Micro and small companies shall be liable for implementing sustainability, says researcher

British consultant John Elkington believes that the shift to more sustainable business models will come from the private sector

Micro and small businesses will be responsible for applying more sustainable models. This is what the “dean of the corporate sustainability movement”, John Elkington, is betting. The British consultant participated in the lecture “Corporate sustainability, an expanded vision for the economic prosperity of value chains”, held this Wednesday, 17th, at the Sebrae Forum Endear, in São Paulo.

According to Elkington, this change will generate resistance and will be challenging, but it is inevitable. In addition, the consultant believes that the transformation will come from the private sector, despite the political debate and public actions being inseparable from this issue.

“I can’t say what the rest of this decade and the next will be like, but a change will happen. Political leadership is crucial, but we don’t know where it will come from. In my view, it will come from the private sector. And the longer we delay this change, the harder it will be”, he points out.

Elkington also highlights Brazil’s role when it comes to sustainability. For him, the country is little remembered for formalizing business in this area and is often mentioned when talking about problems, such as deforestation and persecution of environmentalists. “Due to its natural grandeur, do not be alarmed that every day more other countries will start to worry about what happens here (in this area)”, he predicted, after citing the murders of indigenist Bruno Pereira and Dom Philips, killed in June in the Javari Valley, in the Amazon.

As for the challenges for local businesses to implement more sustainable initiatives, Elkington comments that this will vary according to the sector and also to the possibilities of each business.

“We need to discuss in this forum the failure to act on climate change. We can see how several industries, especially insurance, have awakened to the importance of ESG (acronym in English that translates to environment, social and governance) for business. We cannot ignore this alert, as we did with the pandemic”, he concluded.

Source: The Day