Finally some timely contributions from the wide-ranging community of sustainability practitioners:
1/ A very interesting webinar on the potential credit cards default crisis, hosted by Innovest’s financial analysts Greg Larkin and Laura Nishikawa. In their own words: “Innovest, which was early with its call on sub-prime mortgages, has determined that what Wall Street and the Federal government are diagnosing as a mortgage problem is, in fact, a symptom of a deeper crisis of deteriorated consumer financial health”. The full report is available here (innovest_credit_cards).
2/ John Elkington, one of the most established thought leaders of the sustainability movement (and founder of UK SustainAbility think tank), offers a comprehensive picture of some of the fundamental issues that lie at the core of today’s crisis. Drawing on their scenario analysis “Raising our Game: Can we sustain Globalisation?”, they question whether democracy has shown its limits when it comes to our collective ability to respond and pre-empt crises (be it the credit crunch or climate change, the impeding “ecological credit crunch”). Their conclusion is worth quoting.
“We desperately hope we are wrong, but our analysis is that the current meltdown is not yet the sort of crisis that will force our leaders to the point where [...] they (and we) break frame, do the completely unexpected—and invest in the future as if our futures depended on it. Meanwhile, there is a growing (if unwelcome) opportunity to learn and spread the relevant lessons from the still-evolving credit crunch, both in terms of how to develop and run our economies in ways that are financially sustainable and, longer term, in ways that are also socially and environmentally sustainable.” John Elkington & Mark Lee, SustainAbility.
3/ At the same time on the other side of the pond, Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres, “a leading U.S. coalition of investors, environmental groups and other public interest organizations working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change”, speaks about the problems of short-termism in the markets, lack of board accountability and excessive CEO remuneration on the Harvard Business School blog.
4/ Finally some blue-sky thinking is coming out of SoCap08 in San Francisco. The Social Capital Markets Conference 2008 is buzzing with blogging excitement. Taking a helicopter view, sessions focused on how capital can be deployed in a way that serves the investor’s values and the social good, and whether social values can drive more effective investments. We certainly look forward to finding out more about the outcomes of the conference in the coming days.
