Sustainability in itself as a concept is limited. If you think about the word “to sustain”, it simply means “to endure”, and there are some problems with that as it’s not very inspiring. It allows a lot of companies, economies and societies to be less ambitious because they can follow the path of just minimising damage. The future of sustainability is thriving or what you might also call “regeneration” because at the moment, we’ve been trading off positive and negative impacts. We’ve had, in some sense, positive economic and social impacts and almost entirely negative environmental impacts. This certainly isn’t sustainable, nor is it a long-term solution for thriving in nature, society and the economy.
The concept of thriving is about moving from these breakdowns in nature, society and the economy to breakthroughs. There are six major transitions that we have to go through. For example, in nature, we have two breakdowns: the degradation of ecosystems and depletion of resources. So we have to go from degradation to restoration of ecosystems and from depletion to renewal of resources. We do that through the eco-services economy, where we really start to use our business activities to restore nature and through the circular economy, where we close the loops of materials and energy in society.
In society, the breakdowns are disparity (inequality) and disease, so lack of health and well-being. The transitions we have to make here are from disparity to responsibility and from disease to what I call “revitalisation”. These transitions lead us through the market to an access economy which is all about inclusion, diversity and no discrimination, as well as a well-being economy where we really look after people and improve their health.
The two breakdowns in the economy are disconnection, which is about the unequal access to technology, and disruption, which is about the crises that we face and the real catastrophes that we go through. What we have to do is move from this disconnection to rewiring the economy, and from disruption to resilience and we do that in the market through the digital and risk economies.
These six transitions are the future of sustainability; it’s a future in which we create thriving and regeneration in nature, society and the economy all together instead of trading them off.
2 thoughts on “Corporations will lead the sustainable transformation”
Thank you so much for this inspiring interview! I loved it.
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