Keeping ourselves effective in turbulent times

The following is a guest post from Penny Walker, author of Working Collaboratively: A Practical Guide to Achieving More.

For people leading sustainability, environment or CSR in their organisations, these are turbulent times.

The political and legal context is shifting and uncertain.  Assumptions that we will see a gradual ratcheting up of environmental and social standards are in doubt: no sooner had some of these ideas become mainstream than along comes a populist backlash which threatens to sweep that new orthodoxy away.  The business case is harder to make.

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Somebody Else’s Problem: Consumerism, Sustainability and Design

Ahead of the release of his new book, Somebody Else’s Problem: Consumerism, Sustainability and Design, Robert Crocker examines the pervasive and destructive impacts of our consumption-driven social and economic systems.

Consumerism today represents an unprecedented crisis of values, in ethical, social and material terms. Never before have so many resources and so much energy been used to produce so many goods for so many people. And never before have hundreds of millions of people across the world been so ingeniously encouraged to buy, use and then throw away or upgrade – with increasing rapidity – what they have bought. This has resulted in a world of unsustainable material flows, and a world drowning in waste.

Three Rules of Success for Sustainable Change

The world is at war.

And I’m not talking about the terrible war in Syria or the recent terrorist attacks. I’m talking about the war against the root causes that are real drivers and amplifiers of the aggression we see nowadays. It is a war against depletion, scarcity, degradation, poverty and exclusion and for health, wellbeing, biodiversity, prosperity and inclusion. It is the most important war we, as influencers in public and private organizations, can fight at this moment, and since we are our own worst enemy in this case, we need to stand united in tackling this complex issue. 

Greenleaf author addresses UK Committee on Climate Change

A Greenleaf author has presented research from his forthcoming book, the first to analyze the psychosocial impacts of climate disruption, to a group of experts at the UK Committee on Climate Change (UK CCC).

Bob Doppelt, who is Executive Director of The Resource Innovation, spoke on the theories behind Transformational Resilience to the UK CCC team which advises on links between climate change mitigation and adaptation at the session organized by Greenleaf earlier this week.

Decent Work, Green Jobs and the Sustainable Economy

Peter Poschen, Director of the ILO Enterprises Department and author of Decent Work, Green Jobs and the Sustainable Economy: Solutions for Climate Change and Sustainable Development (Greenleaf Publishing 2015), argues that the world of work has a central role to play in tackling climate change and ensuring a just transition to a green economy.

 

 

Occupying the Collective Space

by Dr. Katrin Muff

Different ways of occupying…

As we will consider in this month’s blog, there are different ways of occupying that middle ground between the personal space each of us feel responsible for, and societal best interests. The collective space called “we” can be used to uplift individuals to act together for a better common future, or it can be hijacked by individuals or special interest groups to occupy or “blockupy” the collective space pressing their issues – for better, or worse, as we shall see below, and not necessarily in the interest of the greater common good.

The “Zero Decade” and the Zero-Impact Feeling

NOTE: This post by Dr Katrin Muff is a continuation of ‘The Transatlantic Debate Blog, a series of articles published in 2014 forming a conversation between Katrin Muff and Kathy Miller Perkins on business sustainability. For more information and to read the posts, please click here.

Activists have come to call our current decade the “zero decade” – the decade in which we have the power to decide if we take action to keep human-made global warming within the relatively safe two degrees, or if we let the climate head off into spheres where the only certainty is that life will dramatically change for the generations after us. Is there anything we can do? Is there anything I can do?

I recently spent 40 hours on a train across India and took the time to read Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything book on climate change and what it will take for us to remain within the required two-degree temperature limit. Well, nothing short of getting rid of the capitalist system as we have come to know it! How? Nothing short of a revolution and global social unrest, she says. I don’t like social unrest – for many reasons – and I am sure I am not alone. The alternative? What if there is none?