Abstract:
Ensuring the health of the earth's eco-systems is critical to ecologically sustainable
development, a development path along which the maximisation of human well-being for
today's generations does not lead to declines in future well-being. Our levels of
consumption, resource usage, emissions and waste, in all developed countries, continue
to grow from levels that are already well in excess of ecologically sustainable levels.
Much of the pressure for this continuing unsustainable growth comes from an increasing
powerful corporate sector, which is locked into a system that requires continually
increasing profits. These increasing profits are achieved through growth in revenues,
usually with increased resource use and often with increased pollution and waste. This
economic growth focus of our current political, economic and business systems fails to
recognise the ecological limits to human activity systems and continues to damage the
earth's eco-systems.
In order to progress towards Ecologically Sustainable Development, major systemic
changes at the societal level are required in order that our human activity systems
including our economic systems function within the limits of earth's eco-systems. Our
political-economic system must change in order to eliminate ecological stress and repair
past environmental damage.
We, therefore, urgently need an end to unsustainable business as usual from almost every
business because our planet's eco-systems are under severe and increasing unsustainable
pressure from our human activity systems, driven particularly by our economic and
business systems.
Ensuring that society moves towards Ecologically Sustainable Development and that
businesses move towards an ecologically and socially sustainable business model will not
be easy but it is important, urgent and necessary. Major societal change is also required to
make significant progress towards Ecologically Sustainable Development. This societal
change will result in a range of major government measures to ensure ecological and
social sustainability of the business sector.
