Former Senator Gaylord Nelson once said, “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.” And he was right. For far too long, we have heard that we have to choose between jobs and the environment, or between having a healthy economy and a healthy planet. But that’s simply not true.
In fact, businesses and the larger economy need a healthy climate and environment to thrive. Why? First of all, our economy depends on a stable climate and critical natural resources – clean water, healthy soil and farmland, growing forests, healthy fisheries, clean air, and abundant energy. But the economy also depends on less visible things that nature provides, called “ecosystem services” by scientists, including the pollination of our crops by insects, the cleaning of our water supplies by wetlands and healthy rivers, and the protection of our coastlines by coral reefs and mangroves. We would be nowhere without these free “services” from nature. Moreover, executives need to minimize the potential risks to their business – whether to their supply chains, their operations, their infrastructure and capital, or their distribution channels and customers – that may come from global environmental disruptions, including the impacts of climate change (more severe storms, more droughts and floods), sea level rise, depleted water supplies, widespread crop failures, and ecosystem decline. The “new normal” for business will be a time of managing these new risks.
In this presentation, Foley illustrates the importance of a healthy, stable environment to businesses and the larger economy. By uncovering the hidden economic value of nature – in terms of the safe climate, natural resources, ecosystem services, and risk protection it provides – we can see ways to improve the long-term health of our businesses and our planet.
This presentation is ideal or influencer audiences, especially from the business community, and can be adapted to broader audiences as well.