A guide to sustainable corporate responsibility

Since the Industrial Revolution in late eighteenth century, there have been tremendous increases in both production and population growth. In the 1960s, the society began to consider the relationship between industrial development, environmental degradation, and the costs it imposed on everyone in one way or another. The United Nations (UN) initiated the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), later known as the Brundtland Commission, which issued a report in 1987 called Our Common Future. From there, the term “sustainable development” was born. Since then, society has been increasingly concerned with the topic. Yet, global production and consumption continue to grow at an unsustainable rate. While today around one tenth of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty, people in industrialized countries are overconsuming (Siet al., 2020). If everybody in the world enjoyed the same lifestyle as people in the European Union (EU) we would need three planet Earths.
Currently, according to the Global Footprint Network, we need an equivalent of 1.7 Earths to provide the resources we use and to absorb our waste. We are living in a world with major economic inequalities, over pollution and resource depletion. There are currently over 40 million people enslaved in the world, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are consistently increasing, and more than 20 percent of the world’s animal species are at risk of extinction. Clearly, continuing on this path will ruin our planet, both from a societal and an environmental perspective. To respond to these global challenges, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were officially adopted in 2015 by 193 UN member states. Efforts to achieve these goals by 2030 are well on their way and the role of business is crucial. Even though environmental and social problems are perceived as challenges, they can also be approached as opportunities. Companies are spending more time, focus, and money on the pursuit of sustainability. Today, 90 percent of CEOs state that sustainability is important to their company’s success, 88 percent of business students think social and environmental issues should be a priority, and almost 70 percent want to incorporate environmental issues in their next job (Hofmann, 2018). Even though corporations are aware of the challenges and opportunities associated with sustainability and want to contribute, many of their efforts are in efficient, leading to time and money wasted. New business models, sustainable business strategies, system and systemic change, circular economies are all examples of potential solutions, which together with a global change of mindset are necessary to achieve the SDGs. Tis book sets out to address the role of businesses and their responsibilities for reaching these goals. I have researched these topics associated with sustainability in corporations, organizations, and educational institutions—nationally and internationally—for almost 30 years.
I worked for the Business Council for Sustainable Development, which played a key role in engaging the global business community to begin discussing how corporations can contribute and adapt to sustainability, an initiative leading up to the Rio Conference in 1991. Familiar with the realities companies are facing, I share my knowledge on how different corporate approaches to responsibility and sustainability lead to different results. This book builds on business theory and experience to recommend practical steps and strategies for corporations pursuing sustainability in an effective way that is good for business and financially sound. The following section provides a short overview of topics discussed in each chapter of this book.
source :
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-88203-7
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