E-Book, Englisch, 396 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-7398-0591-7
Verlag: UVK Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Prof. Dr. Dr. Dietmar Ernst lehrt Corporate Finance an der European School of Finance der Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Umwelt (HfWU) in Nürtingen. Prof. Dr. Ulrich Sailer lehrt an der Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Umwelt in Nürtingen. Er leitet den Masterstudiengang Controlling und beschäftigt sich insbesondere mit Controlling, Nachhaltigkeit und Komplexität. Prof. Dr. Robert Gabriel lehrt Nachhaltige Unternehmensführung an der Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Umwelt in Nürtingen und hat über 100 internationale Unternehmen bei der Entwicklung und Umsetzung ihrer Nachhaltigkeitsstrategien unterstützt.
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2.1 Development of the concept of sustainability
The concept of sustainability - central to this book - is difficult to grasp for many people. This section 2.1, therefore, outlines the historical development of the concept of sustainability as a basis for the following contributions. The following section 2.2 then considers the general significance of sustainable development for companies. Sustainability is a very old term whose meaning has changed over time. Sustain is borrowed from the Latin sustinere, which can be translated as maintain, carry, preserve, or hold back. Sustainability thus expresses structures that are sustainable and have sufficient reserves for the future. It is regularly claimed that the origin of sustainability lies in forestry, where the limits of short-?term overexploitation were denounced centuries ago. In the early 18th century, Hans Carl von Carlowitz (1645-1714) advocated a sustainable use of the forest. Due to the long regeneration period and the low growth rates of the forest stand, the necessity of a careful handling of wood as a raw material was obvious to secure long-?term supply. People should cut only as much wood as could regrow in terms of species and quantity. Another milestone in the development of sustainability was the publication of the study "The Limits to Growth" in 1972 by a group of young scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA, commissioned by the Club of Rome. By means of a computer-?based system analysis, the development of the world economy and of mankind, in general, was simulated in a world model. This led to alarming results and attracted great attention worldwide. "If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years." The publication ignited the discussion about sustainability, about people's economic and living conditions, even though it did not go uncriticized and numerous forecasts had to be corrected later. It was also significant that the environmental problem must be viewed systemically, due to the complex interconnections and interactions. In the same year, the first United Nations Conference on the Environment was held in Stockholm. This was the first of a series of conferences that led to a global awareness of environmental problems. At this first conference, fundamental principles for the environment and the development were adopted. The event was the starting point for the international cooperation on sustainability. In 1987, another milestone in the development of sustainability emerged: the Brundtland Report was published. This was the final report of the "World Commission on Environment and Development" set up by the United Nations. This report is entitled "Our Common Future" and is usually referred to as the Brundtland Report after the Commission's Chairwoman Gro-?Harlem Brundtland (former Prime Minister of Norway). This report identifies the cause of global environmental problems as poverty in the South and unsustainable production and consumption patterns in the North. The report is also known for creating the guiding principle of sustainable development and coining the term sustainability. It states: Sustainable development is development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Beyond this clarification of the term "sustainable development" (synonym: sustainability), the report expresses the need for a significant process of change involving resource use, financial flows, the direction of technological innovation, and institutional structures. The definition quoted above emphasizes that the present generation should not live beyond its means so that future generations have comparably good living conditions. This is referred to as intergenerational justice. Furthermore, the report addresses the fact that also a fair distribution should take place within a generation (intragenerational justice). Finally, the three dimensions of sustainability are already reflected in this report: economic, ecological, and social living conditions are explicitly addressed. Most literature sources see economic sustainability as defined by the fact that humanity has a need for a permanently secure income. This presupposes that the sum of available capital - e.g., natural capital or human capital - is not reduced. Ecological sustainability is understood to mean that humanity may only satisfy its needs in such a way that the capacity of the ecosystems surrounding us is not exceeded and biological diversity does not suffer. And behind the concept of social sustainability is the understanding that all people, in present as well as in future generations, can satisfy their basic human needs, and at the same time elementary principles such as equality, social justice or social security are applied. The three dimensions of sustainability must be brought into balance with each other, into a target balance. In the same year, the three dimensions are presented for the first time in the familiar form of the three overlapping circles in a publication. In this form of representation, sustainability is found in the middle between the circles. In later publications, the familiar "Three-?Pillar Model" of sustainability is increasingly used. A third form of representation of the interdependencies between the three dimensions of sustainability are nested ellipses. They express that economy can only take place within society, and that it is dependent on interaction with it. Society, in turn, can only act within the planetary boundaries of its environment. These three most familiar representations of the three dimensions of sustainability are found in Figure 2.1. Forms of representation of the dimensions of sustainability A few years after the publication of the Brundtland Report, in June 1992, the UN Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the World Summit, took place in Rio de Janeiro. At this conference, the largest of its kind, with 10,000 participants from 178 countries, the future of the earth was discussed and guidelines for action for sustainable global development were drawn up. In the process, sustainability was declared to be guiding principle of politics. The Rio Declaration states that economic progress is only possible in the long term if environmental protection is considered. This is based related to the realization that global protection of the environment is in turn only possible if social and economic aspects are also taken into account. Other important results of the Rio Conference are the Framework Convention on Climate Change (as the legal basis of the global political climate process), Agenda 21 (as an action program for a new development and environmental partnership between industrialized and developing countries), and the Biodiversity Convention (for the protection of the diversity of life on earth). Following these environmental conferences, the German Federal Government appointed the "Rat für Nachhaltige Entwicklung" (Council for Sustainable Development) in 2001, which advises the Government on sustainability and initiates exchanges with the various interest groups. Since then, Germany has had a sustainability strategy that not only identifies important fields of action but has also gained influence on practical policy. At the Millennium Summit in New York in 2000, the 189 member states of the United Nations agreed on goals in the areas of poverty reduction, peace, human rights, and environmental protection to be achieved by 2015. For this purpose, measures were defined, and measurement criteria established to determine whether the goals had been achieved. In the final report from 2015, the United Nations reported great successes in the fight against poverty, in education, child mortality and the supply of drinking water. There is criticism of continuing poverty and inequality and, in particular, increases in environmental degradation and climate change. Even during the lifetime of these Millennium Development Goals, their implementation was sometimes described as slow and criticized in terms of content. This criticism referred, for example, to the fact that the goals of the industrialized countries were transferred to the developing countries and that most of the measures were to be borne by the developing countries. An international panel of experts then developed the next stage of development goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were adopted by all member states of the United Nations in 2015. A key sentence in the preamble to the SDGs is: "As we embark on this great collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind." Compared to the Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs also include a stronger commitment by developed countries to achieve economic, environmental, and social goals by 2030. The goals are also more diverse and international cooperation is required to implement them. Although the...
