to assume that if climate change makes itself increasingly felt it will become politically harder and harder to ignore, and that the risk of sudden and draconian policy risk will escalate? A gradual glide path to lower GHG emissions and toward a higher price on GHG emissions – long an objective of corporate efforts to influence climate policy – could be rendered moot if the public and policy-makers conclude that we have run out of time for gradual measures.

Business of today

Since the Second World War, the West has witnessed unprecedented economic growth. Emerging economies too have followed suit, some now ranked as the top economic powers of the world. Industrialisation, technological advancement, economies of scale and increasingly efficient approaches to profit maximisation have led to what we see today – the good and the not so good.

We live in a world of paradoxes. While the drive for economic growth is often rooted in a desire to improve the well-being of the stakeholders that the organisation or economy seeks to serve, there have been winners and losers. There have been great benefits and also great costs.

The currently prevailing view of the purpose of business is this: to provide goods and services to meet the perceived needs of the customer in order to generate profit for shareholders. The more the customer consumes, the better, as more goods and services are sold, and hence more profit gained. This is what we refer to today as ‘consumerism’. Consumption-based growth has become the driving force of economic growth, which in turn provides employment, providing income for consumers to consume more, in turn fuelling more economic growth. This prevailing business view is incomplete in at least two aspects.

First, business is primarily focused on providing ever more goods and services to generate more profit. This profit is determined by an economic value (and cost), disconnected from social and environmental value (and cost), incurred through sourcing, production and consumption. There are a number of ‘externalities’ that are not incorporated within the economic value and cost (the organisation’s balance sheet does not include a wide range of social and environmental costs and benefits). In other words, social and environmental value (the benefits and costs to all stakeholders) are not included within the current prevailing measurement of economic value. The consumer’s price paid does not reflect true, complete value. Nor do the producer’s costs incurred reflect true, complete cost. Hence, the prevailing approach to value, cost and profit is incomplete.

Second, the goal of business is to satisfy the needs of the customer. In so doing, the clever business mind seeks to encourage the desires of the customer so that their needs best align to the products and services of that business. This would seem sensible business. Hence, business invests in marketing, communications, media and advertising to help generate a demand for the goods and services it produces. In turn, the needs of the customer (the human) become influenced and encouraged by business. Does it matter if the influenced needs of the human no longer contribute to their present and future well-being? If the human consumes the product or service due to a perceived need and feels satisfied for a short period, then is it good business? Alas, we develop an economy that encourages human needs that are not always (perhaps seldom) aligned to the real well-being of the human. More sobering is that this can affect social and cultural norms by encouraging the pursuit of perceived needs and desires over the pursuit of betterment through values, character and wisdom. Hence, the prevailing approach to need (and well-being) is incomplete.

The vast majority of global human ingenuity is currently focused on generating incomplete value for incomplete needs. This incompleteness, I would argue, greatly contributes to the amount of trouble and strife in the world today.

The firm of the past

The firm of the past is resolute in its goal – ‘to maximise shareholder return’. Over the last few decades, shareholders (and the investment market) have in the main become more interested in short-term returns. The goal of the firm of the past has thus increasingly become one of short-term profit, utilising two main levers: cost reduction (bottom-line management) and value enhancement (top-line growth).

Values and behaviours that assist the goal are encouraged; ones that do not are eliminated. The firm of the past is based on a ‘command and control’ philosophy. Management and governance is fundamental to ensuring effective operations within the firm of the past. Without such ‘carrot and stick’ management structures (with all the ‘tricks of the trade’ that are used to influence), people and processes could not be driven continuously towards ever-increasing short-term profits.

In the firm of the past, questions like ‘whom is this organisation serving?’ are met with rolling eyes and responses of ‘it’s the shareholders, of course!’. Dare one ask who the shareholders are, or what their underlying motive for the long-term success of the organisation is? It is this ‘short-term shareholder return is king’ mentality, reinforced by a fixation with ‘numbers, numbers, numbers’, that typifies the firm of the past. Business needs to rationalise and quantify, while also qualifying and contextualising. Focusing on one at the expense of the other is not a recipe for success.

Reductionism and systems thinking

Systems thinking is thinking in terms of interconnections, patterns and processes rather than stove-pipes and separate units. It recognises the interconnected nature of business and wider life, and views the whole system as greater than the sum of its parts. While reductionism helps the understanding of isolated parts, systems thinking helps understand and deal with complexity and change.

In these ever-complex and interconnected times, systems thinking is increasingly being applied to business challenges such as strategy development, process re-engineering, team dynamics and organisational learning.

It is our prevailing reductionist approach to science, technology and business that has encouraged us to see ourselves as separate from nature, and to view the world around us as something to be analysed and over-exploited for our own wants and needs, with scant regard for the consequences. Here lies insight into some of the root causes of our problems facing us today in business and beyond: an imbalanced approach to quantifying without also qualifying, and reducing without also understanding the whole and interconnected parts.

Time to transform

As a result of its focus on operational excellence, economies of scale and predictable returns on investment, the firm of the past is a well-managed organisation, with many attributes that business minds can be proud of. The firm of the past is independent, stable, efficient, risk-aware, controlled, self-focused, competitive, driven and quantifiable. Alas, these attributes are no longer ‘good enough’ on their own for an organisation operating in a business environment that is increasingly volatile, impossible to predict or control, complex, open and interconnected. These are the times within which we now operate, and the level of volatility is only set to increase for the foreseeable future. The firm of the past, with all its strengths, is no longer fit for purpose.

In the words of Dawn Vance, Director of Global Logistics at Nike:

Organisations have 3 options:

1. Hit the wall
2. Optimise and delay hitting the wall
3. Redesign for resilience.

Organisations, executives, employees and investors who hold on tightly to these out-dated business approaches that served us well in the past will find life harder and harder, swimming against an ever-increasing torrent of dynamic change. It is organisations and individuals that recognise the need to adapt and transform that shall flourish by pursuing opportunities within turbulence.

“Seeing a turbulent world through threat-tinted glasses invites the dysfunctions of threat rigidity – centralized control, limited experimentation, and focus on existing resources – that stymies the pursuit of opportunity.”
Donald Sull

Business has learned a considerable amount from the past, with the positive attributes of the firm of the past remaining important as we shift forward to a new paradigm that balances quantity with quality, operational excellence with value creation, the short term with the long term, self-focus with system-focus, and stability with dynamism.

Our current prevailing approach to business has led us into the current reality of a debt-laden society, debt-laden economy and debt-laden environment. Business is part of the problem, yet business is also most definitely part of the solution.

Business is a powerful force for transformation; it is now time to make it a force for good. Each and every one of us in business has the potential to be a change agent for the positive adaptation that helps us as individuals, as organisations, as economies and as a global species. Each of us can freely choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution.

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If you play a word association game with people over 50 and say “1976”, they will probably say “hot summer”. The driest summer for 200 years prompted the appointment of Denis Howell as Minister for Drought. His appointment was followed immediately by heavy rain and widespread flooding, possibly one of the most successful departments in history.

If you say “perfect ten” to the same fifty-something, they will inevitably say “Nadia Comaneci”. The 14 year-old Romanian gymnast took the 1976 Montreal Games by storm, scoring an unprecedented “perfect 10” and winning three gold medals. It was so unusual that the electronic scoreboard at the time was unable to record a number bigger than 9.99 so they had to record 1.0 to the world as Olympic history was made.

It is not necessary to be perfect to win a gold medal – you just need to be better than everybody you are competing against.

Sustainability medal contenders

When we consider sustainability and legacy there are two clear medal contenders. Sydney was the first to call itself the “Green Games” and is a hard act to follow. Some great initiatives involving solar energy and water use stood out in 2000. For legacy we go back to 1992. The Barcelona Games helped to regenerate the east side of the city by building the Olympic Village on the waterfront and creating a new beach resort. The Games also put the city on the map as a tourist destination and a great place of culture built on the legacy of Picasso and Gaudi. Beijing was never really a medal contender and Athens did not get past the heats.

London 2012′s holistic sustainability programme

London 2012 is the first Olympic and Paralympic Games to attempt to deliver a holistic sustainability programme from construction, through Games-time and into legacy.

It is also the first to open itself up to scrutiny by an independent commission such as ours. The Commission is the first (and hopefully not the last) body of its kind; empowered to assure all aspects of social, economic and environmental sustainability across all the organisations tasked with delivering the London 2012 venues, Games and legacy in the UK. I have had the honour to chair the Commission since its inception in 2006, and will do through a period of transformation work to March 2013. I report directly to the Mayor of London and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and have an independent voice to the public through our reports and website. We are empowered to report honestly to the public and we don’t allow any aspects of sustainability to be fudged or brushed under the carpet.

Sustainable construction for London 2012

From a sustainability perspective, London 2012 has been mostly a success. If we consider construction; there is no doubt that the ODA has delivered great sustainable venues. From the wonderful Velodrome, with 30% better energy efficiency than that required by building regulations and half the materials of the equivalent building in Beijing, to the less iconic but equally important energy centre with tri-generation, heating, cooling and non-potable water infrastructure throughout the Park. The Park has the UK’s first industrial scale membrane bio-reactor delivering non-potable water from the product of one of London’s main sewers which run under the Park.

The ODA’s learning legacy is making profound changes to the way the construction industry views sustainability. My only criticisms would be that the learning legacy is a bit sugar coated. At a recent event one of the architects of an iconic venue was asked what they have learned and what they would do differently. The answer was nothing at all. We learn best from our mistakes and nothing is perfect – such arrogance is unnecessary and does nothing to help us to improve. I would also have liked to see a more radical approach to the energy infrastructure. Great as it is, it requires natural gas as a primary fuel source and given the cancellation of the planned wind turbine, renewable energy is conspicuous by its absence.

The first low carbon Olympic cauldron

The Games have started now and the spectacular Danny Boyle opening ceremony had a climax that sent a powerful message about sustainability around the world. London 2012 has delivered the world’s first low carbon flame in the first low carbon Olympic cauldron. Beijing’s cauldron was a monster weighing in at 300 tonnes. The London 2012 cauldron is tiny by comparison – it is on a human scale. It is approximately 8.5 metres tall and weighs just 16 tonnes. Of course less material means less carbon in the manufacture and less natural resource required for the materials. The flame was pretty spectacular on the night, but then at other times, and especially overnight, the gas flow can be reduced very significantly. This means that it is possible to reduce the gas consumption from 100% down to 15%.

Ground-breaking sustainability initiatives

LOCOG has made meticulous plans to deliver unprecedented levels of sustainability through a variety of ground-breaking initiatives. An example of this would be the implementation of the Sustainable Sourcing Code and the Diversity and Inclusion Business Charter. Together these initiatives are driving the supply chain to unprecedented levels of environmental and socio-economic sustainability.

The food vision and zero waste plans also work well together to transform the catering and waste industries. The food vision sets new levels of sustainability through the chain of custody and the zero waste target requires all food packaging to be bio-degradable. Even though LOCOG has gone to great lengths to make the waste process as simple as possible, we have seen problems in test events which we said we expected to be ironed out for the Games. We are out in the venues every day during the Games to review these things and report back.

The local community and communities across the UK have benefited from jobs, skills and employment opportunities through a partnership between the delivery bodies, local authorities, skills agencies, job centres and community groups. This required detailed planning and forecasting of skills requirements and the combined resources to deliver work-ready and appropriately skilled people at the time they are needed. This is a big challenge and requires all the parts to come together at the right time. Any major project, event or venture would benefit from this approach but be warned; it is not easy.

The first public transport Games

London 2012 will be the first public transport Games and the recent publication by the London Legacy Development Corporation of their sustainability guide provides good evidence of their commitment to making the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park “a blueprint for sustainable living” as promised at the outset.

Areas for future improvement

Not everything is perfect and there are some issues which will not be resolved by London 2012 and need to be addressed in future. These include: a low carbon fuel source for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; addressing labour standards in the supply chain, particularly for merchandise; and dealing with wider stakeholder concerns about the corporate behaviour of commercial partners. The innovative sponsorship opportunity for “Sustainability Partners” has not been wholly successful and we would recommend that similar initiatives are much more explicit in their commitments, so the partner “earns” the right rather than just paying for it.

Inspiring sustainable behaviour

We have always maintained that an Olympiad can only be considered sustainable if it can influence more sustainable behaviour beyond the Games.

We have recorded some early encouraging signs and plan to review this aspect in more detail after the Games. In order to help facilitate this we propose a series of events after the Games entitled “Beyond 2012”. The roundtables, which will take place in late 2012 and early 2013, are intended to unlock new thinking and challenge established views around sustainability. By timing these events after the Games we believe we can deal with issues too controversial or sensitive to be dealt with before the Games where there is too much at stake. Output from the series will benefit large corporations, major global event planners and governing authorities. Each roundtable will be professionally facilitated and will focus on one topic. Areas include transport, construction and infrastructure, supply chain, food, sponsorship, legacy, events and assurance. To ensure that each roundtable provides valuable and actionable insights, the Commission will be inviting expert individuals from a range of backgrounds and organisations to have an honest conversation about where London excelled and where things could have been done better. We want to break down the barriers and polarisation that can often influence much of the sustainability agenda and instead take a more collaborative approach to advance sustainability thinking in the years ahead.

Embedding sustainability

London 2012 has demonstrated what can be done when sustainability is embedded in a systemic way in early planning. However, we cannot ignore the fact that this is the first time this type of holistic lifecycle approach has ever been attempted on this scale, and naturally some initiatives did not work as planned. This is why this initiative is so important for us to learn from – both the good and the not so good. Insights gathered from our Beyond 2012 series will be compiled into a publicly available report detailing key recommendations, case studies and areas for further consideration.

No “perfect 10″ but a gold for London

2012 may also be remembered for a hosepipe ban followed by the wettest summer in history but it will also be remembered for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games. Although not a “perfect 10”, London 2012 can claim a gold medal for the most sustainable Games ever.

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Every morning for the past three months, I’ve been saying a little mantra to myself when I wake up: “I am a marathoner”. I’ve been training for my first marathon and earlier this month I finally did it! It was pretty hard, but an amazing experience. And looking back on it, having my mantra was crucial.

It was crucial because my little mantra made the training and the marathon part of my core identity. A marathon is not something someone can just do “on the side”. You need to embrace it or you won’t have the willpower to run in the rain or when you’ve had a bad day at work. You won’t have the willpower to avoid chocolate and eat a more nutritious fruit and nut bar instead. And you won’t have the willpower to run those extra six miles when you’ve already run twenty. The marathon eventually became part of me – and I drew on my mantra all the time to help me train, carry on and eventually finish.

Having a mantra can keep you going (Photo: Marcus Ryder, 2012)

I’ve been thinking about mantras now that the Rio+20 Summit is over. A key outcome of Rio+20 was agreement from governments that a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should be developed as part of the broader international development agenda after 2015, drawing on the success of the eight existing Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs have indeed been very successful, as the recent UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2012 outlines. They’ve acted as the world’s “mantra” – focusing on major challenges we can address together and individually, such as education and health. Though more needs to be done, many developing countries and aid donors alike have been running and progressing along the poverty reduction marathon, armed with these MDGs as their mantra.

Yet while environmental issues were covered by one of the MDGs (MDG7), this goal never really captured the world’s imagination in the same way the other goals did. MDG7 focused primarily on water, sanitation, biodiversity and slums. It was therefore quite narrowly specified, and anything broader – such as action on climate change – has often been interpreted as trading-off with economic and social goals. It means that as far as environmental sustainability is concerned, we’ve not being doing a marathon at all – we’ve only been doing a bit of running “on the side”.

So what’s to say that the process to develop SDGs will change this? Won’t this process just clash completely with the post-2015 framework? Will environmental sustainability simply remain something we do “on the side” rather than embrace?

The trick will be to find a new mantra that makes sustainability a part of the broader poverty reduction “marathon”. We need to try to integrate sustainability into the other key goals that are out there. If we do this, governments and the private sector won’t be able to ignore the environment because it’s raining today or there’s some sort of crisis. If we can make sustainability a part of every-day activities, we could all have the willpower to make sustainable consumer choices. Some businesses have already begun thinking along these lines – check out Marks and Spencer’s new “Schwopping” (shopping and swapping) campaign. An integrated mantra could give us sufficient focus and inspiration to keep us going for that extra mile, perhaps eventually rectifying past environmental damage.

The problem is, coming up with an integrated mantra won’t be easy – it will be much easier to use the SDG process to design goals and a mantra that speak to a small community of environmental experts and converts, as was done previously for MDG7. Countries and parts of civil society will likely continue to propose long lists of specific environmental goals. But that’s why it’s a relief that Rio+20 did not ignore the importance of thinking about the SDGs together with the post-2015 development framework. Governments committed to pursue the agendas together in a coherent and coordinated way. That means we have the freedom to start thinking about the post-2015 framework and how sustainability fits into it now, in 2012. It’s a good thing, because one thing is clear – if we’re going to craft a mantra that really sticks and works for the marathon ahead, we will need as much time as possible!

The negotiations are over, the leaders are speechmaking and the NGOs are unhappy. Two and half years of a (at times painful) multilateral process to chart the future of the planet and its people has resulted in a mixed bag. At best the Rio+20 document is a series of mediocre steps forward, at worst it is failure to deliver on many of the things we need most. But it is too simplistic to declare Rio+20 an utter failure or a roaring success.

It is important to look deeper than a superficial assessment to understand what really happened. Sustainable development is complex; I wish it were easier. There are, without a doubt, some successes that must be celebrated, minor though they may be. Cynicism will not create sustainable world.

So what are some of these successes? The corporate sustainability paragraph gives a mandate to have companies report on sustainability impacts and the beginning of the means to hold them to account. We have a process (but no themes) to establish Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as well as good language on stakeholder engagement within the process and for the integration of all similar processes. And we have a new high-level political forum in the UN system with reasonably well-defined functions.

But the failures are quite stark. The language on the right to water and sanitation is vague and evasive. The text reaffirms commitments which are not universally agreed, rather than affirming the right itself. This is despite the fact that Canada and the UK have, for the first time, recognised the universal right to water and sanitation respectively (another success of the Rio+20 process). Likewise, the right to reproductive health was removed due to effective lobbying from some quarters. And despite 20 years of talking about it, there is no action plan for eliminating environmental harmful subsidies (such as fossil fuels). The amount spent on these subsidies would go a long way to providing the financing for the transition to a sustainable world. In fact, the means of implementation remain weak. Nor is there a clear statement on the need to remain within environmental limits, thereby defining new pathways to inclusive growth.

Overall, there is a severe lack of specifics in the document about how exactly we are going to deliver sustainable development, how it will be funded, what the green economy actually is and what are its underpinning principles.

Ultimately, Rio has delivered series of loosely connected small steps. Sadly it has not delivered the giant, coordinated leap to the future we want, nor the one we need.

It is also sad that sustainability is not delivered in one fell swoop of the pen. However, we now must take these small steps and build on them. It takes hard work and on the ground delivery. And there’s the rub; implementation is the tricky part.

Countries must ‘take Rio home’ with them and focus on national delivery plans. That is the level that implementation will actually happen. But there must be alignment between global goals and local action. As resources for sustainable development are scarce, the need to be both effective and efficient is greater than ever. Each country will want to approach this task in its own way. But some key elements will need to be addressed everywhere. At the national and local levels we must now:

• Improve government and legislative machinery for sustainable development;
• Model new and better processes for engaging civil society and Major Groups in the sustainability transition;
• Create or renew national sustainable development strategies or frameworks in the light of the Rio outcomes, including in particular the new global SDGs;
• Review policies and programmes in the light of the Rio outcomes, including the application of green economy principles and instruments; and
• Deliver formal and informal education and training for sustainable development.

Rio+20 has not been the pivotal moment in history we wanted; that much is certain. And while it has given us new hooks from which to hang future work, it is clearer than ever that time is not on our side. We are sitting on an ecological time bomb.

Therefore, we must take whatever we can home from Rio and roll up our sleeves in anticipation of working harder then ever. But I hope that we will also take hope from one another. The commitment, passion, creativeness and compassion I have experienced at Rio will eventually win the day. That is the day we will finally get the future we want.

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• The marathon after Rio+20

Attending Rio+20 was an incredible opportunity to represent not only more than 500,000 members of Girlguiding UK and the 10 million members of WAGGGS, but also to represent all young women and girls around the world.

Civil society: energising the conference

Having not been to a UN conference before, I was unsure of what to expect. I found civil society events such as the Youth Blast and the People’s Summit to be vibrant and they played a key role in energising a conference that did not have a particularly positive atmosphere.

Although restricted, the access that we were allowed to the negotiations was eye-opening and I was impressed with how open negotiators were to meeting and interacting us.

Recognition for non-formal education

As a delegation, WAGGGS were successful in mobilising with the Major Group for Children and Youth to lobby negotiators for the inclusion of non-formal education in the text. The five lead negotiators who supported us were presented with ‘Citizen Specialist’ badges in recognition and we were pleased that the paragraph remained in the outcome document. This would not have been possible without the inclusion of civil society in the proceedings and the cooperation of negotiators.

In addition, the UK representatives were grateful for our inclusion in the daily UK delegation meetings and to Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman for taking the time to listen to us.

Engaging side events

I felt the extensive programme of side events that ran concurrently helped delegates to engage with the conference issues. Other than our own well-attended side event on “Youth-Led Solutions to Sustainable Development”, the event I found the most engaging and enjoyable was the special event chaired by Caroline Spelman on the “Economics of Sustainable Development”. There was a distinguished panel of speakers, including the economist Jeffrey Sachs, who said “we should mobilise the Girlguiding and Scouting community” – something we intend to do as we implement our projects in our own countries.

The conference outcome

I don’t think anybody attending Rio+20 expected the outcome to be as ground-breaking as the first Earth Summit in 1992. However, while the outcome document is not particularly ambitious I would prefer to be optimistic that there is one, rather than pessimistic about what is lacking. There are good points to the document, but it’s easy to forget these to focus on the less positive and non-existent points. I’m glad the UK are actively supporting the generation of Sustainable Development Goals. I hope those issues overlooked at Rio+20 such as women’s rights are considered and included within these.

I believe one of the key outcomes of the conference was the reaffirmation that members of civil society must work together and bring about change at a local level.