Jonathon Porritt. Earthscan, £18.99. www.earthscan.co.uk
Bleak and inspiring by turns, Jonathon Porritt’s latest book offers
reasons for despair and grounds for hope in roughly equal measure.
The chairman of the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission
presents a three-stage argument that ‘sustainable development provides
the only intellectually coherent basis upon which to transform
contemporary capitalism’. The earth’s life support systems are under
intense pressure from human activity. A ‘sustainable variant of
capitalism’ based on a framework of different kinds of capital –
natural, human, social, manufactured and financial – is achievable
through reform rather than revolution. But how to get there? The final
section, ‘Better Lives in a Better World’, offers pointers. Porritt
sees the role of business as crucial and grounds for optimism in the
commercial opportunities of the period of transition to a sustainable
world.
In a notoriously fuzzy field, one of the book’s strengths is its
clarity, particularly in the definition of the concepts discussed.
Sustainability is ‘the capacity for continuance into the long-term
future’, sustainable development the process by which we move towards
sustainability.
But there is room for fun along the way and Porritt delights in taking
a swipe at almost everyone, and everything, involved. Including
corporate social responsibility, that ‘empty, seductive illusion’ which
he views as a ‘self-contained box’ into which companies ‘pack all their
good stuff’.
Yet Porritt can’t seem to decide whether that’s right. His analysis may
be a bit harsh, he says later on, because CSR may enable ‘people to
reach the first base camp along the road to sustainability’.
Self-evidently, CSR is not ‘there’, but nobody credibly claims that it
is. Later on, Porritt concludes ‘there is a lot going on in the
business world, which is genuine (not driven by public relations),
substantive and long term’. Porritt sees no contradiction: both
statements are valid because there is good and bad CSR and companies
are at different stages. On a larger theme, he is unsure whether the
transition to a sustainable capitalism will happen ‘calmly and
peacefully’ or be a descent into a ‘Hobbesian nightmare’. When writing
about the future, it pays to keep your options open.
Alistair Townley
