Business for a Sustainable Future
Lesson 1: Additional Resources
As a background for the Ecosystem Services framing, these short reads help us to understand the renewable and non-renewable resources available:
- National Geographic’s definition of Renewable Resources
- Fast Company’s Visualizing All The Non-Renewable Resources We Have Left.
For more on the social and environmental impacts of supply chains, explore the Hidden Costs project.
Further reading on environmental economics:
- Pavan Suhkdev: Put a value on Nature! touches on both Ecosystem Services and Externalities/Impacts.
- “Pitch For Nature” – Business & the value of nature makes a pitch for natural capital accounting
- For a more in-depth understanding, some great books to explore are What Has Nature Ever Done For Us?, Natural Capitalism, and The Ecology of Commerce
More on the trends that we’re seeing in the sustainability space — and different perspectives on them:
- Understanding How To Implement Sustainable Business Models
- Market Forces and Food Technology Will Save the World positions business as the answer to many of our most pressing environmental challenges.
- Rebecca Henderson’s book Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire and TED Talk
- World Economic Forum: The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
- Business Roundtable: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation
- Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: This link is the full text of the original MEA.
- Why Millennials are Done With Green Brands and Why It Matters
- How Can We Know Which Companies Are Serious About Sustainability?
More background on a few of the business models for sustainability:
- Moving Beyond CSR: The Business of Social Change
- Regenerative Capitalism: How Universal Principles And Patterns Will Shape Our New Economy is John Fullerton’s report reimagining the capitalist framework. Pages 40-43 answer the question, what is regenerative capitalism?
- A Simple Explanation of the Triple Bottom Line
- This short video on Regenerative Capitalism explains the principles that underpin it.
- Kate Raworth on Creating a Circular Economy shares a larger vision of what it will take to create a truly circular economy, beyond actions of individual businesses or manufacturers.
- More from Unilever:
- Reimagine Podcast: Beyond greenwashing offers a glimpse into how leaders think about these issues, including Paul Polman’s reflections on what it took to drive sustainability efforts at Unilever.
- 6 ways Unilever has achieved success through sustainability
- Inside Unilever’s sustainability myth lends nuance to Unilever’s sustainability efforts: as with any emerging space, there are still many limitations and faults in Unilever’s work.
More on doughnut economics:
- For sustainable business, ‘planetary boundaries’ define the new rules: A look into how the doughnut model of planetary boundaries is taking off in practice.
- Beyond Cockpit-ism: Four Insights to Enhance the Transformative Potential of the Sustainable Development Goals: The intro and part 5 give a doughnut economics perspective of the SDG’s and how “green competition” could be fostered with more benchmarks for businesses.
- Doughnut Economics Action Lab: resources for Doughnut economic thinking and activities.
- How the Dutch are reshaping their post-pandemic economy
Certification models: will ESG become the new normal?
- Intro to ESG ratings and a summary of several prominent rating systems:
- ESG used to be at the cutting edge of sustainability in business. Now that it’s becoming a staple for institutional investors, is it sufficient to position someone as a leader of sustainability? Is ESG having the environmental impact it claims to have?
- BlackRock’s Message: Contribute to Society, or Risk Losing Our Support (Published 2018)
- BlackRock Is Getting Serious About Climate Change. Is This a Turning Point for Investors? Article about Blackrock CEO January 2020 annual letter to CEO’s signaling their intent to address climate change, a huge milestone for sustainability in the business world.
- Can BlackRock Save the Planet? The Institutional Investors’ Role in Stakeholders Capitalism: Strampelli makes the argument that institutional investors like BlackRock can shift the investing and business words from a shareholder centric view to a stakeholder centric view.
- 81 Indigenous leaders, environmental defenders slam BlackRock in open letter
- Purpose over profit: are B-Corps the future of sustainable business? Primer on B-corps.
- Responsible 100 offers a free assessment tool, with the goal of enabling any business to improve its sustainability
Business and environmental justice:
- 5 ways businesses can take action to reduce environmental racism: outlines simple actions businesses can take to address their impacts on Black, Indigenous, and POC communities
- Environmental justice and natural resource extraction: intersections of power, equity and access: To understand how the extractive industry exploits people of color for its own gain