In 1992, representatives from around the world gathered in Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations Summit on Environment and Development. The "Earth Summit" considered issues such as toxic waste, alternative energy, and water scarcity; it was one of first global gatherings to ponder human life on the planet in the context of finite resources and interdependent interests.
If your child was born that year, he or she is now an adult, maybe in school, maybe working. And pondering a future that will certainly be affected by climate change and the resource shortages, population shifts and potential strife it may bring. Twenty years, to that child, is a lot of time – a lifetime – in which to have made progress toward a more sustainable world. The question is, have we?
As the UN works toward convening the "Rio + 20" conference in Rio de Janeiro later this year, I asked a handful of local sustainability leaders to share their thoughts about what the most significant changes (or lack of changes) regarding sustainability in business have been since 1992. Here's what they said.
Joel Solomon, Renewal2 Fund
•sustainable investing, social enterprise
"The wake-up has happened. Critical mass has been reached. Businesses and consumers all know that planetary limits on resources are within sight. New efficiencies, process and product overhauls, and smarter inputs, toward long-term resource stewardship, are a given. Today and tomorrow's economic opportunity is in retooling goods and services for full life-cycle responsibility and longer term ecological intelligence.
"The global economy faces a troubling dilemma. Population growth, demand for rising standards of living, and systemic increase in energy use drive the expansion of carbon pollution to dangerous planetary levels. We have critical choices to make, and we need to make them soon."
Peter ter Weeme, Junxion Strategy
•sustainability strategy, marketing
"I think one of the greatest advancements is the GRI [Global Reporting Initiative] and the fact that in just over a decade we have managed to create some pretty good standards around sustainability reporting. After all, generally accepted accounting principles had seven decades to take shape while double-entry bookkeeping goes back to monks in the Italian Renaissance.
"The thing that saddens/frustrates me the most is that the world (business leaders included) has failed to address climate in any meaningful way. It's a shocking travesty and one that I am certain we will look back on in the future and wish we had handled differently. The technology is there. We just lack the will. I've been working on the issue since 1997, and the progress has been glacial (a metaphor that will lose meaning at the rate of the current warming/melting trend)."
Coro Strandberg, Strandberg Consulting
•corporate sustainability, governance, investing
"Since 1992, the business case for sustainability has been proven; the model for integrating sustainability into business has been developed, and sustainability has moved from being a responsibility of mid-level management to that of boards of directors. Now sustainability is a material concern for growing numbers of investors (a marginal interest in 1992) to $20 trillion of global assets – about 10% of capital markets. Twenty years ago sustainability was a marginal factor in supply chains. Today about 75% of buyers take sustainability into account when making purchasing decisions.
"While the why and how of business sustainability has become clear since Rio, the gap between the rich and poor in Canada and other OECD countries continues to rise. It has hit an all-time record high according to a recent international wage gap report put out by the OECD. In 2008, the top 10% of Canadians earned 10 times as much as the bottom 10%, up from a ratio of eight to one in the early 1990s – a trend that is much the same for most OECD countries. Sustainable development will not be achieved until we can address this income inequality."
Helen Goodland, Brantwood Consulting Partnership
•sustainable building
"The positive changes include the rise of the younger generation to positions of authority. They (we?) get it and are working on solutions in government, business and society; the fact that the climate catastrophe bookshelf at Chapters is now a whole section; and the fact that we've experienced mass human denial in the past (Galileo, Columbus, etc.) and survived.
"The negative changes sadly outweigh the positive: the proliferation of petroleum-fuelled stuff; the fact that we are still making and buying tons of over-packaged crap; the brazen greenwashing of large manufacturing companies who are still not accountable for their impact under our building standards in any meaningful way. We still do not use life-cycle assessment for gauging impacts of the materials we use; the absolute disregard of climate change by our federal government. Why are the Europeans scooping up our 'green' jobs?; the lack of investment in new green solutions that are not predicated on future consumption, pretending we can buy our way out of the problem; the futility of GDP and economic growth as the measure of all things. Why are we still predicating our future on a measure of progress established at a time when we believed we enjoyed limitless resources?"
Cheeying Ho, Whistler Centre for Sustainability
•sustainable community development
"One thing that's changed a lot in 20 years is that we now have significant businesses that are demonstrating how to operate sustainably and thrive that we can point to, learn from and draw models from. Vancity Credit Union is one. Over the past 20 years, it has become a leader in corporate social responsibility, social accountability, social finance, and climate initiatives; also, in how it puts its money where its mouth is, such as investing in Pigeon Park Savings and Dockside Green. They're leading by example."
There is a lot, it turns out, to celebrate in 20 years of progress toward sustainability on the planet. And yet so much work to do, given the impacts of carbon and the global inequities of development. With an abdication of leadership at the federal level, the business sector is an increasingly important place for vision and innovation, and a commitment to ensuring that kids born today have the chance to enjoy a sustainable future. This year's Rio + 20 summit is another global step. More important will be what the readers of these pages will do, this year and ongoing, to make sustainability truly hit ground. •
