Road to Rio+20
Moving up closer to the coming UN Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, policy-makers and multilateral stakeholders involved in threshing out steps towards a green economy are getting more intensely wrapped up in the many issues that confront them. Well, these issues confront us all, as one humanity trying to live through the challenge and effects brought about by climate change not only on an environmental level, but social and industrial ones as well. I found myself plugged in again to this mainstream discussion when I received an e-mail from one of the ladies I was with last month at the Hague, Netherlands. I had been invited as a panelist (to represent Asia, and the SMEs sector/ECHOstore as a women-led business and social enterprise) to be part of the consultative discussions of the business action for sustainable development for input into the official Rio+20 agenda. Exchanges of e-mails between a small group of us focused on what we each could commit towards the coming conference’s themes of working towards a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, and the issue of women and gender inclusion in the institutional framework.
What was clear during the Hague discussion was that governments can only try to answer the challenges we face today on the policy level. The business and civil society need to come in actively with practical steps on the ground to focus on major issues such as of energy, water, our polluted oceans, land and ecosystems, resource efficiency and poverty eradication.
Allow me to continue sharing with you my take-aways from that conference:
Opting-in. We can’t just decide to go off and live an alternative lifestyle and “opt-out.” Rather, choose “opting-in” to change lifestyles that would add value. So we see corporations embracing CSR, conscious consumerism practices, sustainable production processes, social enterprises — all these examples of opting-in choices.
Innovative implementation. All policies created by governments are useless without implementation from business and civil society. We are all in this together in trying to find new ways of solving problems. There is no blueprint to follow. Instead, the call is for looking at different aspects and fixing different priorities when making production processes, products and services more sustainable across the whole value chain.
It’s 4, not 3 Ps: People, Planet, Profit. This is what we understand by the triple bottom line that must be balanced (and within Public-Private Partnerships). But the three Ps make no sense if we do not learn to step back and bring in “Pneuma,” which supplements the People-Planet-Profit triad. Pneuma, which means “spirit,” suggests that we bring spirituality into the equation. This allows us to remove ourselves briefly from the hectic issues of living in our world today and see everything with an “inner sense” aimed at promoting the higher values of harmony (with one’s self and the environment). The Earth Charter (output of Rio 1994) says that our direction is to “openly declare our responsibility towards each other, towards the wider community and towards future generations.” The hard task of breathing new awareness, vitality to the world economy and the turn around it must make, is anchored on spirituality and ethics. Anchored on values of equal sharing and less greed so poverty can be eradicated. Anchored on the right kind of pride when each of us, our company or organization can shout out to the world that we are doing all we can to make the world a better place, attaining new levels of personal or corporate social responsibility within the parameters of the triple bottom line. When inner personal change truly manifests in the outer action for positive change. This is “Pneuma” in action.
Scary to caring. The challenges we and the planet face are global megaforces with issues like natural resources scarcity (50 percent less fresh water by 2030 due to global demand); population growth (10 billion people by end of the 21st century, which means a whole range of issues on food, water, health, education, etc); changing wealth patterns lead to changing production patterns; energy insecurity as the global energy supply is becoming more volatile; food and security; climate change. All these affect each other. Scary! The initial gut feel would be fear. Our challenge is to look towards caring and the will to change our lifestyle, choices and way of doing business.
Transition phase. The movement towards the green economy is slowly but surely happening. It will not happen overnight. But as we remain conscious that we are shifting, then we will be open to all the new possibilities and innovative ways that we can make the transition happen faster, and collaborate.
The DNA of the green economy. Three pillars need to be looked at and woven together as we move towards the green economy. The first is social innovation (awareness and understanding of the issues, education and skills training, and employment). The second pillar is environmental innovation, which includes resource efficiency where the finite world resources must be managed with scarcity in mind. The life cycle approach ensures that every part of the value chain from raw material extraction all the way to the final recycling or reuse of a product is sustainable. The third pillar is economic innovation, which includes open and competitive markets; the use of metrics, accounting and reporting of green growth measures; and finance and investments.
The Road to Rio+20 actually makes a stop this June in Rio de Janeiro. But as all journeys are, the evolutionary transition towards a green economy will involved our lifetime.
