John Elkington

Many years ago, I wrote an article for Jain Spirit magazine that explained the religious roots of my early conversion to environmentalism. A philosophical collision in the mid-1950s with a Mother Superior in Limavady, Northern Ireland, when I was 6 or 7, derailed any belief I may have had in monotheism. Mother Superior said I was either a pagan or a pantheist, but even my ill-developed mind knew it sure as hell wasn’t destined to take the Catholic path.

That said, and given the reality that is the Catholic Church, it’s encouraging that Pope Benedict used yesterday’s New Year address to underline the need for environmental responsibility – and to change their lifestyles to save the planet. But I wonder whether he has – or his cardinals have – been introduced to what I see as the single most fundamental equation in the sustainability field: I = P x A x T?

The logic here is that the environmental impact of an individual, community, corporation or economy is a function of population numbers times the prevailing levels of affluence/lifestyles times the level of technology used to sustain those lifestyles across that population. Perhaps its time for the Vatican to launch an internal environmental literacy program? Perhaps Daniel Goleman’s book Ecological Intelligence could be laid alongside all those Bibles?

In a world headed towards 9-10 billion people, if you believe the demographers, how long will it be before the Vatican finally bites the bullet and accepts the need for population control? Until it does, pious calls for lifestyle changes are unlikely to move the needle very much. How long before we are lucky enough to see a truly ‘unreasonable’ Pope in St Peter’s Square?

A crystal clear Moon is moving upwards, left to right, across the night sky – seen through the glass roof of our kitchen. Last night, it was a Blue Moon, which I needed to have explained to me again. Elaine and I watched the Moon through the binoculars a few moments ago, marvelling at the sheer number of impact craters. An indication of what a hell the Earth must have been in its early days. I recall seeing a huge circular impact crater somewhere as I flew east across Europe many years ago – and another in the south-west of the USA.

 

Golden pheasant 1 Golden pheasant 2

I have no idea what the Chinese are dubbing 2010, in terms of animal symbolism, but for me it begins as the Year of the Golden Pheasant. As Elaine and I walked around Kew Gardens today, in glorious afternoon sunshine, a golden pheasant walked straight across to us, bold as brass, and looked us in the eye. Unbelievably beautiful.

Recent days have been restful, though yesterday we went to the EARTH Exhibition at the Royal Academy. Some 10-12 years ago, I began to develop an exhibition of environmental campaign posters, many of the posters still stacked upstairs, and I devised the logo EARTH, which has now popped up for this exhibition. Scratch that idea.

A few other photographs from recent days follow:

Richmond Park skyline Anish Kapoor shows balls at Royal Academy My shadow and I in Kew Gardens Coot chase Green Man bench Fountain

Julia Hailes sent me a link this morning to the CSR International survey of leaders in the field of corporate social responsibility, in which I appear in fourth place tied with Muhammad Yunus, and behind Al Gore, Barack Obama and Anita Roddick. If I learned anything from statistics courses 40 years back, it was how easy it is to use them to provide a distorted lens on the world – but it’s a wonderful start to the New Year to find that, at least in 2009, I was in such august company.

Democracy is at the heart of the new agenda of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (FDSD), which I chair, previously The Environment Foundation. In this context, a reflection by Niall Ferguson in today’s Financial Times on the meaning of the past decade struck me as particularly apt and insightful. He explores the reasons behind the astonishing – and accelerating – shift to the east in the world’s economic (and, ultimately, political) centre of gravity. In the process, he asks what it was that gave the West its “ascendancy”, through the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the ensuing race around the world, as far as the Antipodes?

His answer is that the West benefited from six “killer apps”. These were: “the capitalist enterprise, the scientific method, a legal and political system based on private property rights and individual freedom, traditional imperialism, the consumer society and what Weber probably misnamed the ‘Protestant’ ethic of work and capital accumulation as ends in themselves.”

Some of these, Ferguson argues, particularly numbers one and two, China has already replicated. Other, and among these he includes imperialism, consumption and the work ethic, it is making headway on. “Only number three,” he notes, “the Western way of law and politics – shows little sign of emerging in the one-party state that is the People’s Republic.” But, he muses, “does China need dear old democracy to achieve enduring prosperity?”

Those two words, enduring and prosperity, put the question slap-bang into the heartland of the territory that the FDSD team is beginning to map out. As we wrestle with the question of how to shift paradigms in ways that we want, we also have to be aware that paradigms often shift under their own steam. As we reflect on future pathways to scale for solutions we find exciting, the ways in which those solutions will play out will be powerfully influenced by paradigmatic and civilisational trends of the sort discussed here.

Read Niall Ferguson’s fascinating article and ponder our collective future trajectories – as I did. Then join us at the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, in 2010 and beyond, in the quest to find out how to marry the best of West and East in pursuit of sustainability.