Lots of us think about the future, but few can say they're actually a professor on the subject. Markku Wilenius is one of them, and now a consultant at Allianz Group. His outlook for 2008: change or be changed.
 | Markku Wilenius, Professor of Future Studies at the Turku School of Economics, Allianz Group Development“With current economic models and current economic thinking we are, in the long run, heading for disaster.” |
You were involved in the negotiations leading up to the Kyoto Protocol. Do you rate Kyoto a success or failure?
In relative terms it has been indeed a success story, though looking with a long-term perspective, we have to consider it as not more than a moderate start to curb emissions and stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases.
What is your response to the outcome of the Bali Climate Change Summit?
The biggest positive was that a mandate was given for a roadmap process, where a truly global deal will be made. As often, the breakthrough took place in the last moments of the meeting and even the US turned its negative stance into one accepting the common agenda.
What are other climate change trends that will be important in 2008?
The most interesting trends relate to issues of investment: where will we see investors taking really big steps towards making green financial markets? I also expect that there is going to be hot debate about how to get EU-initiated CO2 emissions trading extended globally.
The energy debate will be extremely vigorous as we begin to realize, particularly in Europe, how we are getting trapped by old industrial technology, Russian energy sources and oil that is getting ever more expensive. We really need new and fresh solutions here.
So, do you think it is possible to reconcile environmental protection and the economic growth of a free-market capitalism?
No it is not. We have to change our idea about our economic model. With current economic models and current economic thinking we are, in the long run, heading for disaster for sure. There has to be a revolution in economic thinking for sure. Only then can we change.
The present economic model treats environmental costs still largely as external. In other words, we do not value in a systematic way the harm we are causing the environment. We need to start to calculate these costs since this is the only way we will change.
The centre of that thinking is that we cannot exploit our scarce natural resources in seeking profit as we have done in the past. In addition, we need new thinking where companies see environmental and social issues not just as costs but also as opportunities.
Where do you think those changes have to come from?
Governments are essential for the whole effort on climate change, in terms of international co-operation to take multilateral schemes forward. But I think these schemes will never work until we have a group of global corporations that accompany these targets set by international associations.
Businesses are at a very unique point in history: they are the only entities in the world with sufficient technical resources, capacity and reach to make a difference. So as we go forward the role of companies becomes more crucial.
What are your thoughts on corporate sustainability initiatives? There is a lot of criticism about companies supposedly going green in word but not in deed.
In many cases that is certainly the truth. Which means that consumers that want to be green need to be very conscious about whom they trust. However, I do believe that in the future we will find more and more customers wishing to see that the companies walk their talk. People are so bored with image building without any real alignment to actual action.
Nowadays almost every major company has some sort of program to reduce its environmental impact. The interesting thing is when ‘ordinary’ companies take social or environmental problems to the core of their business thinking. Today we have very few of those companies.
GE is a great example with its "Ecomagination" programme, where they have invested substantially to invent and produce dramatically more environmentally friendly products than those of their peers. They have turned around the idea that developing green initiatives is necessarily a cost for business into the idea that you turn green initiatives into technologies and investments.
How can a company transform in such a way?
The first thing is that there must be a huge amount of people involved. I was at Nokia three years ago talking about corporate sustainability. But because there was only a small fraction of people involved they had this view that they couldn’t do much. That is changing.
Last year, Nokia’s business groups around the world defined its corporate values from the bottom up. I don’t think any top-down approach can work. A corporation finds its identity through the values of the people that are employees.
In the past there has been a strict division between the business world and its values and the private life with other values. Some companies have shown that these don’t need to be separate.
Views expressed by Mr. Wilenius are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of Allianz.
editor: James Tulloch
publishing date: January 16, 2007
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