Earthrise

For me, and I daresay for many working in the sustainability space, Earth Day has become an opportunity to reflect on the progress we’ve made over the past year, and to think about where we need to focus our efforts going forward….

In a blog posted in the fall of 2012 entitled, What’s the Big Idea, Chris Guenther and I explored the degree to which vision (a Big Idea) enables sustainability performance and leadership and vice versa. We concluded that it does to a very substantial degree, and that the current era is one suffering for lack of the kind of rhetoric that, when backed by appropriate strategy and operational excellence, paints a picture of the change required and provides inspiration that it can be realized….

Collaboration for sustainability: Nike is working with its competitors to develop a systems change programme to eliminate hazardous chemicals from supply chains.

As the Guardian’s Jo Confino wrote at the close of the Rio+20 Conference in June 2012, “the most often used phrases in the many meetings I attended [were] the need to create ‘coalitions of the willing’ and a recognition that ‘all issues are inter-connected’ and cannot be viewed in silos.”

Collaboration is widely acknowledged as vital if we are to address global challenges at the scale and speed we need, but the current rhetoric often fails to acknowledge how hard it is to …

Image: USFS Region 5 (Flickr)

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is now.” Chinese proverb

If planting a tree is a metaphor for taking action on climate change, the old Chinese proverb is wise advice for our present day dilemma. We are, of course, a couple of decades late in taking meaningful steps to transition to the low-carbon economy necessary to safeguard the quality of life and economic prosperity that businesses, governments and individuals strive to achieve and maintain. But just because we should have begun long ago does not mean we should not take action now. Indeed, urgency has been added to necessity, and adaptation has been added to mitigation, as the implications of a warmer world are becoming clearer with each passing year….

In 2001 the International Business Leaders Forum and SustainAbility analyzed the power of corporate boards and identified steps for “mobilizing board leadership to deliver sustainable value to markets and society”. Boards operate with little transparency, so it is hard to tell which, if any, boards adopted those recommendations and the opacity of board activity limits our ability to characterize current good practice. However, it is terribly obvious when boards trip up, and the last decade has been characterized by momentous failures of corporate governance and corporations themselves….

As SustainAbility’s web and digital media manager, I’ve been looking at how online tools and technologies can be used to support our work on The Regeneration Roadmap.

The ambitions for the project are high, and engaging the right people in the right way will be key. Online platforms can play a significant role here: today there are fewer barriers than ever in mobilising people from all backgrounds and geographies to shape and get behind a campaign. From video blogging and social discussion forums to idea generation and crowd sourcing websites, the options available are seemingly endless. But where do you start?…

Everywhere you look, it’s all about the Olympics!

One of the earliest events, occurring the day after the opening ceremonies, was the men’s cycling road race – a 250 km route that finished through the streets of London.

An avid cyclist myself (I am proud to say that I have completed three 100-mile races), I was happy to tune in to catch the end of the race.

As I watched two competitors pull away from the main pack (otherwise known as the peloton) — and sprint toward the finish, I thought about what it takes to win a race like that and what parallels can be drawn for those of us in the sustainability field….

As global carbon emissions rise and fossil fuel demands drive resource availability, the need for leadership on climate and resource innovation and for institutions to act with urgency, addressing long-term constraints is increasingly critical. Prominent examples of leadership in this space, however, remain …

Copyright (c) Unilever

It looks as though Unilever’s Paul Polman decided to take Rio very seriously and has been an active participant in many events here. If anyone doubts his sincerity, they would just need to hear him talk about how the current market system has failed so many on this planet. He spoke at Rio+20 at an event organised by Avoided Deforestation Partners. APD’s founder, Jeff Horowitz is an amazingly self-deprecating man who has had a major influence on the movement to have forests valued as natural capital and thereby avoid deforestation….

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: …

Written with Dan Hendrix, president & chief executive, Interface, and Chris Coulter, president, GlobeScan.

One hundred years since the sinking of the Titanic, it is still debated why that fabled and fated ship hit an iceberg and went under. But surely the root cause was the widespread belief that she was unsinkable.

Twenty years since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro — which did so much to elevate environment and development on the global policy agenda — we fear a similar fate for our planetary ship. …

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 …

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 …

In business, sometimes simplicity is praised and sometimes it is scorned. It can be hard to predict which reaction will win out.

Each year, GlobeScan and SustainAbility survey sustainability experts across corporate, government, NGO, academic, research, and service organizations in 75-plus countries to determine which businesses are perceived to be sustainability leaders, and why. This year’s results remind us that simplicity is a more complex phenomenon than it might appear.

The 2012 Sustainability Leaders Survey was released this month. …

SustainAbility is now in its 25th year and as part of its celebrations launched The Regeneration Roadmap – a look backwards and forwards by some of the brightest folk from the frontline at the successes, failures, hits and misses of 25 years of “sustainability thinking”. From where I stand the glass could be half full or half empty, but what’s more important is “what’s next”? Are we making progress at the rate we need to? How can we accelerate? It’s not that we don’t have …

How can an organisation that buys one-half trillion dollars worth of stuff every year create a sustainable supply chain? That was the question posed to me and about 80 other guests who were invited by the White House to a meeting on March 30.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the General Services Administration (GSA) co-sponsored a group brainstorm on what a Community of Practice for a Sustainable Supply Chain should look like. Put simply, a Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better through regular interaction.
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In March, a report from the Institute for Local Self Reliance was released, mentioning that Wal-Mart was nowhere near meeting the Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) that it had set out in late 2005 – that is, to be 100% powered by renewable energy, create zero waste, and …

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…

This year marks two especially significant milestones in sustainable development: the 20th anniversary of the United Nations’ Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the 25th anniversary of the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future.

How far have we come since the concept of sustainable development was elevated to the global policy agenda?

To put it simply,…