Business success and the environment? Long-term bonded: here's why

The crisis triggered by the coronavirus has reminded us of an essential truth: we are vulnerable. However much ingenuity, resilience, courage humanity has, a microorganism has put it in serious difficulty by radically changing the context, and taking away many lives with it.

We are still in the midst of the storm, but in recent months we have learned a few things. They can help us build a better and safer long-term future for each of us.

3 more weeks of world resources

The global pandemic has reduced our Ecological Footprint by almost 10%, mainly due to the reduction in travel and the slowdown in construction activities. A massive impact that, according to the calculations of Global Footprint Network, has brought Earth Overshoot Day forward by three weeks compared to 2019, the day when humanity begins to consume more resources than the Earth is able to regenerate within a year. A "progress" forced by a global tragedy, very different from the carefully planned transformation we must implement to create a sustainable future.

Mathis Wackernagel, founder and president of Global Footprint Network

We can benefit from some very important lessons that this situation gave us. In primo luogo, we clearly understood than to ignore the ecological context in which we live is a huge risk for everyone's survival and success. Secondly, that we are essentially a single living organism, ei our destinies they are intertwined. Finally, that humanity can reverse the direction of the increasing consumption of resources.

Even if all our attention and efforts are aimed at recovering after the crisis, it is this is ours opportunities to make our economies compatible with resources that our one Planet can offer. How can this be done? Placing regeneration at the center of all decision-making processes of resources, the defense of biodiversity, circularity and the fight against climate change.

We will only be able to get up and build a better long-term future if we recognize the limits of our planet

We have an unprecedented chance: change shape like ours economy and our society to make them more resilient, inclusive, collaborative and able to thrive sustainably. We need to make sure we create infrastructure and economic systems that they use resources much more efficient than before, so from being able to grow by exploiting only what the Earth is able to give us. Nothing less than this can lead us towards the future that all of us, and in particular the younger, we want.

Some examples

To give an example, we know that the levels of greenhouse gas emissions have been closely related to human and industrial activities. Travel, transportation, manufacturing, consumption practices, energy generation. We need to break this correlation, and digitalization in this meaning is one essential tool at our disposal. With tools right digital, the data can be used in new ways, they bring to make better decisions, to use the resources in a way more efficient and achieve better results a long term.

Let's take the buildings. A digitalized building (newly built or redeveloped, it's the same) can consume much less energy, be much more resilient to adapt to changes in scenario and use and also to become much more comfortable for those who occupy it. The key to achieving this are the possibilities offered by digital. Monitor and operationally manage the building remotely, carry out maintenance predictive and preventive, designing in innovative way systems and infrastructures.

Today, for a business model to be successful, it is evident that it must also be designed to enable humanity's long-term success. If it does not, the risk is that it will quickly become obsolete. A good example are circular business models, which produce value and at the same time ensure that products, components, materials are exploited to the maximum of their usefulness and capacity, always. 

One-Planet prosperity

Success for humanity is defined, simply, as the ability for all to thrive while remaining within the ecological means of our planet. A concept defined as “one-planet prosperity”.

The path to this goal can be measured. We can understand if everyone can enjoy the benefits of growth throughUnited Nations Human Development Index. The level we're at able to operate respecting the limits of the Earth's resources, it is possible to traceEcological Footprint. By combining both things, one can delimit a space safe and fair operation, which really allow it not to "go over the ecological budget".

Companies that will be able to help their customers to increasingly enter this space, they will be the ones we need even more long term.

It is for this reason that Schneider Electric's strategy is based on the ability to design an innovation that can win a double challenge. That of improving the well-being and resilience of humanity, while at the same time reducing our dependence on the planet's resources. A strategy based on a double commitment: digitalisation and decarbonisation. Actions aimed at obtaining more safety and quality of life, more respect from environmental resources through deliberate choices that lead to a significant increase in the ability to obtain efficiency and circularity. Our focus is on maximizing decarbonisation opportunities for and with our customers. Customers who build and manage buildings around the world, operate in industry, in the data center sector, in infrastructure.

Olivier Blum, Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer of Schneider Electric

Prosperity with the resources we have

This is what it means to pursue prosperity within the limits of the planet's resources. It's not a question of aspire to do well and at the same time “do good”. It is a question of interpreting these choices as necessary if you want continue to be successful, as a business, in a world that he faces climate change, reduction of biodiversity and resources available.

With this spirit we will be able to overcome the crisis that COVID-19 has caused. We can get there to a future designed from the start to ensure resilience and work for all. It is essential that the conversation on the topics of sustainability changes, ceasing to consider it a "noble effort" and instead declaring it fundamentally necessary. If we do, this will help us make it flourish a prosperous future within i means of our planet. It is the most feasible strategy that we have now.

And in the long run it is certainly better than a future of insecurity on the only planet we have.