Business leaders present a vision for a sustainable economy
Alejandro Litovsky
March 2, 2010
Last year I was involved in the design of the future scenarios ‘Vision 2050: the New Agenda for Business’, an effort by some of the world’s most influential companies to lay out a pathway for achieving a sustainable world by 2050.
The report suggests that greater sustainability and resource-efficiency will, increasingly, become a precondition for corporate success. “Sustainability will become a key driver for all our investment decisions, said Idar Kreutzer, CEO of Storebrand, a leading Norwegian financial group.
Led by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the Vision 2050 project identified the scope of ecological challenges the corporate sector will face in the coming years as well as related opportunity areas – and involved the participation of companies such as Boeing, Syngenta, Weyerhauser, Procter & Gamble, Alcoa, Duke Energy, Toyota and Volkswagen. The Global Footprint Networkcreated a ‘scenario calculator’ that helped leaders run the numbers on various ecological scenarios and solutions. We profiled the collaboration of WBCSD and the Global Footprint Network in The Phoenix Economy report as an example of how innovators create innovation ecosystems to accelerate their impact.
The Vision 2050 report lays out must-have conditions for making a sustainable society possible, including:
• A system of market pricing that reflects ecological costs, starting with carbon, water and ecosystem services
• Doubling agricultural output without increasing the amount of land or water used
• Halting deforestation and increasing yields from planted forests
• Halving carbon emissions worldwide by 2050 through a shift to low-carbon energy systems and more energy-efficienct goods and services.
• Providing universal access to low-carbon transportation
New rules for markets will drive innovation and competition in the direction of sustainability and away from resource- and energy-intensive production, the report says. Simply put, the costs of producing highly resource-intensive goods will increase, even as demand for such products falls.
“The radical changes highlighted in Vision 2050 demand a different perspective from business leaders, requiring them to rethink how they operate to stay on-track for a sustainable future,” said Samuel A DiPiazza, Jr., former CEO and Chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Read the Vision 2050 report.
