There is an emerging consensus that all is not well withtoday’s market-centric economic model. Although it has deliveredwealth over the last half century and pulled millions out of poverty,it is recession-prone, leaves too many unemployed, creates ecologicalscarcities and environmental risks, and widens the gap between the richand the poor. Around one trillion dollars a year in perversesubsidies and barriers to entry for alternative products maintain“business-as-usual” while obscuring their associatedenvironmental and societal costs. The result is the broken system ofsocial inequity, environmental degradation, and political manipulationthat marks today’s corporations.
We aren’t stuck with this dysfunctional corporate model, butbusiness needs a new DNA if it is to enact the comprehensive approachwe need. In Corporation 2020, Pavan Sukhdev lays out asweeping new vision for tomorrow’s corporation: one that willincrease human wellbeing and social equity, decrease environmentalrisks and ecological losses, and still generate profit. Through acombination of internal changes in corporate governance and externalregulations and policies, Corporation 2020 can become a reality in thenext decade – and it must, argues Sukhdev, if we are toavert catastrophic social imbalance and ecological harm.
Corporation 2020 presents new approaches to measuring the truecosts of business and the corporation’s obligation to society.From his insightful look into the history of the corporation to histhoughtful discussion of the steps needed to craft a better corporatemodel, Sukhdev offers a hopeful vision for the role of business inshaping a more equitable, sustainable future.
Pavan Sukhdev is the founder & chair of GISTAdvisory, a consulting group specializing in valuing & managingenvironmental impacts and dependencies at all levels - national,provincial, business and personal. Until recently, Pavan was SpecialAdviser and Head of UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative, whichdemonstrates that the greening of economies is not a burden on growthbut rather a new engine for growing wealth and decent employment, andfor the reduction of persistent poverty. A career banker, Pavan took asabbatical from Deutsche Bank from 2008 till 2010 in order to deliverhis environmental projects “TEEB” and the “GreenEconomy Report” for UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative. TEEB,a global study on “The Economics of Ecosystems andBiodiversity” commissioned by the G8+5, released awidely-acclaimed suite of reports at the UN’s Convention onBiological Diversity bi-annual meeting at Nagoya, Japan, in October2010.
Pavan pursues long-standing interests in environmental economics and innature conservation through his work with the Green Indian States Trust(GIST) and other NGO’s. He serves on the boards of StockholmResilience Centre (SRC), Conservation International (CI) and onUNDP’s Advisory Panel on the Human Development Report and itsHuman Development Index (HDI). He has been awarded the McKluskeyFellowship, 2011, by Yale University.
