‘Climate change represents one of the greatest business opportunities’

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: UNEP has been active through its own networks and the UN Global Compact in advancing new ways of doing business--doing business in a manner that displays better and more intelligent ways of managing the environment and society and building the business case for sustainable development.

This is a business model based on performance goals such as resource productivity and driven by life cycle management approaches that move beyond re-active, end-of-pipe technologies.

It is a model seeking to add value by addressing environmental challenges as and opportunity--using a triple bottom line approach-- as opposed to those who continue to operate on risk averse approaches that consider only short-term financial results.

It is a model that reflects the challenges of our times where many of the wealth creating and poverty-alleviating nature-based resources - known as ecosystem services and ranging from forests to wetlands, soils and the atmosphere -are under pressure as never before.

Where - to cite just one example - scientists estimate that without action a once plentiful, renewable and economically significant resource like the world's commercial fisheries may have disappeared in less than five decades as a result of poor management including simplistic one-dimensional subsidies.

What in UNEP's view is the environmentally responsible company? It is the company that takes steps such as the following:

- Re-define company vision, policies and strategies to include the 'triple bottom line' of sustainable development.

- Develop sustainability targets and indicators (economic, environmental, social).

- Establish a sustainable production and consumption programme with clear performance objectives to take the organisation beyond compliance in the long-term.

- Work with suppliers to improve environmental performance, extending responsibility up the product chain and down the supply chain.

- Adopt voluntary charters, codes of conduct or practice internally as well as through sectoral and international initiatives to confirm acceptable behaviour and performance.

- Measure, track and communicate progress in incorporating sustainability principles into business practices, including reporting against indicators as found in the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines.

- Ensure transparency and unbiased dialogue with stakeholders.

Our world today is an interconnected, Wikipedia world of activist consumers and one that is - in the words of Thomas Friedman - "flat".

As competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries are leveling, new questions are being asked about the standards of performance enforced through global supply chains.