The art of Forestry

There are lots of difficult questions in the idea of 'sustainable business' that from some angles seem contradictory.   This would cause some people to find it such a hard sum to balance that any kind of action is too challenging. There is some truth in their fears. There are really hard conceptual issues that could take up all of your time if you had to engage with them every day. This creates a huge responsibility on the proponents of the thinking to grapple with them until not only they can fully understand them, but they can also explain them clearly to others.

The route of the problem in my mind that creates all of the smaller inconsistencies and tensions that sprout up here and there is as follows:

-A smaller economy is the quickest route to reducing the total impact of human activity.

-Companies are defined by growth. This is core to their existence and the pursuit of this represents the only way they can survive in the face of competition

-Therefore sustainability interests and business interests are set in critical opposition to each other from the off.

The best resolution of this that I have ever read was on John Grants blog and is based around a useful metaphor - the idea of forestry. It states that we should think of the economy as a whole as a huge forest that has been growing in all directions for a while now. Trends towards reducing excessive consumption through government intervention, consumer choice or scarcity of resources can and should make the forest shrink in its totality. It would also change the rules of how the many forms of life inside win and lose. What would not change would be the fierce competition for the scarce life sustaining resources available inside. Each species and individual would have to adapt to this change in conditions in order to succeed. This will definitely mean that some of the biggest oldest oak trees (on present form lets say the American car industry) might fall. But this in turn would free up resources for other more suitable forms of life in their place. Other well established life might be able to change and mutate quickly enough to stay strong with a lesser or even highly coverage. However the most noticeable thing would be some bamboo shoots or other nimble fast growing life, totally suited to the new environment, growing up before our very eyes.  

In other words even in an economy that is shrinking overall, the growth drive of companies does not and can not subside. What’s more important is the transitions that will take place between better suited, more able, more sustainable forms of business, and older less flexible institutions.  

But despite this those in both scenarios need help. The newcomers need resources and guidance to become established. While the incumbents need help to modernise and learn new methods. If ultimately the latter are sat on an unsustainable business model and are not prepared to address this despite any smaller steps they take around the edges then they may not make the distance. But all deserve the chance.

So if it seems complicated sometimes the task can be reduced to something pretty simple… two tasks in fact. The first is making big or established companies become more sustainable. The second is making newer or smaller more sustainable companies big. The race for the future happens in-between.