Companies like Whole Foods have developed successful business models to meet particular environmental and social needs but it is not necessarily as straight forward for mainstream brands.

“Innovation is most powerful when it’s activated by collaboration between unlikely partners, coupled with investment dollars, marketing know-how and determination. Now is the time for big, bold solutions. Incremental change won’t get us where we need to go fast enough or at a scale that makes a difference.” — Mark Parker, CEO, NIKE, Inc. at the LAUNCH 2020 Summit

I recently finished Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia, and came away with new perspectives on, and examples of, strong private sector leadership on environmental and social issues. The authors’ examples from Whole Foods – generous employee benefits, transparency and equity of salaries, etc. – are impressive and might be enough to soothe customers displeased by Whole Foods’ CEO Mackey’s candid views on topics such as health care, climate change and unions.

Like others before them (see my blog on Creating Shared Value), the authors attempt to differentiate their concept with others such as sustainability, citizenship and CSR. Yet Mackey and Sisodia essentially offer the same thesis: companies that consider and manage a broad array of stakeholder interests (beyond meeting the needs of shareholders alone) will perform better financially over the long run. This viewpoint is now more or less commonplace amongst large, global companies, a development we should celebrate….

Gulu, Uganda - Copyright (c) Livia Martini

My junior year of college I spent a year living between Northern Uganda and Rwanda. Like most twenty-something liberal arts school students who graduate from an international studies program, I was convinced I would change the world and that living abroad would show me how. I returned to the United States disheartened; ashamed at myself for being naïve enough to think I had the answers, and convinced that poverty was unsolvable. Three years and many life turns later, I’ve begun to rethink the issue of poverty alleviation….

Image: OiMax (Flickr)

We are reminded constantly that humanity faces unprecedented challenges: climate change, resource constraints, economic volatility, over and under nutrition, widening inequality, and political conflicts that are increasingly aggravated by these issues. Yet, even as awareness of the causes and potential solutions to these challenges has never been higher, overall progress remains frustratingly slow or non- existent. Understandably, many of us have looked to national and international leaders, multinational companies, universities and other large scale institutions to provide leadership but, while their efforts have been earnest and sometimes substantial, they have so far failed to make very much difference….

Among the myriad challenges facing the human species in the early years of this century there is one that shows up on every political and business agenda from Pretoria to Paris, Lusaka to London, and Windhoek to Washington: how to sustain economic growth. So dominant is this discourse that those who dare to question it can be readily dismissed as lunatics, so far outside the mainstream as to appear out of touch with reality. Can’t they see? We need to create jobs…

Before the massive Rio+20 conference in Brazil earlier this month, Chris Coulter of GlobeScan, Dan Hendrix of Interface and I published Icebergs Near Rio? The article explored sustainable development progress since the original 1992 Earth Summit asked whether policymakers would seize the opportunity of the anniversary event to chart a future course capable of accelerating and scaling sustainability in the manner we believe necessary, or, like that fabled and fated ship, risk a Titanic …

If you’ve been watching any of the news coming out of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, you would not be blamed for thinking that it will ultimately fail. Many have decried the final Rio outcome document as weak and watered down. Several leaders have spoken out against the final version expressing dismay that it does not offer a more ambitious agenda. United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said in his opening remarks to the general assembly earlier this week, “Let me be frank: …

In the past few months, certain media articles have left me wondering what impact the mixed economic fortunes of various leading nations will have on sustainability leadership emanating from them.

It is awfully tempting to ignore the Rio+20 Earth Summit.

If you’ve been listening to the echo chamber of low expectations surrounding the summit, you can’t be blamed for doing so. Many companies and even some environmental NGOs are keeping their heads down.

But it’s not in business’ best interest to ignore the summit. We’re in the midst of a tipping of …

This article originally appeared on Ethical Corporation website.

At the end of this year the first commitment period of the Kyoto protocol expires. Not because it has succeeded in tackling climate change. Far from it. While there were many positive effects resulting from the protocol, getting carbon reductions down to a safe level has not been one of them.

The climate challenge looms larger than ever, and the governments of the world still don’t have a plan to address it. …

As a temporary London resident in the run-up to the just-completed mayoral election, I was intrigued by the platforms (and I must admit, the mudslinging) of each of the vying candidates, seeing the obvious parallels to hotly contested races in the U.S.

But what really grabbed my attention wasn’t happening in London and didn’t include potential office-seekers on a ballot. Instead, ten cities across the U.K. voted on whether to ditch the traditional cabinet model of leadership in favor of an elected mayor. Reading through the arguments in the British media for and against mayors …

I write as I begin my life at SustainAbility, at the close of a weekend which saw Cambridge – my home town – hosting WordFest, a wonderful mélange of ideas and people. And if I needed any further convincing of the importance of the work I am about to undertake, then this weekend did the trick.

Uncertainty and anxiety are ubiquitous nowadays. The global economy remains fragile, and even where it does show some life, the continued volatility (and upward trajectory) of energy and other commodity prices is there to beat back any real sense of momentum.

Meanwhile, progress on grand challenges like climate change, food and water security, and sustainable consumption is either halting or nonexistent, and there is declining confidence that large institutions, including governments, multilateral organizations, companies and even large NGOs, will lead the way in addressing them.

That’s the general feeling at the global level, and across many countries. But look through the prism of cities…

SustainAbility Council member Gary Kendall shares this report following a recent visit to China – in particular a portion of his journey featuring a cruise down the Yangtze River and through the locks at the infamous Three Gorges Dam.

“That’s my new house” – my Chinese tour guide gestured toward a row of featureless apartment blocks beneath our vantage point overlooking the river – “and that’s where I used to live.” She showed me a photograph of a modest two-storey structure within the walls of the ancient city of Fengjie. It presumably remains intact, albeit more than 150 metres underwater.

This stretch of the Yangtze – roughly 660km from Chongqing to Sandouping – is much less a river than a lake these days…

Copyright (c) Kyra Choucroun

Despite years of thinking about the traditional model of economic growth, it wasn’t until I drove through rural Ghana that it truly hit me just how spectacularly it has failed to deliver on the promise of global prosperity.

In my last blog I challenged the widely held belief that infinite growth is both necessary and viable. That piece generated a flood of responses, from howls of protest at one extreme to speaking invitations at the other. And it was one of those invitations that led me to Ghana in the first place, to share my views on how Africa can play a part in tackling the world’s most complex challenges at a youth-led conference in Kumasi.

This post was co-authored by Mark Lee (SustainAbility) and Chris Coulter, (GlobeScan) and originally appeared on Guardian Sustainable Business on 15 September 2011.

It’s tough now to be optimistic about policy, the economy or their combination. The eurozone is reeling in the face of defaults and potential defaults as well as lack of shared vision about managing and paying for future challenges. US stock markets entered August downbeat after the bitterly partisan deficit showdown. They then suffered major declines by the month’s end, while the job-creation numbers released at the start of September suggest American economic malaise will linger. Emerging economies remain vibrant, even boisterous, but questions about inflation in Brazil and elsewhere are amplifying, debate over corruption has taken centre stage in India and pundits wonder how China can maintain torrid growth while its western export markets remain in the doldrums.

In early July, after nearly a year of drafting and several rounds of consultations with business and civil society, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India announced the adoption of the National Voluntary Guidelines for Social, Environmental and Economic Responsibilities of Business…

In just the last few weeks, one of the worst E. coli outbreaks in history has killed 37 people and made more than 2,600 ill, academics concluded that climate change will have more negative consequences for agriculture than expected, and the UN’s Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization released a guide warning “world farming needs a ‘major shift’ to more sustainable practices as intensive crop production since the 1960s has degraded soils, depleted ground water and caused pest outbreaks.”

Industry and food system experts interviewed for SustainAbility’s latest report, Appetite for Change, read trends such as these and conclude that the food industry is failing…

At the end of last year, my colleagues and I wrote, debated, and then re-wrote a blog on ten sustainability trends from 2010. Now that 2011 is underway, here are five trends we’re watching closely. We hope you’ll join the discussion and share your thoughts on the key issues appearing (and not appearing) on this list.

Despite the hope microfinance has not made poverty history - once again we are in need of new inclusive business models.

Rachel Botsman talks about a powerful force that is re-inventing not just what we consume, but how we consume it.