Timelines: Archive
The waves diagram
Downwave 3 (2003 – 2007)
2003 marked the twentieth anniversary of
our launching of the old John Elkington Associates—and saw the launch
of this website, almost a year in the making. A huge amount has changed
since 1983 and a great deal has been achieved. But as the Downwave
3 period gets into its stride, with global recession, war in Iraq,
the economic impact of the SARS epidemic in Asia and so on, we need
to refocus and prepare for new challenges.
 Wave
2
focused on business and markets
 Wave
3
focused on globalisation and governance
 Downwave
1
saw a raft of new laws introduced across
the OECD
 Downwave
2
saw a proliferation of environmental
and social management systems
 Downwave
3
will see at least seven key issues
in the spotlight
Among the issues I expect
to be predominant in this new phase of the debate are:
Security:
Competing
definitions of security are emerging. Some are based on high technology
defence technologies, others on the notion that, in the end, "we are all in the same boat, including future
generations." There are profound implications for privacy and
civil rights.
Globalisation:
With the market signals early in 2003
suggesting that the globalisation project has slipped a few gears,
and could well go into reverse, there will be new emphasis on how
we can achieve globalisation that really does achieve acceptable
triple bottom line outcomes.
Governance:
Both global and corporate governance will continue to
be in the spotlight. Of the two, global governance is by far the
biggest challenge, as the problems experienced by the US, UN, NATO
and the EU during the build-up to the Iraq war—and subsequently—demonstrated.
Financial markets:
A growing proportion of our work has focused
on financial markets: the insurers, reinsurers, lenders, financial
analysts, and so on.
Access:
2002's World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) was
something of a political failure, but it usefully sketched out a
powerful new agenda for the next decade. The focus will be on access:
access to clean water, affordable energy, drugs (e.g. for HIV/AIDS,
TB, malaria), and so on.
Social enterprise:
Most of our work has focused on large corporations,
but we remain skeptical about their capacity to make the necessary
changes in time. So we plan to focus more time and effort on the
social entrepreneurs who are experimenting with radically new technologies
and business models.
Market engineering:
To make the necessary changes happen, we will
need to become much more sophisticated in terms of reshaping market
signals to deliver sustainable outcomes. Experiments such as the
Chicago Climate Exchange are pioneering in this critically important
new opportunity space.
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