Business as if people and planet mattered
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What is business? Stripped to its core, it is little more than a collection of people in common pursuit of an objective. The right objective, we believe, is to transform planetary resources into human well-being while staying within our ecological limits. In pursuing this objective we must maintain the highest standards of moral conduct and social justice, respecting life and nature.
Human well-being does not just mean satisfied customers and happy employees; it means looking after the whole supply chain and all stakeholders’ interests, including society as a whole.
Staying within ecological limits means not only cutting carbon emissions, it means minimising all uses of natural resources and aiming to eradicate waste and pollution.
Corporate conduct means acting in a human, value driven way – businesses should treat others with the same respect and morality as we treat each other as citizens, friends and family.
It is possible for businesses to do all this today, so why do many fall short?
There is an imbalance of power between corporations and citizens and we need to redress it. As consumers we can exert our democratic power over businesses by voting with our feet, as well as publicly campaigning against bad corporate conduct. As citizens we can hold government to account to resist lobbying and vested interests, to set the rules of the market in the public interest, and to enforce them rigorously.
But do we also need to question the impact of scale? Can giant global corporations, owned by remote shareholders, and with supply chains stretched across the planet, ever be trusted to act as if people and planet mattered more than profit?
About Tony Greenham
After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, he worked in UK Equity Capital Markets first with Barclays Bank and then Credit Suisse.
Prior to joining nef, Tony was working with the Transition Towns movement, a network of community initiatives implementing local solutions to the challenges of climate change, peak oil and economic regeneration. He helped set up Transition Training and Consulting, providing strategic sustainability advice to organisations, and remains a Trustee of Transition Network, which supports the international movement.
Tony also advises the UK Government as a member of the Regional Growth Fund advisory panel.
I share your views and position concerning our economy and global affairs. I am currently striving to hold workshops that will recycle materials discarded by local businesses and using it for artwork projects. Reading your views gives me the inspiration to continue with my efforts.
Had a long discussion with fiance last night about the state of things and our consensus was in scaling down—government, policy-making, right on down to buying–it all needs to stay in manageable communities, or be, as in the case of Etsy, a direct maker to consumer line so that clear transactions are made only by the parties involved, in the manner of their choosing. Applause for your commitment to ecological issues as the foremost consideration–have always wondered how anyone expects to get anything accomplished or made without a responsible understanding of the give and take of raw natural resources…ludicrous not to see that this is the heart of the matter, and why there is so much disconnect.
Thank you for a very “whole” view of our global imperative! Moments ago, I was looking at the 1987 definition of sustainability from the Brundtland report where the word needs was the evaluating factor: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Your definition has a much more human slant – I like the concept of well-being more than needs (how many LCD tv’s do we need?).