Just got this report from UNEP: GEO-5 For Business - Impacts of a Changing Environment on the Corporate Sector:
Here is the report's 'Foreword' from UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner:
Environmental change, in large part driven by humanity’s demand for
resources, rising lifestyles and growing global population, is accelerating and generating new and emerging challenges but also opportunities for business.
Companies that face up to these realities are likely to be the ones that thrive and remain competitive in a rapidly changing world where factors such as climate change and dwindling availability of natural resources like water will shape future profit and loss and drive new markets.
This new report, GEO-5 for Business, is based on the flagship assessment by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Global Environment Outlook 5, which was launched in advance of the Rio+20 Summit.
GEO-5 for Business outlines current and future impacts of environmental trends across a range of sectors from construction to food. It dovetails with other assessments such as those by the UNEP- International Resource Panel that estimate consumption of natural resources will triple by 2050 unless urgent action is taken to decouple economic growth from natural resource use.
These trends are likely to not only impact and influence markets but also trigger technological innovation and change while stimulating regulatory and policy developments nationally and internationally, which in turn represent opportunities for business in respect to new kinds of goods and services.
Meanwhile as policy-makers, the public and investors become ever more aware of environmental change, they are likely to demand increasing transparency and more comprehensive corporate sustainability reporting – indeed this new push for sustainability reporting was among a range of outcomes from Rio+20.
GEO-5 for Business notes that not all opportunities glimpsed today may be opportunities tomorrow – as the Arctic melts many oil and gas companies are scrambling to exploit the opportunity, but may expose themselves to a range of other risks in a fragile environment.
GEO-5 for Business recommends that businesses conduct a deeper, company-specific analysis, taking a life-cycle approach using this report as a framework and guide.
Those who succeed may find that they not only can use the trends to their advantage, but can generate real and ever more transformative solutions to challenges already arising from a rapidly changing environment in a rapidly changing world.
Enjoy - or not.
"The current economic system, built on the idea of perpetual growth, sits uneasily within an ecological system that is bound by biophysical limits." - from the report (p. 6)
"The science is clear: we are approaching, and in some cases surpassing, the limits of our planet’s resources and carrying capacity. Scientific experts warn that many of these impacts may become permanent in human timescales if action to alleviate pressures does not occur immediately." - from the report, p. 6
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