More people are beginning to understand the link between international security, the environment and corporate responsibility, says an expert on business sustainability.
And after the terrorist attacks of last September and the messy fallout from the Enron accounting debacle, “more and more senior executives are looking at the morality of their business operations,” says Brian Nattrass.
“Any thinking person who considers the roots of 9-11 and other terrorist activities knows there is a very large and disenfranchised population on the planet – and so our future security depends less on creating a fortress world than on creating the conditions where more and more people can be brought into the abundance and prosperity we enjoy here in the West.”
“Will we be wise enough to expend human and financial resources to deal with the root causes of social breakdown around the world?”
Nattrass spoke to business audiences in both Calgary and Edmonton last week in back-to-back seminars sponsored by the Alberta government and Nexen and organized by the Calgary-based educational and research consortium Alliance for Capitalizing on Change.
Nattrass is a Canada-based director of the Natural Step, a non-profit advisory and think tank founded in Sweden by a cancer doctor who observed and traced the cause of a growing number of childhood leukemia cases to increasing toxins in the environment due to human production processes.
Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt set up The Natural Step in 1989 to address the systemic causes of environmental problems, defining a set of system conditions for a sustainable society.
Major Swedish companies began incorporating the framework into their business practices, and today, The Natural Step (TNS) is an international organization that helps both corporations and businesses integrate sustainability into their core operations.
Multi-national corporations including McDonald’s, IKEA, Electrolux, Home Depot and Starbucks subscribe to TNS business practices.
Nattrass says one of TNS’s major clients, Nike Inc., is an example of a company which has struggled with multiple ethical issues, including boycotts over sweatshop labour practices and the potentially toxic ingredients used in the making of running shoes.
The giant sports company operates 750 factories on six continents, with its suppliers, shippers, retailers and service providers employing close to a million people. International boycotts against Nike, among the five best-known brands in the world, were one factor in the company’s drive to shift towards more sustainable business practices, says Nattrass, who added while he was not an apologist for his client, “they are authentically engaged in a process of change.”
The sneaker company has committed itself, among other initiatives, to work towards a zero-waste policy including a reuse-a-shoe recycling program, a zero level of toxic substances used in their products and an “inter-generational quality of life” for its workers, including doing business with factories that respect worker rights.
Other companies in Canada and around the world can follow Nike’s example for sustainable change, believes Nattrass, adding corporate responsibility bears “real dividends”.
But he noted several grim signposts which indicate global change – especially in the West – will soon be a necessity, not a luxury.
Human consumption is increasing while resources, including water availability per person, are decreasing.
But even greater than the risk of running out of resources, he believes, is the incessant toxification and destruction of the environment that supports life.
“What Nike and many other organizations are starting to understand is that we are living in a global funnel where life-supporting resources are in decline and consumption of life-supporting resources is rising. “We are running out of time and space for some fundamental solutions on this planet,” Nattrass said.
“I don’t have a crystal ball, but I feel things are going to get profoundly worse before they get better. The signs are all there.”
Following the speech, Nattrass said he believes Alberta energy companies – many of which have implemented sustainable corporate responsibility and environmental strategies – will follow the path of industry leaders such as BP and Shell in accepting the link between climate change and fossil fuel emissions. “British Petroleum and Shell have both acknowledged that climate change is a reality and that human causes are the largest contributor to climate change,” he added.
“You’ve got two of the three largest energy companies in the world accepting it, and making progress towards doing something about it. Both of those companies are in the process of redefining themselves as energy companies.”
Nattrass and his partner Mary Altomare Nattrass, who are based in Gibsons Landing, B.C., have co-written Dancing With The Tiger: Learning Sustainability Step by Natural Step.
His message of biological balance and the Earth as a fragile interconnected system differs from other commentators such as Dr. David Suzuki, Nattrass says, “because I work with the companies.”
“I accept their need to make a profit,” he adds, “and the challenge of making the internal transition towards a more benign way of doing business.”
(Click here to e-mail Lisa Dempster)
