Achieving True Sustainability: Economics for a Blue Planet

18 Mar, 2012

by Jurriaan Kamp and Marco Visscher, via ODE Magazine

Armed with an MBA from the French business school INSEAD, Gunter Pauli was in his mid-30s when he took the reins at Ecover, the Belgian cleaning products manufacturer that ran into financial difficulties when it expanded internationally too quickly. Pauli, who was responsible for construction of Europe’s first “ecological factory,” left Ecover in 1994 after discovering that cultivation of the palm oil for his products was damaging Indonesia’s primary forests.

Since then, he has been living “on a path that pursues a sustainable world,” he says. The 55-year-old Belgian, fluent in seven languages, has lived on four continents and set up 10 companies. He also supports initiatives that develop sustainable production methods via his foundation ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives). Pauli has written 15 books published in 30 languages, including short stories for children about science and technology.

After his pioneering work to encourage green business, Pauli has developed a new vision, which he describes in The Blue Economy: 10 Years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs. The book has been published in 22 languages. In the blue economy, sustainability is the result of a production process that is just as integrated as an ecosystem. And the use of raw materials is avoided whenever possible, thanks to innovations based on nature.

Your concept of the blue economy is a criticism of the green economy, which is based on human well-being, socio-economic development and environmental protection. What can be wrong with that?

“The green economy has major flaws. We’re asking consumers to pay more and get less quality; we’re asking investors to put up more capital with less return. That may work for a small part of the world population when the economy is doing well. But we’re facing an economic crisis, with high rates of unemployment everywhere, so how can we ever expect anyone to pay more money without getting better quality or to put up more money to settle for lower returns? The way the green economy has been conceived—through higher prices, lower returns, new taxes—is simply not going to work.”

Don’t you think the pioneers of the green economy have made tremendous gains that have benefited us all?

“I’m not declaring the past stupid. What we have today is the best we could imagine. Now, we can tap ourselves on the shoulder and say, ‘Good job. Let’s do more of the same.’ Or we can say, ‘Let’s see if we can do better.’ I think the green economy was an interesting beginning, but at a time of crisis we need to look at a different type of economy, an economy that requires less investment, an economy that provides multiple cash flows and builds up social capital, an economy capable of responding to basic needs with what we have.”

That’s how you came up with the blue economy. What’s the big difference?

“Rather than promising something good downstream, the blue economy produces something good immediately—revenue and jobs. It doesn’t rely on a lot of capital, but on smart innovations that order processes through the wisdom of nature. The blue economy is based on the idea that whatever human beings have as challenges, natural systems have found solutions for them. We only need to examine closely. Once we understand how nature does it, we need to transpose its solution into our modern world and redesign everything. If we embrace nature’s innovations and emulate ecosystem solutions, we’re going to be sustainable with whatever we do.”

Why “blue”?

“Seen from the universe, the Earth is blue. With all the blue water and the blue sky, the Earth is essentially a blue species.”

A blue economy needs businesses. Are there any “blue” businesses?

“Yes, I know of about 100 business models, implemented in different parts of the world, which represent this fundamental shift in the economy. Any business leader or market leader today in any particular segment will find that whatever these businesses are doing has nothing to do with what the large companies are offering.”

Click here to read the rest of this article at ODE Magazine.