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Ethics and the Future of BusinessLecture 4: Challenges & Solutions
23 September 2022 | Arno Kourula
Table of Contents
1. Broader Context of Business
1.1. Anthropocene and Key Sustainability Trends
1.2. Frameworks for Sustainability
2. Business and Climate Change
2.1. Climate Change Science
2.2. Climate Change Targets
3. Towards a Sustainable Economy
3.1. Circular Economy
3.2. Sustainable Business Models
1. Broader Context of Business
1.1. Anthropocene and Key Sustainability Trends
Welcome To the Anthropocene
A new epoch of geological time (epoch = tens of millions of years).
- Are we disturbing the Holocene?
Examples of human impact:
- Agriculture, deforestation, mining, and urbanization: Less than 3% of land on earth is
ecologically intact.
- 414+ ppm of CO2 in atmosphere (highest in at least 2 million years).
- All human-made mass exceeds all living biomass (plants, bacteria, animals, etc.).
- Our global economy consumes 100 billion tons of materials a year and wastes over 90%.
- Rapid ecosystem deterioration.
- Rapid species extinction (100 to 1000 times faster): Humans have wiped out an average of
68% of (monitored) mammals, birds, fish and amphibians since 1970.
- Humans eat an estimated 50 billion chicken every year.
- Traces of estrogen, ibuprofen, and caffeine in fish.
“If all insects on Earth disappeared, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings
disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.”
Hockey Sticks
Long periods of stability, followed by extremely rapid growth. It is seen in many trends nowadays.
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,Ethics and the Future of Business
In The Past Century
In terms of social trends, there are a lot of positive trends.
- Many people tend to misjudge a lot of the trends going on in the world. There are a lot of
questions less than 33% of the population would answer incorrectly.
o E.g., How many countries are now led by women? 78 (whereas it was 18 in 1990).
Other trends:
- World population more than quadrupled.
- World economy increased by a factor of 80.
- Average life expectancy more than doubled.
- The share of people living in extreme poverty dropped by a factor of 8.
- Literacy rates more than quadrupled.
- Astonishing developments in science and technology.
Population Growth
Stabilization is expected in the next coming decades.
Wealth and Climate Change
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, Ethics and the Future of Business
1.2. Frameworks for Sustainability
Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) (Kubiszewski et al., 2013)
GDP is a very limited measure of welfare.
GPI: Measure of economic welfare to be used in conjunction with other measures.
- 24 different components (e.g., income distribution, environmental costs, crime,
volunteering, etc.)
- GDP has increased 3-fold since 1950, GPI has decreased since 1978 in this 17-country study.
- However, it has been criticized much and it is incomplete.
Material Footprint Nations (Wiedmans et al., 2015)
Material Footprint (MF): A consumption-based indicator of resource use.
- Achievements in decoupling in advanced economies are smaller than reported or even
nonexistent.
- As wealth grows, countries tend to reduce their domestic portion of materials extraction
through international trade, whereas the overall mass of material consumption generally
increases.
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