Strong on China

07 Sep 2007 – John Elkington

One of the more extraordinary people I talked to at this evening’s WEF Gala Soiree was Maurice Strong, who turned out to be on our table. He, it hardly needs saying, was one of the godfathers of the sustainable development movement. His Wikipedia entry may be a mixed bag, but there is no question but that he has been an extraordinary eminence grise, or verte, and over many decades.

Among many other things, Maurice was the organiser of the first UN environment conference, held in Stockholm in 1972, and then founder-executive-director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Happily, UNEP have been a long-standing partner in SustainAbility’s work on what has variously been called environmental sustainability and/or non- or extra-financial reporting. This work has now branched into three strands of work programmes: (1) Global Reporters; (2) Engaging Stakeholders; and (3) the searchable online Learn from the Leaders database on sustainability reporting.

Later still, Maurice was a member of the Brundtland Commission, which reported in 1987, a few months after we founded SustainAbility. Their report, Our Common Future, established sustainable development as an emerging global priority. Always an early bird, he moved to China a while back, sensing that this is where the future was happening. It will be fascinating to see whether these two great interests of his – sustainability and China – can co-evolve.