BETTER BUSINESS BETTER WORLD

Three decades have passed since the Brundtland Commission report, Our Common
Future, defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs”. 18 Since then, the world has seen huge social improvements and continued to
experience unprecedented economic growth. Between 1988 and 2008, the poorest
third of humanity saw their incomes rise by 40-70 percent, with those of the middle
third rising by 80 percent. 19 The proportion of people in extreme poverty declined by
more than half between 1990 and 2015, as did the number of children dying before
the age of five. 20 Over the past 50 years, while the world population has almost
tripled to more than 7 billion, global GDP has expanded six-fold.
However, these social and economic successes mask major fault lines in the world’s
current model of development. It is failing the Brundtland test. Many of the drivers
of growth in the past – for instance, use of fossil fuels and rapid urbanisation – are no
longer sustainable in their past forms. Without urgent correction, growth is likely to
be much slower and more erratic over the next 30 years than the past 30, and many
who escaped poverty during that period could slide back in.
Failures in today’s development model are adding to a swelling list of global
burdens that threaten future stability and shared prosperity. On the environmental
front, human activity has already pushed the planet beyond four of its nine safety
boundaries, the ones for climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system
change and altered biogeochemical cycles. 21 On the social front, there are vast
numbers of people who do not have access to basic services such as healthcare,
clean water, clean energy and sanitation. In middle-income countries, the growing
burden of non-communicable ill health is replacing gains made in the treatment
of communicable diseases. Tobacco now kills around 6 million people annually 22 ,
and the global prevalence of obesity doubled between 1980 and 2014 23 . Although
improving, many education systems are still failing to deliver access to high quality
education. Without urgent action, the prospects for more than 124 million children
and young people lacking access to schools 24 and more than 250 million not learning
necessary skills are severely diminished. 25 Income inequality in OECD countries is at
its highest level for 30 years 26 , and Oxfam estimates that the 62 richest people in the
world have the same wealth as half the world’s population. 27
"Income inequality in OECD countries is at its highest level for 30
years."
On the economic front, many of these burdens are beginning to place important
constraints on the world’s future growth prospects (Exhibit 3). For example, without
radical changes in the current food and agriculture system, the cost of biodiversity
and ecosystem damage could reach up to 18 percent of global economic output by
20