THE CLOCK IS TICKING.
We have 14 years left to achieve #global goals and save the planet.
At the time of writing this blogpost, the global economic system is still plagued by recent multiple crises with significant consequences for the world’s poor. Highly volatile and rising oil prices put further pressure on the gains that have been achieved through economic development. Rapidly increasing food and commodity prices, in part driven by increased fuel prices, reflect further the inter-linkages of economic and environmental challenges. Considering a projected population of 9 billion in 2050, feeding the world will be a major challenge, given current consumption trends. Putting in place a more sustainable food supply systems is clearly an urgent need.
This is alarming for both non-renewable and renewable resources that depend on ecosystems, which can irreversibly collapse after overexploitation.
Most of people all around the world don’t know what is going on. It is about developed and not developed countries. People only see what is on surface — growing number of supermarkets and restaurants, technologies those are making our lives easier and happier, without thinking about next day. It seems win-win situation both for producers and consumers of these goods. That shows the biggest problem — lack of systems thinking, seeing bigger picture, all elements from the side of decision makers.
Fortunately everything is not so lost. That what I can say after UNLEASH Lab 2017 — meeting of one thousand talents also entrepreneurs from all over the world those are trying to take a lead in achievement SDGs. It is unique platform to bring own experience and brainstorm on potential solutions.
Several conclusions I did during this event which I want to share with public.
1.We need good storytelling. Even people with professional background don’t feel the problem at personal level.
Modern world is like a “consumption trap”, where are blocked all of stakeholders. It is really hard to say today if demand is driving offer or the opposite, as they are so interlinked to each other. It is clear we have a kind of dependence from each other that is impossible to break easily. That require decades of work to achieve some sustainability. Denmark can be a good example for this, which is “ticking” both businesses and consumers through different regulations. The result is that production of electricity from renewables accounted for 56.0% of Danish domestic electricity supply in 2015. The largest contribution came from wind power at 41.8%, and biomass at 11.0%. It is interesting that after these measures it has not only decreased the carbon dioxide emissions but also gross energy consumption level (https://stateofgreen.com/en/profiles/danish-energy-agency/news/danish-energy-statistics-2015-renewables-now-cover-56-of-electricity-consumption)
2.Market driven sustainability only can be progressive. I don’t know if there is such kind of term, but again I made this conclusion based on some Danish companies like Carlsberg, Grundfos, Lego, Bestseller, Novozymes etc. which are putting serious efforts for making their productions more resource efficient and environmentally friendly. I am sure this is mostly not a results of regulations but own development strategy.
“Business as usual” is not an option; they will not survive in a world of resource scarcity and rapid growth of human population.
“It is more profitable to be sustainable” what we can conclude from the interviews of CEOs of such advanced companies as Tesla, Patagonia, Unilever, Nike, Adidas, Puma, H&M etc. Sure they are not majority yet but as soon as they become a critical mass the rest will follow them.
Donella H. Meadows explains the situation very well at “The Limits to Growth” published in 1972 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth). The book used the World3 model to simulate the consequence of interactions between the Earth’s and human systems.
3.Systems thinking is applicable at any level — starting from personal care and finishing with global solutions. In case of economy it is mostly based on circular economy aspects that consider actions within “cradle to cradle” frames.
4. How to be sustainable without losing market — developing supercompany ? That is a serious challenge for businesses those are not able to go for this risk. It is uncertainty because they are not applying systems thinking for decision making and they don’t have vision on this. There are also other issues we have identified such as lack of knowledge, lack of incentives that have crucial influence. This still needs detail studies, tested on practice examples. The observations of natural ecosystems can be helpful in these studies.
5. When resource are degrading we are competing for them…so one way to promoting peace is to promote sustainable management and equitable distribution of resources.
