SUSTAINABILITY:Small countries can lead the way in creating a green future, says Stuart Hart

The challenge - should you choose to accept it - is to develop a sustainable global economy that the planet is capable of supporting indefinitely. The consequence, if you don't is to set the world on a collision course with the future and accelerate the path to potential major economic and social disruptions on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression in the first half of the 20th century.

This sounds rather sensationalist, especially coming from an American professor, Stuart Hart, author of Capitalism at the Crossroads and a highly respected authority on sustainable development in business. However, he is adamant that Ireland, and in particular the State's thousands of small and medium-sized companies, has an important role to play in taking on what he believes is the most pressing challenge facing the world today.

"For large countries and corporations, adapting to a new way of thinking can be like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole," says Hart.

"But for smaller nations and smaller companies, it's an easier thing to do and can often be much more successful." As a result, he believes Ireland needs to take the lead.

The idea of environmentally-friendly practices in business is nothing new, with several companies - the Body Shop being one of those - trading on the whole aspect of environmentalism and sustainability.

However, the idea that so-called "green" practices can go hand-in-hand with revenue growth is something more alien to most of the business world.

According to Hart, in the past the business logic for "greening", as he calls it, was largely operational or technical.

However, nowadays, companies are coming round to the fact that environmental opportunities can actually offer a source of revenue growth - take Dunlop Tire Corporation and Akzo Nobel as an example.

Their development of a new tyre made using fibre belt, rather than conventional steel belt, not only eliminated some of the expensive recycling costs associated with steel, but also improved gas mileage and made driving safer, vastly improving the product on offer whilst also helping the environment.

Still, while Hart welcomes positive changes such as those made by Dunlop and Akzo Nobel, he is quick to point out those who think sustainability is only a matter of pollution control are missing the bigger picture.

"Even if all the companies in the developed world were to achieve zero emissions within the next few years, the earth would still be stressed beyond what biologists refer to as its carrying capacity," he says.

So what does tackling the issue of sustainability actually entail?

According to Hart, there are three possible paths. The first is to decrease the human population and thus lower the number of people using the world's resources; the second, to lower the level of affluence and stop people competing for resources; and the third, to change the technology used to create the goods and services that constitute the world's wealth, a process he refers to as using disruptive innovation to create clean technology.

The first is obviously not feasible without inducing a mass cull of the human race and the second would only accentuate one of the causes of the problem - it's well known that poverty and population growth go hand in hand.

That, therefore, leaves the third option, which Hart believes offers one of the biggest opportunities for business in the history of commerce.

In order to achieve this, or even attempt to get near to it, Hart lays down three necessary stages of transformation.

Stage one is all about moving from pollution control to pollution prevention, he says.

This means focusing on minimising or eliminating waste before it is created, rather than clearing up waste after it has been produced.

Stage two, meanwhile, concerns product stewardship, whereby companies focus on minimising not only pollution from the manufacturing process, but also all environmental impacts associated with the full life cycle of a product.

According to Hart, if this process is carried out properly, it has the potential for significant revenue growth through product differentiation, and as a result can already be found in the business plans of several large multinationals including Philips and Sony.

However, if the world is to become truly sustainable and avoid what Hart believes could turn into a global crisis with human beings competing with most other animal species for food and driving many to extinction, then these acts alone aren't enough.

What needs to happen is for companies to plan for, and invest in, tomorrow's technologies today.

"The simple fact is that the existing technology base in many industries is not environmentally sustainable," he says, citing the chemical industry's dependence on chlorine as a particular example.

As a result, something needs to be done to address this issue and encourage companies to start being proactive rather than reactive in their approach to sustainability.

While Hart is adamant that the responsibility for creating a sustainable economy falls on the shoulders of the world's enterprises, he is also in no doubt that governmental support would add significant weight to any push towards a national environmentally sustainable strategy and believes this is what gives Ireland the edge over other nations.

"Smaller countries like Ireland and Denmark are in a pole position to take on the role and become leaders in this area of clean technology," he says. "In the past, Ireland's business and economic development has been about attracting foreign companies into Ireland.

"That game is pretty much played out now, with manufacturing moving to other places and industry evolving. It's now time to look at what is going to be the next generation of industry."

According to Hart, Ireland is well placed to become a leader in the development of the next generation of clean technology and, as a result, play an important part in the growth of the sustainability movement.

"Ireland could become a development haven," he says, adding that the State's affinity with indigenous entrepreneurship and R&D could act as an essential catalyst.

"It's all about the entrepreneurial mindset," he says. "Not immediately thinking about the bottom line, but looking ahead and seeing business development as an affordable loss."

Speaking at a conference in Dublin recently, Hart talked of the potential to develop an environmentally-sustainable indigenous tourism industry in Ireland.

"Sustainability could be used as a leverage point to sell the Irish tourism industry and to hold it up as an example to other countries," he says.

"There could be a conscious national Irish strategy to use the tourism industry as a vehicle to demonstrate the next generation of commerce."

While any move by the government in the US to implement such a strategy would obviously be welcomed, Hart is sceptical this will ever happen - after all, it took the Bush administration until last year to acknowledge that climate change was even an issue.

As a result, Hart believes it is down to the corporations and, where possible, the smaller countries, to accept the consequences of carrying on as we are and rise to the challenge of addressing the issue.

Ireland's chance to be a leader may only just be beginning.