Although we exist in a world where the economy is fundamentally connected to our basic lifestyles, I don't believe that it is impossible to incorporate sustainability elements into businesses while maintaining economic prosperity.
What I Value
I value an economy that does not attempt to harness and control nature to profit unilaterally, but instead coexists peacefully with it to establish a mutually beneficial relationship between people and the environment.
What I Envision
I envision a world where corporations can honestly cooperate with governments to set the foundation for a more sustainable society. In this vision, instead of focusing on short-term monetary profits from resource exploitation, companies invest in profitable ventures that help to preserve natural resources in the long term.
Possible Interventions
As punishing evasion of policy may not be as motivating as rewarding adherence to policy, a potential intervention would be to provide incentive such as subsidies to encourage companies to sustainable practices. However, in order to ensure that sustainable practices are maintained, companies would be regularly and thoroughly audited in order to determine eligibility for incentives based on current evaluations on approaches to sustainability.
A train likely containing wood pellets manufactured by Drax. Despite the departure from sustainable practices, Drax continues to receive subsidies (Chan, 2023). In order to provide fair incentive to companies that do adopt and maintain sustainable practices, it is essential that a rigorous and regular auditing system is implement to assess if the operations of a company is deemed sustainable and provide eligibility to incentives accordingly. Image retrieved on October 27, 2023 from https://www.drax.com/ca/
References
Chan, K. (2023, October 20). Business [PowerPoint slides]. University of British Columbia.