Recognising the Transformation
In recent decades, many changes have been made in business and society to deal with sustainability and the impacts of new technologies. But these changes mark only the end of the beginning of a major transformation. The current ‘take, make, waste’ economy is increasingly being criticised by society, industry and politics because it is facing raw material, ecological and social limits. It is time for local authorities, agencies, businesses, educational institutions, NGOs, you and me – the citizens, to seize the initiative and lead the way to Better Lives for All.
Evidence of the transformation is widespread and has been accumulating for decades. For example, some notable milestones include the numerous Climate Change Agreements such as: the Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997 and enforced in 2005; the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate that was adopted in Paris in 2015; and the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report with the conclusion that emissions will have to be reduced far more than scientists originally estimated. We are all involved in these events as with the many national policies developed to help realise the energy transformation within a circular, recycling economy.
A few of the key books and reports about the Transformation include: Doughnut Economics published in 2017 and praised widely from the UN General Assembly to the Occupy movement; the 2019 ACCA & CFA’s (Accountants and Financiers) “Social & Environmental Value Creation” report that provides business professionals with the knowledge to inter alia build scientific literacy for business multi-value creation; Polman and Winston’s 2021 book “Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take”, published by Harvard Business Press, arguing that companies of the future will profit by fixing the world’s problems, not creating them; and finally Speth’s 2008 book “The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability” which concludes our previous “Being More” blog post.
In China, all these transformative changes have been encapsulated in the ambition to create an Eco-Civilisation; the title of which indicates the depth of transition going on around us. The United Nations may have not declared a new civilisation but the changes needed in development, businesses and people to attain their 17 Global Sustainable Development Goals is not far from doing so.
Attaining the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations will transform nations.
The Dasgupta Review
On 2 February 2021, the UK government published the Dasgupta Review that argues for a transformative change in how we think about and approach economics in order to reverse biodiversity loss and protect and enhance our prosperity. It calls for an urgent rethink of our relationships with nature and for all sectors to move towards a nature-positive global economy. The report may be downloaded for the UK Treasury’s website.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” report, published February 2022
In what may prove out to be an historic moment, the IPCC has written about degrowth. This is the panel’s first consideration of degrowth since its initial 1990 report. The latest report refers to “degrowth” no less than 15 times.
To achieve the UN’s SDGs, the report recommends the redistribution of wealth rather than more economic growth (Chap. 1, p. 67-68). Overall, the IPCC foresees a form of development based on multiple values and “different paradigms of wellbeing” such as buen vivir, ecological swaraj, and Ubuntu in which people are embedded in Nature in ways radically different from Western mechanistic visions (Chap. 18, p. 21).
The World Business Council for Sustainability (WBCSD) Report “Vision 2050: Time to Transform”
This report published in March 2021 is introduced with a warning: this report is not for you, if you think tomorrow is going to be much the same as today.
The report is claimed to mark a unique and generation-defining moment. The transformations the report foresees will require enormous, determined and enduring effort from businesses, governments, markets, civil societies and individuals. The report argues that critical business mind-set shifts are urgently needed.
These are not transformations affecting only governments, economists, accountants and business people. As the IPCC’s “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” report foresees, we need new forms of development based on multiple values and different paradigms of wellbeing; that kind of change affects us all. Consider recycling, new products, increasing costs and changing habits that have more or less required our compliance or adoption for reasons of sustainability. These changes are all evidence that the economic growth that the world has been pursuing affects people, nature and planet in ways not foreseen by economic theories alone. We are, increasingly desperately, trying to recognise and comply with different views of development that are far broader than traditional economic theories allow.
A Transformed World
The following adapted Venn diagram illustrates just how businesses are taking development out of discrete economic theory and placing it pragmatically in the realities of a world that we are all increasingly and personally experiencing. It is a world slowly gaining credence within our formal knowledge and science.
In the “Inherited Business World”, business activities take place without consideration of wider, non-economic impacts. The Nature World is barely recognised other than as resource. The success or failure of such businesses depends upon measurements taken in accordance with abstract accounting concepts of profit, loss and cash flow.
The “Present Environmental Business World” represents the current state of affairs. Here, businesses recognise that there is a broader Environment in which they operate and which needs to be protected. Hence the Venn diagram reveals a limited overlapping of Environmental Business but with a largely unchanged business sphere. There are no core business value changes in this, the current state of affairs.
It is only in the third part of the info-graphic that we see the transformation in its final form. The business world is now embedded in the ecosystem to reflect our experiences and the best scientific knowledge that we now possess about the constitution of ourselves and of the living world. Here, we are part of a dynamic, interdependent, inclusive and autonomous Economic-Ecology. We are now nurturing nature and ourselves simultaneously. Note how in this final representation, the white male businessperson has been joined by a dark-skinned businesswomen to reflect increasing inclusion and also that their feet (if we could see them) are grounded in the ecosystem. (N.B. See Part Two of this post “Understanding the Transformation” to find an explanation of the graphic’s two terms “Primal” and “Economic Ecology”.)
"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
Becoming one with nature is the last word of any progress, science, common sense, good taste and excellent manners.
