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New report calls for 'extended leadership' on sustainability
un articulo por Chris Guenther for GreenBiz

Each year, the Worldwatch Institute publishes its flagship State of the World report. The 2013 edition is organized around whether sustainability is still an attainable goal. In the opening chapter, Worldwatch President Robert Englemen asks starkly, "In the wake of failed international environmental and climate summits, when national governments take no actions commensurate with the risk of catastrophic environmental change, are there ways humanity might still alter current behaviors to make them sustainable? Is sustainability still possible?"



click on photo to enlarge

This is similar to the starting point for a new report from SustainAbility and GlobeScan, Changing Tack: Extending Corporate Leadership on Sustainable Development. The report is the final, summative output of The Regeneration Roadmap, an 18-month project designed to assess progress on sustainable development during the last 25 years, and to consider how to more thoroughly accelerate and scale such progress in response to the growing urgency of economic, social and environmental challenges today.

Not surprisingly, Changing Tack finds that the macro picture isn't very good. Despite decades of well-intentioned effort and dialogue, as well as genuine improvement in social and economic welfare in many parts of the world, nearly every metric of global environmental health is still moving in the wrong direction, while inequity, volatility and political upheaval continue to cause damaging social disruptions in rich and poor countries alike. Taken together, these trends threaten to undermine or reverse progress on development more generally, and to severely constrain opportunities for future prosperity.

This is the sustainable development challenge in a nutshell, and Changing Tack joins a chorus of voices proclaiming we still have a long way to go to improve the overall outlook. That perspective doesn't overlook the great number of positive examples and trends we do observe, which, even if not yet adequate in macro terms, are both encouraging and important. Indeed, real change is often the result of years and years of trial and error, accumulated effort and plenty of starts and stops along the way. As such, it is likely that we wouldn't recognize a meaningful tipping point on sustainable development until well after it has occurred. Still, it is not radical to acknowledge that more and faster progress is needed in order for civilization to outrun the worst of what the future may hold.

While acknowledging the vital role of both civil society and governments in driving the agenda early on, Changing Tack recognizes the increasing role and importance of private-sector leadership today, and while others (particularly governments) cannot be left behind, we see the private sector as having the greatest potential to drive forward progress in the short term.

This conclusion is partly a response to stubborn reality: as Rio+20 and recent climate change summits have proved, governments are still largely incapable of delivering meaningful, enforceable international policy frameworks for critical issues, and civil society organizations (for now) lack adequate influence and resources to compel them to do so. It also rests on the view that business has both the reasons and resources needed to chart the course toward a more sustainable global economy, and to pull governments, consumers and other critical actors along with them.

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Annie Leonard: How to Be More than a Mindful Consumer

The way we make and use stuff is harming the world—and ourselves. To create a system that works, we can't just use our purchasing power. We must turn it into citizen power.

by Annie Leonard
posted Aug 22, 2013

   Stuff activist Annie Leonard: “Consumerism, even when it tries to embrace ‘sustainable’ products, is a set of values that teaches us to define ourselves, communicate our identity, and seek meaning through accumulation of stuff, rather than through our values and activities and our community.” YES! photo by Lane Hartwell.

Since I released "The Story of Stuff" six years ago, the most frequent snarky remark I get from people trying to take me down a notch is about my own stuff: Don't you drive a car? What about your computer and your cellphone? What about your books? (To the last one, I answer that the book was printed on paper made from trash, not trees, but that doesn't stop them from smiling smugly at having exposed me as a materialistic hypocrite. Gotcha!)

Let me say it clearly: I'm neither for nor against stuff. I like stuff if it's well-made, honestly marketed, used for a long time, and at the end of its life recycled in a way that doesn't trash the planet, poison people, or exploit workers. Our stuff should not be artifacts of indulgence and disposability, like toys that are forgotten 15 minutes after the wrapping comes off, but things that are both practical and meaningful. British philosopher William Morris said it best: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

Too many T-shirts

The life cycle of a simple cotton T-shirt—worldwide, 4 billion are made, sold, and discarded each year—knits together a chain of seemingly intractable problems, from the elusive definition of sustainable agriculture to the greed and classism of fashion marketing.

The story of a T-shirt not only gives us insight into the complexity of our relationship with even the simplest stuff; it also demonstrates why consumer activism—boycotting or avoiding products that don’t meet our personal standards for sustainability and fairness—will never be enough to bring about real and lasting change. Like a vast Venn diagram covering the entire planet, the environmental and social impacts of cheap T-shirts overlap and intersect on many layers, making it impossible to fix one without addressing the others.

I confess that my T-shirt drawer is so full it's hard to close. . ... continuación.


Este artículo ha sido publicado on line el June 16, 2013.