Phil O'Reilly: Sustainability & enterprise
Phil O´Reilly
Sustainability is a hot topic in New Zealand and is likely to be an election issue in 2008. It will be the hope of many in business that it’s debated in a holistic manner.
Currently we too often have a situation where sustainability is taken to mean only our physical environment.
Of course issues like carbon emissions, industrial waste, and air and water quality are extremely important – and are taken seriously by enterprise, as witnessed by business involvement in many initiatives to improve our environment.
But it would be a mistake to think that is the limit to sustainability.
New Zealand’s challenge of a sustainable future is an extremely broad one.
Importantly, it must include the sustainability of business, since our livelihoods are sustained solely by enterprise. Governments do not create resources and wealth, nor do regulations or legislation. It’s only enterprise that can do that.
It is a fundamental fact that without sustainable businesses, people will not have the incomes and resources to prosper.
It’s simply not possible to best manage the physical environment sustainably if our prosperity is in question.
Without sustainable businesses, there will be no resources to invest in cleaner technology, product stewardship, waterway protection or any of the myriad initiatives aimed at a better physical environment.
Without sustainable business we would also have significant problems of social breakdown. There is a real connection between successful businesses and social cohesion. Countries where there is societal breakdown are not noted for their successful businesses.
Businesses do a great deal to grow social cohesion in the communities in which they operate – often specifically in corporate social responsibility initiatives, but also in the more basic sense of supporting and being part of the community generally.
Whether the small businesses that provide the “engine of growth” as they engage with and trade within their communities.
Or the more established businesses that succeed and grow employment and capital in their communities.
Or the very large businesses that can span and link many communities.
Our enterprises are vital to a sustainable future, and attention must be paid to the larger environment in which they operate.
For example we need laws and regulations that are fit for purpose and do not smother enterprise. We need an open, competitive environment that allows enterprises to respond readily to the legitimate needs and interests of stakeholders including customers, employees and the community.
These are needed for businesses to be able to sustain the communities in which they operate. The danger of some current thinking about sustainability is that it is phrased solely in terms of punishing business or loading the costs of environmental initiatives onto it. That can be counterproductive.
Let’s approach sustainability in a holistic way, recognising business as the sustainer of communities, not an enemy that must be punished in the interests of a narrowly defined concept of sustainability.
Of course we must care for the physical environment, but we must do it in a way that enables success for the enterprises that sustain our livelihood.