18 - Changing direction: corporations as ambassadors for the environment?

Summary

Hitting hard – corporations and the environment

Nature pays for economic growth

The term sustainability was coined over three decades ago, and has since then become a challenge that can no longer be ignored by any major international company. Progress towards a more sustainable society has, however, been slow. During those decades, the economic model on which our global society is based has not become fundamentally more sustainable. Economic development and the creation of wealth still rely on the exploitation of (largely finite) natural resources. Commonly used indicators for progress, such as the measurement of Gross Domestic Product, do not take the depletion of natural resources or the pollution of the natural environment into account. The external costs of resource use and the associated pollution are not being internalized. Rather, society as a whole is carrying the burden, as well as the costs associated with this burden. To make things worse, the burden is shared unequally across the globe: people in poor countries often carry a larger share of the burden than those in richer countries. A good example is the impact of climate change, which, in the form of droughts and extreme weather events, is already affecting developing nations to a much greater extent than developed countries, although much of the problem is being caused by consumption and lifestyle patterns in industrialized nations. Simultaneously, poorer developing nations often lack the means to adapt to climatic changes.