A sustainable Australia is not at odds with a prosperous and resilient Australia. Ultimately, a pathway towards sustained growth will underpin predictable economic growth. Australians have the capacity to fundamentally change our relationship with the environment in which we will interact and the resources we exploit to ensure the longterm growth of our economy.

Drivers of change

And yet the sustainable development landscape in Australia is in turbulent times. Reasons for this are numerous, and diverse. They include:

• A need for transformation, innovation and investment to address growing population, demographic shifts, climate change and increasing pressure on natural resources;
• A “who’s in charge?” world – Uncertain global governance;
• New regulations putting a price on commodities and services;
• Transparency being the new business “licence to operate”;
• Asia is in ascendancy and going green;
• A “Green Race” has begun and threats of protectionist measures have begun; and
• Other countries (in the developed and developing world) as well as global business see sustainable development as a strategic issue on how to position itself in the new Green Race. This has moved from the earlier moral focus on CSR.

Progressive business responds

For some years now there has been an Australian business association that has not only identified the inevitable forces which are driving Australia towards more efficient consumption of natural resources and energy use, but also advocated and highlighted leading Australian business enterprise around commercial solutions to address these forces.

The Environment Management Industry Association of Australia came into existence in the early 1990s because the burgeoning of professionals in the nascent environment industry needed to be heard. And heard they were!

Through the efforts of such champions such as Paul Perkins, Mike Williamson, Tony Wright and Paul Howlett – and under the guidance of its first CEO, John Cole – they led initiatives such as the development of the environment industry action agenda (ground-breaking for its time) and held innovative forums such as the Business of the Environment.

These efforts gave meaning and purpose to an enterprise that connected the dots for business and government between the seemingly disparate and often competing challenges of the times, particularly on issues such as waste management and corporate social responsibility.

As the organisation moved into a new decade (and a new century for that matter), a new CEO came with a new focus and extraordinary vigour. Indeed a reinvigorated, and renamed, Environment Business Australia (EBA) became a think-tank and advocacy body whose existence was forged and fortified by
a growing Australian business voice on the emerging climate change debate.

CEO Fiona Wain championed and articulated this progressive business sentiment on the shape that a new post-carbon economy would take. Through instigation and participation in significant national events such as the first Ecoforum, and the establishment of the first Advisory Board to compromise some of Australia’s top business leaders (including BP, Veolia and the Commonwealth Bank), EBA took the debate out of the hands of the engineer and put it firmly into the in-tray of Australia’s senior executive, and quite often onto dinner tables of corporate Australia. 

As we drive through the uncertain “tweens”, there comes a need for new sense of purpose and resolve for business around the drivers of change in the sustainability agenda. And that applies equally to Sustainable Business Australia (SBA), the new name of EBA.

Time for a root and branch rethink on Australia’s economic growth

It is time to start thinking and mobilising business beyond its traditional models of GDP growth and reconcile Australia’s future economic resilience, which is essential to the alleviation of poverty and for the promotion of prosperity, as well as the need to preserve our nation’s resources.

How? A green growth agenda can look at the prospect of promoting growth while at the same time preserving and protecting  and correcting past damage to the natural environment. It also has a social dimension.

Should we be concerned about embarking on such change when the future is so uncertain and the dividend to the shareholder, and the general community, is at best opaque? I think not.

The fear for Australian business should not be one of believing we will mis-step by leading the rest of the world on structural change of our economy without them joining us, nor that growth will not be at the heart of this change. Rather, it must be a realisation that competing in a global economy now also embraces, at its core, the valuation of the environment as a measure of economic health, whether for a nation, a community or even a business. This cannot be done with a few climate change or energy efficiency programs alone.

Climate change, ecosystems depletion, resource inefficiency and loss of productivity. These are new paradigms in a new century that have neither linear nor traditional solutions open to them. Future economic fundamentals are inexorably going to be measuring, managing and reporting environmental impacts as a key economic parameter of a corporate performance. A sustainable Australia must encompass all aspects of growth: how we price our natural resources, how we design our cities, develop new modes of mobility and overcome land use conflict; and the type of infrastructure we need for the next 50 to 100 years.

For some businesses this is nothing more than common sense, while for others it will be an exercise in cost reduction. Still others will view it as a reputation issue, while for some it will be an innovation or investment opportunity. No two businesses are the same, and nor will their response to this agenda.

But that’s fine. Australia can build the underlying DNA of sustainable development that can uniquely serve them.

Transform the Agenda, Promote the Pragmatic, Realise the Tangible

SBA has a solution to this challenge. It will be focusing on Australia’s business contribution to the sustainable development agenda. How can we do this?

• Promoting policy development to enable the right framework settings for business to make an effective contribution to sustainable human progress and prosperity;
• Advocating the business case for sustainable development; and,
• Highlighting the business contribution to sustainable development solutions and share leading edge products, services and skills among the members and the broader Australian community.

At SBA we have started our own transformation, to focus on the drivers of this green growth. Those drivers are:

• Smart policy and regulation;
• The role of markets and the importance of metrics (and I’m not just talking about carbon!);
• Innovation and technological development, deployment and commercialisation;
• Finance & investment (new mechanisms for the new challenges); and
• The consumer / supplier relationship.

And our model delivery will be just as transformational and pragmatic in equal measure. We will be building a community of purpose amongst Australian business to develop policy responses to the sustainable development that evoke answers, and not 24- hour spin.

So we head towards the undiscovered country. And that is the future.

And that’s why Sustainable Business Australia will be working with Australian business to explore, build capacity and promote that agenda. Come and join us!

Andrew Petersen is the new CEO of Sustainable Business Australia (formerly Environment Business Australia).
Contact him on
www.andrew.petersen@sba.asn.au
or +61 2 9358 1800