Abstract:
This article seeks to identify ways of ensuring that the business sector can more
effectively contribute to the required transition towards ecologically sustainable
development (ESD). It begins by seeking to identify the major reasons for the lack of
progress towards ESD in Australia, New Zealand and most other developed countries.
It then identifies the financial and business systems within which the major
corporations operate as one of the major reasons for this lack of progress.
The article briefly reviews possible approaches to sustainable societies and it then
proposes using the Natural Step system conditions for ecological and social
sustainability to develop objectives for an ecologically sustainable business sector. It
then describes some of the major ways of changing how governance, society,
governments and businesses might operate, in order to re-orient society towards being
ecologically and socially sustainable.
