Be green to keep growing

By Harriet Lamb, Executive Director, Fairtrade Foundation

I am learning more about all good things Australian. Top of the list has to be ‘flat-white’ Fairtrade coffee – cappucino without the froth which some UK coffee shops are also now offering. I can certainly recommend it. When I manage to drag myself away from the coffee to the National Business Leaders Forum on Sustainable Development, the day is kicked off by none other than our very own Prince Charles.He’s keen to encourage business to play their part in creating change. For me the star turn though is Kevin Rudd, now Minister for Foreign Affairs and former Australian Prime Minister, who is on the front pages of every Australian newspaper as it is one year since he was ousted from the leadership by current PM Julia Gillard.

The political rumourmill is in full spate as the PM’s ratings plummet and there is talk of a Rudd comeback – and the carbon tax is the hottest of the political potatoes. Back in the calm of the conference, he speaks about the importance of addressing both climate change and the needs of developing countries. He soon has me cheering from my seat when he says: ‘to believe markets will deliver fairness is to suspend disbelief… we cannot allow unfettered markets to do what they would do…. We need radical intervention to make markets work fairly… it’s about how we shape international society.’

Some sectors of Australian industry have loudly opposed deep cuts in carbon emissions for fear of losing business to developing countries. Yet Mr Kishor Chaukor, MD of Indian corporate giant, Tata Industries Ltd, is using its response to the climate problem as an opportunity for growth and innovation. That’s the company who invented the $2,000 Nano car. While one of the world’s largest, fastest growing and most successful companies, it is still deeply rooted in ethical values – like the old Quaker companies that have now been swept away in Britain. 

Next up is Simon Upton, Director of OECD Environment Directorate who blows me away with fact-filled powerpoint after powerpoint graph, the risks in not going green – the shocks to food supply, the pressures on natural capital and water scarcity, the biodiversity loss, the systemic risks such as climate change. ‘If you want growth’, Simon says, ‘you will have to be green to keep the growth going’. He argues that there is no one answer for any business or economy but that green analysis needs to run through the every operation -  a systematic ‘green growth framework’. He announces that the OECD, who he admits has been ‘the temple of GDP maximisation’, will from 2012 integrate green growth analysis into their analyses of economics. It is a strong signal of leadership.