Slow progression not the way ahead for green sustainability

Aug 25 2008 Agenda

In the run-up to The Birmingham Post’s Big Debate on sustainable strategies, environmental business expert David Middleton argues that now is the time to step up the pace of change.

I was delighted to learn through The Birmingham Post of Birmingham City University’s green attitudes survey and its own review of its sustainability performance.

Of course it is essential that tomorrow’s leaders do understand sustainability and it is interesting to me that increasing numbers of members of the Birmingham-based Business Council for Sustainable Development – United Kingdom (BCSD-UK) of which I am CEO report that the bright young people they are trying to recruit are keen to find how committed their potential new employers are to sustainable development.

It is also encouraging that increasing numbers of people understand the magnitude of the programme of social transformation that we as the dominant species on this planet are entering. This is not an optional course for us to consider but a no choice situation driven by a set of unique circumstances that many have seen coming for years but against which little or no action has been taken. So now we are left with no alternatives.

It is not difficult to see why we essentially need to change the way we function as a society.

We have polluted our atmosphere with more greenhouse gases than is sustainable – a global increase of 75 per cent since 1970 – to a level which almost certainly is now contributing to climate change. More of us are living on our planet with numbers going from three billion in 1959 to six billion by 1999 and an expected nine billion by 2040 and we have some mind blowing economic growth and social change going on in places like China and India.

That growth is placing our global energy supply under severe test. People are changing their cultural styles which is causing pressures, not least of which is to the food supply industry. We are also increasingly becoming city dwellers with only three per cent of us living in cities in 1800 but 47 per cent of us by the end of the 20th century.

And our cities our growing. In 1950 the world had 83 cities with a population exceeding a million. By 2007 it was 468.

Look how many ancient cities died because they eventually could not bring enough food and water to their people.

As an aside, whilst there is much discussion about the carbon economy, a recent BCSD-UK workshop concluded that we may also be entering a water economy, such will be the pressure and accompanying new values on this essential basic raw material without which life cannot be sustained.

So society MUST transform the way it functions.

The good news is that we probably already have many of the solutions we need to achieve change. And in the development of those solutions, many of which are environmentally related and which consist of new products and new services, we can generate a wealth based on those responses which will enable us to undertake the social work we need to fulfil.

There are many examples around the world of this happening already. But there are two major hurdles standing in our way.

The hurdles are of equal problematical strength and complexity so what follows is not an order of priority.

Our willingness to confront change is a problem, especially those of us living in developed countries and many of which have enjoyed unprecedented life-style improvements.

The rate of progress has been phenomenal and in the period of one generation the changes to how we live have been remarkable.

A “I want it and I want it now” culture has become part of the psyche of modern day living and this culture and way of life is difficult to slow down or even turn away from.

Most of us don’t like change anyway, especially if it is to compromise our perceived comforts and pleasures.

And too often we fail to stop and consider – and react to – the fact that this achievement of modern day comforts and delights has not been globally equitable. It hasn’t even been equitable in our own country let alone on a world-wide scale and the differentials have stimulated disquiet and unrest leading to extreme and dangerous situations.

In my life the dominant concern has been the chasing of the buck.

That is why economic development continues to take priority over political strategies and delivery programmes, why the Treasury dominates government departments, and why in chasing the economic goals we have taken the eye off the ball of the other elements of sustainable development – environmental protection, social responsibility and the prudent use of natural resources which are not renewable. The sustainable development rule is that you cannot chase one of these values without equal consideration to the others.

Clearly that has not been the rule of thumb in my lifetime.

The speed of change that we need to achieve is of major concern.

Most people engaging with this subject agree that we must get things right by 2050. It we haven’t by then, we never will. The consequences have been well researched and the forecasts are not to be dwelt on.

But like changing the direction of a supertanker, changing the way we live and how we respond to the challenges headlined earlier is a slow process. And the worrying thing is that against the graph line between now and 2050 and the key targets to be achieved by critical dates, we are falling off the line. And the more we fall off the line, the less likely becomes our ability to meet the 2050 targets.

Sustainable development is about reaching a state in which life becomes sustainable on our single planet home. At the moment it clearly isn’t. So we need an influx of young and determined minds to start accelerating the process – to transform the cumbersome, deadly slow and complex political bureaucracy that stifles dynamic progress and sucks enthusiasm from entrepreneurial spirits.

And we need a new style of business leader which recognises that business as usual in the old form is a redundant concept. Sustainable development values now need to be embedded right through the heart and every function of the corporate animal.

And there is lots of evidence that the process of change has started. We can see the move to renewable energy.

We can see changing habits in how we move about and how much we move and travel. We can see manufacturers starting to realise they need to get production back close to markets. We see new ways of doing business – a more ethically based business model emerging.

But though there is evidence of change, it is quite frankly not enough and not fast enough. It needs to be of revolutionary proportions and dynamic in its progression.

It needs to be a radical step change and not one of slow progression. It needs to be positive, not a response to the negative issues but one undertaken in a spirit of progress, ethical values and concern one for another.

We can do it. We must do it. Will we? Don’t know.

* David Middleton is CEO of the two not-for-profit sustainable development business networks – the Business Council for Sustainable Development – United Kingdom, and the Midlands Environmental Business Company. Both are managed by Environmental Business Communications of which he is MD.