DEVELOPING A PLAN FOR THE PLANET
A BUSINESS PLAN FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING
IAN CHAMBERS & JOHN HUMBLE
GOWER 2011
The Green Economics and Sustainable Growth Series
PART I
This book is dedicated to the millions of people who live in poverty, without access to education, clean water, health facilities or employment and who have no voice of their own.
‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survive. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.
Charles Darwin
Chapter 1: Why We Need a Plan for the Planet
‘If a visitor were to arrive from outer space and looked at planet earth, their immediate request would be to ask to see the manager.’
William S. Burroughs
Let us just imagine for a moment that we did receive a visitor from outer space and after a brief look at the state of our planet, they did ask to see the manager! What would our response be? We could imagine taking them to one of our global organizations such as the United Nations. Here we could imagine that we would probably highlight the major advances our civilization has made over the last 10,000 years – from hunter gatherers, to the wonders of modern science, medicine, communications and technology.
However, our visitor would not be totally satisfied with this overview and we could expect them to ask a few telling questions about what is not working so well on Planet Earth. Questions about climate change, energy resources, food and water, global health, unsustainable population growth and the well-being of other species on the planet.
At this point we would probably have to admit that we as a human race are facing some of the most challenging issues we have encountered as a civilization – all converging at the same time and with many needing to be addressed in the next decade if we are to be successful in dealing with them.
We could imagine our visitor nodding understandingly and explaining that every planet faces challenges as it progresses. However the successful planets develop an overall plan on how to address the issues in a coordinated way and then work together to tackle them. At this point we know what the next question will be. Our interplanetary visitor would ask to see our ‘overall plan’ on how we are dealing with these challenges we are facing. How we are coordinating our efforts on a global scale? How we are working together to tackle these issues?
- We have to admit that we have no overall global plan to address these issues.
- We realise that the human race and Planet Earth are facing some of the most challenging issues in the history of our civilization, yet we have no overall, coordinated global plan on how to deal with them.
- If this was a business, then our interplanetary visitor would probably suggest politely that we ‘change the management’ and appoint a new management team who can quickly develop and implement a plan to address these global challenges.
- The reality is that there are no other managers to appoint – we are ‘the managers’.
Everyday, in everything we do, we all manage a part of the ‘business’ called Planet Earth. This may be in our household, our business, in our community, in the organizations in which we work, or in government. And how we manage these parts of the business everyday impacts on Plane Earth – every one of us is everyday making matters worse – or making things better. There are no bystanders. And there is no one else to address these issues. The reality is that it is up to each of us to make a difference in the areas we can impact.
- To be effective, this can only be done in a coordinated way. It is common sense. If we are going on holiday, if we are moving house, we put a plan together.
- We have to admit we are not working effectively together to tackle and address the global challenges.
- We are becoming increasingly aware of the extremely limited time frames in which we have to act.
- The time for talking is over. The time for coordinated action is now. We need a plan that can be implemented at national, business, community and individual levels.
- We have developed this Plan for the Planet as a starting point to demonstrate that using global business planning principles we can build a plan to achieve a sustainable world.
Within the next hour, the following changes will have taken place on Planet Earth:
v Population: Within this hour the population on Planet Earth will have increased by more than 9,000 people. This translates into an increase of an additional 220,000 people every day – and over 80 million more people every year! Over the last 70 years, less than one average lifetime, the human race has more than trebled from 2 billion to over 6.8 billion.
v Climate Change: Within this hour over 1 million tons of CO2 will have been released into the atmosphere – translating into over 10 billion tons per year. The increasing evidence is that this is contributing significantly to the damaging greenhouse effect and therefore the potential for further global warming. Global warming in turn has been linked to reduce crop yields, changes in weather patterns, and increasing droughts and storms. Events which we have already been observing over the last decade.
v Energy: Within this hour an additional 3.5 million barrels of oil will have been used. This means we continue to consume more than 30 billion barrels a year, yet we are aware that at least half of the easily accessible oil reserves may have already been consumed. This is contributing to increasing uncertainty about long-term production capabilities. It has been estimated that Planet Earth without fossil fuels could only support 2 billion people, due to the importance they play in agriculture and food production.
v Water and food: Within this hour over 1 billion people will not have enough food to eat or access to safe drinking water. Women and children in Sub-Saharan Africa will be spending on average more than two hours a day collecting water, with journeys of six to seven hours not unusual. At the same time, the European Union (EU) has estimated that over 40% of its water resources are being wasted.
v Global resources: Within this hour an area the size of 900 football fields will have been destroyed in the Amazon Rainforest – a major source of oxygen production for Planet Earth. In South East Asia and in the virgin Siberian forests there is similar devastation. Forests that have stood for millions of years are being destroyed at an alarming rate. Financially, the EU has estimated that the total cost of environment damage is more than $8 million every hour. However, we are all aware that the impact is much more than economic. It is devastating other species who also call Planet Earth home. More than 100 species are currently on the endangered species list.
v Extreme poverty: Within this hour more than 1 billion people will be struggling to survive on less than $1 a day and a further 2.5 billion people will be living on $2 a day. Within this hour over $300,000 of International Development Aid will be provided to try to tackle this inequity, yet less than half of this funding will reach those for whom it was intended.
v Global health: Within this hour over 250 people will have been infected with HIV/aids, however, only 20% of these people will have access to treatment. More than 200 young children will have died from diseases associated with poor hygiene and lack of sanitation, and over 50 women in Sub-Sahara Africa and Asia will have died from preventable complications during pregnancy or childbirth. Over 350 people will have died of tobacco-related illnesses.
v Universal education: Within this hour over 70 million children will still not have access even to basic primary education and there will be over 800 million illiterate people, many of whom will struggle to find work.
v Conflict and peace: Within this hour a further $130 million will have been spent on global military expenditure – contributing to a total cost of over $1200 billion per year. In contrast, United Nations (UN) expenditure within this same hour on Peacekeeping will be less than $1 million, despite the fact that there are currently at least 18 significant unresolved conflicts taking place on Planet Earth. Global expenditure on Peacekeeping is therefore less than $7 billion a year, compared to more than $1200 billion military expenditure.
v Global finances: Global GDP turnover will be over $70 billion within this hour, or over $650,000 billion ($65 trillion) per year – arguably more than sufficient funds to address the global issues we have just reviewed.
These examples give a sense of the scale of the global challenges we are facing on Planet Earth: Unsustainable Population Growth; Climate Change; Energy Supplies; Water and Food Supplies; Planet Sustainability and Biodiversity; Extreme Poverty; Global Health; Universal Education; Conflict and Peace and Financing a sustainable world.
- The issue of Climate Change has moved from ‘is it real’ to ‘is it too late’ in less than five years. Many of the other global challenges are equally urgent.
The good news is that from the time we started walking upright the human race has demonstrated a great capacity for creative response to the challenges it has been confronted with on Planet Earth – to adapt. As the British historian Arnold Toynbee said, “The quality of human nature on which we must pin our hopes is its proven adaptability.”
- We already are seeing good examples of recent successes and a growing awareness that change is urgently required: The ozone layer; The eradication of polio; Increasing global awareness and coordination; The business contribution.
We need to begin acting a lot smarter and faster. The greatest challenge we therefore face, whether in government, in business or in the community, is ‘how can we achieve this?’ How can we achieve the ‘step change acceleration’ required to drive the coordinated changes across the planet? Can we work together on a global scale to implement this coordinated action, delivered at a local level, and in the limited timeframes required to avert the potential devastating impacts on the Planet Earth of the global challenges? Can we combine our efforts and actions fast enough to deal with these challenges before they combine together into what some are already terming the ‘perfect storm’?
The purpose of this book
- We outline an approach to achieving this step change acceleration through a coordinated planning approach which can be implemented at every level – government, business, community and as individuals.
- The biggest challenge has been in putting in place effective decision-making and management approaches to deal with the challenges and manage and coordinate their solutions on a global scale.
Lester Brown highlights the requirement: ‘It seems that the world needs some sort of conceptual framework within which to look at the problems and then what to do about them. One would think that someone would be doing a plan – the World Bank or the US Government or the UN. They’re not even close. And you have to incorporate a wide range of issues because there are no partial solutions.
The purpose of this book is also to provide a summary of the key challenges so they can be easily understood and to outline some of their solutions. This is to enable us to all understand not only the urgency for taking action, but also to demonstrate our belief that if we commit ourselves to using known solutions and best practices – leverage our ability to innovate and adapt – and work together to implement these capabilities in a coordinated and cooperative manner – we can build a sustainable future – not only for our generation, but for all future generations.
To build this plan, there are a number of key requirements:
v An understanding of the global challenges and solutions;
v An understanding of the interconnectivity of the challenges – and both the threats and the opportunities that these interconnectivities provide;
v An understanding of the key global management practices which can be used to develop and successfully implement a plan of this scope ad scale;
v And finally the involvement, cooperation, commitment and sense of urgency and drive from all stakeholders – international and national governments, business and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), communities and every individual in the community – to drive forward the necessary changes required to deliver our Plan for the Planet and build a sustainable world.
We are greatly assisted by an understanding of the five key themes that run through this book: Interconnectivity; The stakes are high; A focus on business; Urgency; ‘Together we can’.
You are invited to visit the Plan-for-the-Planet.com website where you can download the Plan for the Planet Templates to adapt to your own organization, business community and household, keep up to date with developments and access the management effectiveness checklists. These are all located at: www.plan-for-the-planet.com.
You are invited to join us on the journey that this Plan for the Planet lays before us: a journey that will be fraught with obstacles, yet a journey that can be achieved through doing what the human race has done well throughout history – working together to overcome the challenges that we face to build a sustainable word for our and future generations.