Vision
Is propserity sustainable? We think so.
Our vision of sustainable prosperity is a synergistic balance between human activities and our planet’s natural systems.
It comes from Kenneth Boulding’s path-breaking concept of spaceship earth. For Boulding, sustainability required the transformation of our increasingly globalised “cowboy” society into a “spaceman” society. As Boulding put it back in the 1960s: “We cannot have cowboys and Indians in a space ship, or even a cowboy ethic.”
For us, sustainable prosperity is about living responsibly within our planet’s capacities!
Through working in partnership with others, we aim to influence, encourage and assist private, public and non-profit organisations to make prosperity sustainable. We have a particular interst in the linkages between business, the economy and biodiversity.
Boulding’s two short, seminal essays on sustainability written back in the 1960s are still very much well worth reading today:
The economics of the coming spaceship earth (1966)
More recently in January 2012, the Ditchley Park Foundation in the UK organised a most fascinating conference on how to make prosperity sustainable. The Director’s Note on the conference concluded that “it was noteworthy that those from the private sector seemed on the whole more optimistic than those from civil society or government. If the private sector are beginning to lead, and have the greatest capacity to make change happen, that at least is a good sign.” We agree.
