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The least we should expect of business is to call out the failure of the system

For the past 25 years of my life, I’ve been an uncompromising advocate of the benefits of NGOs working with business rather than working against business, in order to accelerate the transition to a genuinely sustainable economy. I still am, but not in the same way, and absolutely not on the same…

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Beyond COVID-10: Can Business Really ‘Build Back Better’?

First published by Forum for the Future, May 28, 2020 | The COVID-19 crisis is having a devastating impact – both in terms of lives lost and economic disruption. At Forum for the Future, we believe that it would be tragic to go back to yesterday’s “business-as-usual”; moments of radical disruption…

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Unilever versus Kraft/Heinz: Competing Models of Capitalism

For all sorts of reasons, the way people feel about corporate sustainability is influenced disproportionately by how well Unilever is seen to be doing through its Sustainable Living Plan. You can see why. The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) is one of the most ambitious, one of the most…

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The Extraordinary Works of the Late, Great, David Fleming

David Fleming was one of the most important people in my early green life – perhaps the most important. When I joined the Green Party in the mid-70s (or Ecology Party as it was then), I relied for inspiration almost entirely on a small number of books (‘Small is Beautiful’, ‘Blueprint for Survival’…

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Re-inventing the ‘Limits to Growth’ debate

Still barely a mention about the environment in the Referendum campaign – just another reminder that these issues still have very little cut-through in UK politics. Beyond the debate about climate change (which, to be fair, does get some cut-through, though rarely in ways that would be desirable),…

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Shock Horror! Tories and Lib Dems Don’t Agree about the Economy

I can’t deny that it’s highly entertaining watching the Coalition Government energetically tearing itself to pieces over the future of the economy. You’ve just got to laugh out loud at the wounded indignation of Danny Alexander suddenly waking up to the fact that his ‘close colleague’ at the…

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