Corporation 2020

Business | Environment

Sukhdev

Advance Praise for Corporation 2020

—Achim Steiner, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme

In 2008, Pavan Sukhdev took a sabbatical from Deutsche Bank, where he’d worked for fifteen years, to write two reports on the green economy. His “Green Economy Report” for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) synthesized years of research to show that environmentally sound development is not a bar to growth, but rather a new engine for growing wealth and creating employment in the face of persistent poverty. His groundbreaking “TEEB” report counted the global economic benefits of biodiversity, encouraging countries to develop and publish “natural capital accounts” tracking the value of natural wealth alongside traditional financial measures. Sukhdev has chaired the Global Agenda Council on Biodiversity and Ecosystems for the World Economic Forum and was a speaker at the World Economic Forum meetings at Davos in 2010 and 2011. He serves on the boards of Conservation International and the Stockholm Resilience Centre. In 2011, he was named a Visiting Fellow at Yale University, where he was awarded a McCluskey Fellowship. Jacket design and illustration by Maureen Gately

“The ideas and assertions in this book blow well past ‘insightful’ and edge toward ‘revolutionary’ insofar as they expose major fallacies in our most basic assumptions about what we call our ‘economy.’ It’s an equally important exposure for corporate leaders and leaders of the movement for environmental sustainability, because both need to move beyond the ‘infancy phase’ in terms of truly understanding and acknowledging the value of natural resources. A seriously inspiring and, ultimately, very hopeful piece of work.” —Edward Norton, United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity “Pavan Sukhdev writes with extraordinary clarity, compassion, and conscience, laying the ground for a new, whole-system economics. Recognizing that all human activity is part of nature, and that nature is essential for human well-being, Sukhdev creates a framework for the restoration of human and natural systems. Corporation 2020 brilliantly lays out a pathway for corporations, countries, and citizens towards the earth’s health.” —Jonathan F. P. Rose, President, Jonathan Rose Companies “When Pavan Sukhdev comes along and writes an extraordinary book, and backs it up with an extraordinary campaign and a really good website to promote . . . a change in the basic culture, definition, and orientation of corporations in our society, it’s very timely, and it’s very important to take what he has to say seriously.” — James Gustave Speth, Professor of Law, Vermont Law School and Distinguished Senior Fellow, Demos

CORPORATION 2020

“Much has recently been written about how a new wave of ‘green’ corporations is just around the corner, an endogenously transformed phalanx of knights in shining armour just waiting to rescue us. Pavan Sukhdev says ‘not so,’ but he also shows, with consummate skill and clarity, what exogenous changes can be made to re-engineer the ‘social contract’ between society and corporations in the 21st Century.”

CORPORATION

2020 Transforming Business f o r To m o r r o w ’ s Wo r l d

Pavan Sukhdev

All is not well with today’s market-centric economic model. Although it has delivered enormous wealth over the last half century and pulled millions out of poverty, it is recessionprone, leaves too many unemployed, creates ecological scarcities and environmental risks, and widens the gap between the rich and the poor. The model for today’s corporations—formed over the last two centuries in a world of seemingly limitless resources—is clearly broken. Around $1 trillion a year in perverse subsidies and needless barriers to entry for alternative solutions maintain “business-as-usual” while obscuring its environmental and societal costs. The result is the social inequity, environmental degradation, and political manipulation that are the unwanted by-products of today’s corporations. We aren’t stuck with this dysfunctional corporate model. If it is to enact the comprehensive approach we now need, however, business needs a new DNA. In this sweeping vision for a new species of corporation, Pavan Sukhdev p roposes the new incentives and regulations that will enable corporations to increase human well-being and social equity, decrease environmental risks and ecological losses, and continue to generate strong profits. The status quo is no longer an option. Corporation 2020 can become a reality in the next decade—and it must if we are to avert catastrophic social imbalance and ecological harm. From his insightful look into the history of the corporation to his thoughtful discussion of the steps needed to craft a better corporate model, Corporation 2020 offers an important and hopeful vision for the role of business in shaping a more equitable, sustainable future.