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Britain urged to renounce "green voluntarism"
26th November 2002
ENDS - Environment Daily
The UK government has come under fire from one of its senior environmental advisors for being too ready to accept a "voluntarist" corporate sustainability agenda and too unwilling to impose measures on business where these are necessary. Broader and tougher regulatory and fiscal intervention is needed, says the chairman of the UK's sustainable development commission, Jonathon Porritt.
In a report published by NGO Forum for the future, Mr Porritt and journalist Roger Cowe argue that the triple bottom line approach, under which business self-interest is seen as a key driver for sustainability, has strict limits to its effectiveness. Very often, they argue, companies' environmental, social and financial priorities in fact conflict. In these cases shareholders' short-term interests generally prevail.
According to the report, Britain's Labour government is largely failing to recognise this due to a desire not to be seen to be anti-business. Instead of "trying to talk business into doing more", the authors argue, the government needs to more firmly set the direction of policy through a combination of regulation and incentives.
Among a raft of recommendations the authors call for reconsideration of a decision not to require environmental reporting from larger firms. They also urge the government to reaffirm its commitment to environmental taxation and also to shifting taxes from "goods" to environmental "bads".
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