Growth or Sustainability? Defining, Measuring and Achieving Prosperity

First breakfast, then a selection of holy writings and prayers embellished with live music, and then a brief and energetic presentation by AIESEC Chief communications officer, Lucy Symons on what her 32,000 strong student organization is doing to promote positive change and on prospects for continued collaboration with EBBF.

There was no stopping on the last morning of the EBBF/IEF annual conference, and immediately we were introduced to the CEO of GRI, the Global Reporting Initiative, Ernst Ligteringen (in photo), whose organization has developed a 79-indicator sustainability reporting framework to encourage and help organizations “Make sustainability reporting as visible and substantive as financial reporting.” Mr. Ligteringen spoke on the whys and hows of his work.

The urgency of awareness and reporting on issues of sustainability are becoming more and more clear:

One headline: “At the beginning of summer in the Southern hemisphere, there was a 50% chance of the southern ice cap melting completely”. North Pole ice cap has halved in the last 50 years. Food prices have shot up. Not only are the Italians complaining about the price of pasta; millions of millions of millions of people are now on the brink of starvation. Millions of euros were asked for to help these people, which came in slowly. Far less quickly as the millions which were raised for AIG to survive. As to population: In 2050, reach 9 billion people. Over 80% live in developing regions. Most have legitimate reason to aspire to a better life [in material terms]. Not talking about two cars, huge house, and the like, but access to water, mobility, and food security, maybe a motorcycle, maybe a cheap car. There are billions of people who quite rightly want to change their life, and want to live at Europe standards, but if this happens, we’ll have big environmental problems.

In the 1980s we passed a big mark: we began to use more of world’s resources (soil, marine resources, timber, ores) than the planet could regenerate. If we continue at this pace, we will need 2 planets to supply our resource needs. Don’t need an accountant to see we have a problem here. We can hold the course for a certain time, but very soon we’ll have to deal with reality.

The big question is how? More »

September 22nd, 2008 | Tags: Ernst Ligteringen, GRI, sustainability reporting | Category: Sunday | Leave a comment

After lunch we had the second set of workshops (the first set was this morning), with titles such as “Developing Generative Change Leaders Across sectors: An exploration of Integral Approaches”, “Renewable energy and energy sustainability”, “Spreading values making the best possible use of the media: a powerful means to influence”. I chose to go to one on “Sustainable Consumption” led by Victoria Thoresen (standing, in photo), who introduced the workshop thus:

The purpose of the workshop is to look at sustainable consumption. I’m a teacher of teachers, professors of education in Norway. I’ve worked with value and peace education, but then I got kidnapped by consumer education office in the government which wanted to develop curricula to help kids become better consumers.

But how do you help more people learn about their consumption patterns without making them feel guilty, wanting to put their heads in the sand. And then, how do you teach this? What we’ve created is a concept called consumer citizen education. Not just consumer education, but with citizenship. Because the idea of a consumer who just complains isn’t very constructive. More »

September 20th, 2008 | Tags: sustainable consumption, values and consumption | Category: Saturday | Comments (2)

IEF president and longtime EBBF board member (among many other things) Arthur Dahl, gave a thrilling talk on “ways forward to true prosperity”. In some way he looked like an Olympic athlete, cruising through 60 slides in less than 30 minutes with seemingly effortless grace, passing through the current state of the world, the rather grim outlook of the next few decades, the new values and system involved in a sustainable model of continued human life, and what that model would look like. He even had time to begin with a few words of caution.

I have a very short period of time to give you solutions to all the problems of the world, and I’m bound to fail so don’t be disappointment. I should be given a health warning to hang around my neck, saying, ‘this is dangerous to your health. What I tell you could lead to nightmares, depression, anxiety, etc.

Then on to talk about the end of the current business and political paradigm where growth is in the center:

There is a conflict between growth and sustainability. If company isn’t growing, off with your head, if GDP isn’t growing, change the president. But there are limits to planet. There isn’t anywhere else to go that is accessible except for to astronauts, and they generally want to come back here.

“On current trends, …humanity will need twice as much energy as it uses today within 35 years…. Produce too little energy, say the economists, and there will be price hikes and a financial crash unlike any the world has ever known, with possible resource wars, depression and famine. Produce the wrong sort of energy, say the climate scientists, and we will have more droughts, floods, rising seas and worldwide economic disaster with runaway global warming.” (John Vidal in The Guardian Weekly, 2007)

We shall probably do both at the same tine

Since we are operating on a limitless growth model with a shrinking resource base, our civilization is headed towards collapse. The question is when. If we continue on the current road at the current rate, says the model that though updated hasn’t changed since the 70s, around 2015 or 2020 we are going to be hitting a crisis of food, resources availability, industrial output, translating into a lower standard of living for all.

In this century we’re coming to an end of the growth paradigm. This is interesting for business based on exponential growth. Economic growth has depended on population growth, energy growth, resource growth and tech innovation. The first three all end this century. All running out. Even these rare earth elements in cell phones are cameras, are very limited, and we’re hitting lots of limits. All we have left is technological innovation. We’re left with brains and heart.

Retreating to a fortress of old values (forgetting bananas and pineapples) and keeping the poor out isn’t possible. We have no option but to move towards a new, sustainable paradigm.

All models show that this is technically possible. We have the knowledge, we have the technology, what we don’t have is political will. We have to look at questions of balance. What is the optimal size of company? Optimal size is not endless growth. Optimal size of a mouse is not an elephant. Dematerialization, how can we do with less. And figuring out working with a closed system, reusing what we have over and over again.

In this new paradigm we must redefine prosperity, and along with this the kind of civilization we want to build. He used the Bahai writings for inspiration on this theme:

Man’s merit lieth in service and virtue and not in the pageantry of wealth and riches. Take heed that your words be purged from idle fancies and worldly desires and your deeds be cleansed from craftiness and suspicion. Dissipate not the wealth of your precious lives in the pursuit of evil and corrupt affection, nor let your endeavours be spent in promoting your personal interest. Be generous in your days of plenty, and be patient in the hour of loss…. Guard against idleness and sloth, and cling unto that which profiteth mankind, whether young or old, whether high or low.

…although material civilization is one of the means for the progress of the world of mankind, yet until it becomes combined with Divine civilization, the desired result, which is the felicity of mankind, will not be attained…. Material civilization is like the body. No matter how infinitely graceful, elegant and beautiful it may be, it is dead.

That purpose must be sought in spiritual dimensions of life and motivation that transcend a constantly changing economic landscape and an artificially imposed division of human societies into “developed” and “developing”.

the real purpose of development…  is laying foundations for a new social order that can cultivate the limitless potentialities latent in human consciousness.

So we aren’t talking about no growth, but a new kind of growth: growth in beauty, in science, in creativity. There are all kinds of possibilities for growth, if we define prosperity in different context.

He then painted the outline of the New World Order, the institutions that we need to build in order to create a sustainable society, based on the principles of unity and justice. (You can see this part of his presentation— and many other parts that I’ve skipped, skimmed, or misrepresented(!)—on the conference website.)

Arthur then addressed the question of how to get there (sustainable world order) from here, highlighting the role of ethics and values in this process.

Ethics is the social equivalent of DNA. In biology everything is coded in a cell’s DNA tells them how to each other. In society these types of interaction are determined by its values. The most important way to transform a society is through its values. Otherwise a society will need an elaborate system of laws, backed up by a significant police force and large prison system. If individual knows how to behave, and is self-directing, it’s a cheap and effective system.

We are trustees of this planet. Sustainability itself is an ethical concept, for it has to do with being moderate and humble. We must ‘be content with little and be freed form all inordinate desire”. Just as an individual doesn’t only eat and grow forever, so likewise a company.

Sustainibility therefore requires a new kind of entrepreneurship. We are in the midst of a major global transition. We can either consciously work for change, or wait for catastrophe to force us to change. There are new forms of wealth creation and business out there that haven’t been done before, so we need creativity.

[Note: Photos to follow. Also, I'm posting only about 10% of what's happening here. We've had guided walk in the woods while talking about issues of sustainability, workshops galore, and other interesting talks. This is all to say, being here is much better than reading this!]

September 20th, 2008 | Category: Pre-Conference | Leave a comment

After lunch is a difficult slot to fill, as the energy needed to be an attentive listener isn’t easily disengaged from its previous date with your stomach. But Steve Karnik, from the Bahá’i International Community (BIC), and John Patterson, whose work as a clergyperson, businessperson, and now NGOperson exemplified service, kept us more than awake, with respective talks redefining prosperity, and giving an example from business of translating spiritual principle into practice.

Below I include selections from Steve’s slides which lead to an alternative conception of prosperity and some ideas about how to measure a society’s movement towards that prosperity, and after that the gist of what John Patterson said.

Steve Karnic on a new definition of Prosperity

“Human nature is fundamentally spiritual and spiritual principles underlie the essential elements of a peaceful, prosperous and advancing civilization.”
More »

September 19th, 2008 | Tags: John Patterson, new vision of prosperity, Steve Karnic, translating values into business practice | Category: Friday | Comments (1)

Sylvia Karlsson of IEF

After a devotional period, reflecting on the beauty of creation and the natural world, IEF secretary-general Sylvia Karlsson gave the keynote of the conference, directly addressing its central question: Growth OR Sustainability.

She began by reminding us that sustainability is something that involves a lot of defining (what resources, species and all should be sustained and for how long?), and that it has both temporal and spatial dimensions. Environment has long temporal dimensions. What we do today, for example, to temper the dangers of climate change, will be felt after a lapse of decades. Economic issues, on the other hand, have to do with short-term decision making and consequences. Sustainability also implies spatial dimension inasmuch as economies are interconnected. While one country may clean up its act as it moves towards service economy, the polluting processes of production may just have been moved to another part of the world (e.g. China). More »

September 19th, 2008 | Tags: Growth or sustainability, Sylvia Karlsson, Values and environment | Category: Friday | Comments (1)

Threading into Dutch farmland and forests atop the 2nd floor of the gliding electric train, I arrived safe and sound to the joint IEF-EBBF conference on Growth or Sustainability. Aside from the natural beauty of the countryside, people around us are making positive contributions to the environment: the bike traffic dwarfs that of the cars (if only Madrid would follow its lead…).

I’m running on a few hours of sleep, but I can’t help but feel energized once here. Over a yummy dinner I spoke with a couple recent Italian graduates, one who is working with a ballooning wind energy project in Milan, the other pursuing a career in corporate social responsibility. After dinner, a chat with a man doing his PhD. on the relevance of spiritual principles found in the Bahai Faith to the discipline of economics.

Then the first evening session. After a wacky getting to know you activity, alternately converging and separating into sets of entrepreneurs, employees, or others best represented by ‘work? What’s that?’, we were introduced to a sampling of the conference presenters through creative questioning by Finnish EBBF member and talk show host, Aram Aflatuni.

Here’s a sampling of the interaction with the four interviewees (three of whom are Canadian!).

1. Senior policy advisor of product division of Eco Canada, Diana Cartwright.
Aram: What motivates you to get to work every morning?
Diana: (with irony) Well, that’s an easy question to start with! I get to ride my bike to work and I really like biking.
Aram: How much is the sustainable thing in the hands of governments or big business as opposed to in the hands of individual people?
Diana: I think we all have to own sustainable development. Should I recycle, should I use reduce consumption? Yes, do it all. We also have to have carbon taxes, etc., but sustainability is in everyone’s hands.
Aram: What is the relationship between spirituality and sustainability?
Diana: Spirituality I define is trying to connect to higher reality in life. Sustainability is about living just off the interest of the earth’s resources and not its capital, as we are currently doing. I learned something about the relationship from going through the Bahá’i Fast. It’s not something that I particularly enjoy, but I do it because I know it’s good for me. It helps me learn to be detached from material things. Prayer and meditation also help to inoculate us against all the materialistic propaganda, and fasting to help detach from material bombardment. By being more detached and aware, we will be able to reduce our consumption and be more responsible as consumers.

2. John Patterson.
Aram: You spent 11 years in India doing development work, how was it?
John: Well, my son was born in India, daughter was one when we went there. We were living in the village with the people, using simple accommodations. What we did was we listened to local people, More »

September 18th, 2008 | Tags: business and spirituality, DePoort conference center, IEF EBBF conference | Category: Thursday | Comments (1)

This year we decided to hold the EBBF and IEF Annual Conferences jointly, gathering together to offer and learn about ideas, practical applications and innovative visions around the title:

Growth or Sustainability?
Defining, Measuring and Achieving Prosperity

As the conference has sold out and for all those of you who want to maintain their carbon footprint low we have set up this alternative way to enjoy the event.

It will not be quite like being there in person but we hope that you do enjoy the experience of viewing the talks and panels of the EBBF/IEF joint annual event and the opportunity to interact with participants and with other people viewing this online experience.

As we wait for the conference to begin you can view the latest news, list of participants, relevant articles and information, the opportunity to submit your project etc do visit this webpage.

We offer this online experience free of charge but if you feel it gave you something worthwhile or if you wish to support a specific activity or project, feel free to invest as much or as little as you wish here.

September 15th, 2008 | Category: Pre-Conference | Comments (1)