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Decarbonisation is flawed, says development expert on why business won’t save the world
(Eco Business, 21 Jan 2019) Big corporations don’t act for the common good nor will they serve the basic rights that underlie sustainable development, and we are foolish to think that business will solve global challenges, according to Chandran Nair, author of The Sustainable State.
Decarbonisation claims by corporations are flawed, claimed Chandran Nair, fifteen minutes into what turned into a tense panel discussion on the biggest drivers behind people’s understanding of sustainability at The Future Sustainability Summit held in Abu Dhabi last week.
“Our entire world is based on carbon. When a company says it’s achieved a three per cent reduction in carbon, it’s not decarbonisation—it’s merely taking inefficiencies out of their carbon usage,” he said, calling decarbonisation “jargon” that was being used by companies to portray themselves as responsible actors.
His comments followed fellow panelist Timothy Nixon, managing editor of sustainability at Thomson Reuters, who shared research showing that more companies in the world were transforming their business models in a bid to “decarbonise in line with a 2 degree world.”
On the role of business in solving the world’s sustainability challenges, Nair, the Malaysian author and founder of Hong Kong-based think tank The Global Institute for Tomorrow, continued: “Sustainability is a public and common good, which is not the purview of private entities. That doesn’t make them bad, but this is not what they do.”
Eco Business, 21 Jan 2019: Decarbonisation is flawed, says development expert on why business won’t save the world
