There is an emerging consensus that all is not well with today's market-centric economic model. Although it has delivered wealth over the last half century and pulled millions out of poverty, it is recession-prone, leaves too many unemployed, creates ecological scarcities and environmental risks, and widens the gap between the rich and the poor. Around $1 trillion a year in perverse subsidies and barriers to entry for alternative products maintain "business-as-usual" while obscuring their associated environmental and societal costs. The result is the broken system of social inequity, environmental degradation, and political manipulation that marks today's corporations.
We aren't stuck with this dysfunctional corporate model, but business needs a new DNA if it is to enact the comprehensive approach we need. Pavan Sukhdev lays out a sweeping new vision for tomorrow's corporation: one that will increase human wellbeing and social equity, decrease environmental risks and ecological losses, and still generate profit. Through a combination of internal changes in corporate governance and external regulations and policies, Corporation 2020 can become a reality in the next decade-and it must, argues Sukhdev, if we are to avert catastrophic social imbalance and ecological harm.
Corporation 2020 presents new approaches to measuring the true costs of business and the corporation's obligation to society. From his insightful look into the history of the corporation to his thoughtful discussion of the steps needed to craft a better corporate model, Sukhdev offers a hopeful vision for the role of business in shaping a more equitable, sustainable future.
"In his nuanced analysis, corporations need to align their aims with society, becoming viable communities, institutes and financial, human and natural capital 'factories'." "A strong case for why corporations, extolled as agents of change, should transform themselves" "Much has recently been written about how a new wave of 'green' corporations is just around the corner, an endogenously transformed phalanx of knights in shining armour just waiting to rescue us. Pavan Sukhdev says 'not so', but he also shows with consummate skill and clarity what exogenous changes can be made, to re-engineer the 'social contract' between society and corporations in the twenty-first century."---Achim Steiner, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme "The ideas and assertions in this book blow well past 'insightful' and edge toward 'revolutionary' insofar as they expose major fallacies in our most basic assumptions about what we call our 'economy'. It's an equally important exposure for corporate leaders and leaders of the movement for environmental sustainability, because both need to move beyond the 'infancy phase' in terms of truly understanding and acknowledging the value of natural resources. A seriously inspiring and, ultimately, very hopeful piece of work."---Edward Norton, United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity "Pavan Sukhdev writes with extraordinary clarity, compassion and conscience, laying the ground for a whole system economics. Recognizing that all human activity is part of nature, and that nature is essential for human wellbeing, Sukhdev creates an economic framework for the restoration of human and natural systems. Corporation 2020 brilliantly lays out a pathway for corporations, countries and citizens towards the earth's health."---Jonathan F. P. Rose, President, Jonathan Rose Companies "When Pavan Sukhdev comes along and writes an extraordinary book, and backs it up with an extraordinary campaign and a really good website to promote...a change in the basic culture, definition, and orientation of corporations in our society, it's very timely, and it's very important to take what he has to say seriously."---James Gustave Speth, Professor of Law, Vermont Law School and Distinguished Senior Fellow, Demos "Pavan Sukhdev discusses in eve
