Planet under Pressure

ECONOMIC LESSONS
mal, and the whole transformation that
was already on the way is pushed back.
Let’s talk a little bit later about solidarity and
the transformation of industries. But first I
would like to pick up on what you said about
risks. Julian, in a recently published World
Business Council for Sustainable Development
publication, one can read that all this was very
predictable. It was clear that such a pandemic
could show up, and it was clear that we have
chronic underinvestment in the health system,
we have short-term profit maximization by
many companies, and all these things were
undermining the resilience of society at all
levels. What happened to the highly praised,
sustainable concept of stakeholder capitalism?
Julian Hill-Landolt: We take a different
view of this (and our view is in line with
Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s, who came up
with the black swan concept): the difference
is between predictability and
preparedness. The Covid-19 crisis is behaving
like a black swan because we
were completely unprepared for it, but
it wasn’t a black swan because it was
entirely predictable. There is an international
body called the Global Preparedness
Monitoring Board, co-convened by
the World Bank and the World Health
Organization, to discuss health disruptions
like Covid-19. At the top of their
list last year was our preparedness for
a respiratory viral pandemic. A lot of
the resilience conversation in business
right now focuses on a shift from “just
in time” thinking to “just in case.”
In terms of the stakeholder capitalism
question that you asked, again I think it’s
important to think about preparedness.
The World Economic Forum had made a
relatively strong point at its meeting back
in January with Klaus Schwab releasing
his manifesto about the role of stakeholder
capitalism. Pace and momentum
have been gathering behind the need for
a shift toward a more stakeholder-led
model. The pandemic has brought into
sharp relief the failings of our current
systems – from underfunded healthsystems,
to economic systems that highly
are vulnerable to shocks, to increasing
risks of future public health crises stemming
from climate change or zoonotic
diseases. A move toward a stakeholder
model of capitalism can help to address
some of these failures and WBCSD is
working with its members and partners
to accelerate the shift.
That having been said, there is an urge
to force sustainability factors into all
conversations and decisions immediately.
I think we need to be respectful of the
phase that we are currently in, which is
about “rescue” in the immediate term,
and the phase that we are going to get
into, which is about recovery. And at
the moment, I think its important that
people get help receiving essential medical
care and putting food on the table.
Yes, we need to have conversations about
where stimulus money is going to go
but, at the end of the day, nothing will
recover if you have mass unemployment
and mass public anxiety about the state
of a given society’s economy.
Emily, your expertise centers on the UK’s progress
on the SDGs, on cross-sector engagement,
and localization of Agenda 2030, among
other things. So actually before this crisis or
pandemic started, António Guterres called the
beginning of the year a decade of action to
make the SDGs happen. Instead of action, we
are experiencing a lockdown. Are we expecting
a lost decade in terms of the SDGs, or a swing
in the right direction?
Emily Auckland: It slightly depends on
my mood on the day as to how I answer
that question. In the UK context, we
started this year with UKSSD launching
our action plan for the SDGs with our
network to say: Actually, if we all work
together, we can do this, and this is what
we need to do. So we started with a really
positive outlook, and then obviously
everything has changed since then.
But nevertheless, we have seen some
really positive signs of the types of behaviors
and attitudes that are going to be
necessary for achieving and implementing
the SDGs: The way that businesses
have responded to the crisis, many of
them have had to pivot their product
lines, many of them have developed
really progressive approaches to partnerships
and to communities. If those
behaviors and those attitudes continue,
then maybe we do stand the chance of
making progress with the SDGs.
Similarly, in the United Kingdom, I think
it’s very fair to say that, ever since the
vote on the EU referendum, and leading
up to that, there was division in
our society. The pandemic has created
– certainly at the community level – a
sense of unity in our society that we
haven’t had for a while, and in the face
of that crisis we have come together. If
we can continue to use that community
unity, we have an opportunity to
really localize the SDGs and to achieve
them by 2030. But it depends on what
happens now within government, what
decision-makers take forward in terms
of economic stimulus, what the recovery
program looks like, what happens globally.
It’s not a lost decade yet, but it feels
like it’s just too soon to say either way
what is going to happen next.
Stimulus is a good keyword for passing this
question to Maja. There are billions of euros,
dollars, or British pounds waiting to stimulate
economies and societies. This is probably
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because in
this generation, we will not have a second
opportunity to invest so much money. Share
with us your wish list! How should we spend
it to get as much sustainability and as much
Agenda 2030 as possible?
Maja Göpel: I would actually like to
tie it to the points that Julian has made
because chipping away has already happened.
Every company that was sincere
in contributing to sustainable societies
has known about the collaterals. Most
of the businesses I speak to say we need
legal signals so that we can shift, >>
Global Goals Yearbook 2020
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