28 | NewScientist | 17 December 2011

ALMOST four years ago I joined what must be one of the world’s most ambitious projects: a plan to put Earth well on the way to global sustainability by 2050. The Vision 2050: The new agenda for business report produced 70 measures of success and 350 milestones to span the next four decades. The plan was billed as the most comprehensive, detailed description of what we must do to support or save much of civilisation from the ravages of climate change, overpopulation and declining renewable resources.

My role was to produce an accompanying “information mural” – a supersized laminated wall chart. This builds on the many years I have spent translating complex ideas about everything from manufacturing projects to political arguments to scientific and philosophical debates into the visual language of large-scale maps and info-murals. Even in a digital age – or perhaps especially in a digital age – they are far better at making sense of the deluge of data that might otherwise drown us.

Vision 2050’s overall conclusion was relatively optimistic – a position we broadly summarised as “9 billion people live well, within the limits of the planet”. The optimism may have stemmed from the fact that the project was a brainchild of the World Business

Big business, rich elites, poverty protesters, desperate refugees, beleaguered NGOs… Twenty years after the Rio Earth Summit, we seem as divided as ever, but if we want a sustainable future we must look for consensus across the divide, urges Robert E. Horn

To save the planet, listen to everyone

Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), an organisation of CEOs of blue chip companies such as Philips and Boeing, with combined annual revenues of some $7 trillion (for comparison, China’s GDP is $5 trillion).

With its origins in the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the WBCSD aims to galvanise the global business community to create a sustainable future for business, society and the environment. Its vision is important, if only because these top businesses are already using this view of a sustainable future to change their corporate strategies.

One of the major outcomes of the WBCSD project was a list of 40 “must haves” – projects that must be “on track” to achieve that vision of 2050. For example, the report says that manufacturing needs to increase its reuse of materials by a factor of four to 10, energy efficiency must double, so must agricultural output (using the same amount of land), and forest production should also double. The project’s strategists set key milestones using 10 tracks: energy, buildings, mobility, materials, economy, governance, people, agriculture, forests, and ecosystems and biodiversity.

Many of the must haves are as ambitious as going to the moon and back. They require enormous cooperation between governments, NGOs and the private sector. And that would only be possible with an astonishing degree of multi-sector leadership and cooperation.

We have always had great difficulty getting our minds around large, complex issues – so-called “wicked problems”. The sustainability of the planet and human civilisation is clearly one such, where a failure to do good long-range thinking has prevented real progress in getting the interested parties to work

OPINION THE BIG IDEA

ProfileRobert E. Horn is at the Human Science and Technology Advanced Research Institute within Stanford University, California. The report Vision 2050: The new agenda for business and the info-mural Pathway to a Sustainable 2050 are both downloadable at wbcsd.org/vision2050.aspx

Refugees must be factored in to any vision of a sustainable world

28 14/12/2011 18:06:57

17 December 2011 | NewScientist | 29

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together. We have also had great difficulty agreeing on fundamental underlying assumptions for dealing with wicked problems, as the history of political disagreement shows. But the development of foresight methodologies such as scenario-building and computer modelling has begun to help outline ways of looking at our long-range difficulties and opportunities.

So how could we build on Vision 2050? First, we must acknowledge its weaknesses. For example, the “people” track fails to deal adequately with poverty, population and basic human rights issues. And, astonishingly given current headlines, the “economy” track fails to touch on any of the problems raised by the financial crises in the US and Europe and the obstinate problem of how to make the transition to a low-growth economy.

As for “governance”, this track does not deal with the crucial problem of planning cities, nor with some national, regional governance issues, such as the inability to help a half-dozen or more failed states, and the slowness to address the reduction of risks from weapons of mass destruction. And the “energy” track fails to take fully into account continuing increases in greenhouse gas emissions, increases in efficiency, and doesn’t mention smart grids.

Perhaps even more glaring is the absence of whole areas of human and planetary phenomena. The oceans that cover three-quarters of the planet are not mentioned except in the context of the big risk of ocean acidification. Water availability as an issue is spread across tracks and so does not receive the kind of attention it needs. Cities are predicted to contain 2 billion more people by 2050, yet do not feature in a correspondingly significant role. Issues such as adaptation to climate change, disaster relief and displaced people through migration do not feature at all.

This is a comprehensive strategy document that comes out of business assumptions, biases and blind spots. Primary among these assumptions is the incorporation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s limit of 450 parts per million of atmospheric CO2 in setting the estimates for the “energy” tracks. This has been seriously criticised by climate scientist James Hansen and others, who argue that only a more severe limit of 350 parts per million can keep planetary climate within tolerable limits. The organic farming research community has attacked even the assumption in the document that there will be a modest use of advanced

genetically modified crops. And whether we can achieve the difficult goals in the “forests” track of doubling timber and fibre output by 2050 also needs closer examination.

Perhaps the biggest assumption was the use of back-casting, which involves defining a desirable future and then asking what milestones need to be in place decade by decade to make it happen. It assumes the political and economic context within which various milestones will (or not) be reached is going to be relatively straightforward. But we know from complex, chaotic systems that discontinuities do occur. So substantially more consideration needs to be given to all of the geopolitical and macroeconomic factors underpinning the Vision 2050’s must-have tasks, and the project requires considerable grounding in our constantly evolving reality.

Some of that grounding is probably already lying in position papers and reports of NGOs, United Nations agencies, not-for-profit

climate change organisations, policy arms of governments, left-wing think tanks – even in protest camps in London or New York.

How different would a comprehensive vision and pathways model be with their input? A more inclusive, version 2.0 of the report could produce a deeper understanding of what business, government and NGOs can do if they work together with the enthusiasm, clarity and focus that comes from a shared vision. It would provide a context for fruitful discussions at different levels of scale: local, regional, national and global.

So how big will the differences be? At present, media polarisation of world views magnifies disagreements that may be more apparent than substantive: in reality I think they won’t be that large. And, most of all, the expanded coverage and updated data will produce a more widely shared common language and a sustainable commitment plan.

But we badly need to know exactly how much agreement the non-business vision has with the business vision because the business sector is certain to be the major implementer of much of that work and, most importantly, the tasks are so gigantic that everyone needs to work together. Comparing info-murals and charts will make those crucial differences and commonalities clear as crystal. n

“ The strategy comes out of business assumptions, biases and blind spots”

29 14/12/2011 18:06:57

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development info-mural -

Pathway to a Sustainable 2050

Pathway toward a sustainable 20502010s

Price of carbon in place, preferably on a global basis. Tax incentives / subsidies drive renewables expansion. Proven commercial viability of CCS.

Required to be on track for 2050 Energy R&D increases rapidly

Required to be on track for 2050Major collection ofinternational agreements on climate and energy Notnecessarily treaties, but perhaps bilateral and multilateral agreements

ENERGY AND POWER - Meet increasing demand while stabilizing global temperature increase to 2

Required to be on track for 2050Carbon sequestrationfunded for rapiddeployment

Carbon Prices, R&D and International patent protection encouraging deployment of concentrated solar power combined heat and power,onshore wind

BUILDINGS - Energy efficient and comfortable living and working spacesTough energy efficiency regulations begin

Efficiency included in addition to building Fire, Safety and Health regulations and codes

Programmes launched to develop requisite skills and capacity in the construction sector, to monitor and record the implementation of energy efficiency, and to increase awareness among school children

Approx.40% of

emissionsare

buildingrelated

40%Buildings

All other sources

MATERIALS - Closed-loop societyValidation of storageapplications of Industrial-application Carbon Capture and Storage for industrialapplications is complete

Manufacturing emits morethan one-third of all CO2Iron, steel & cement account for half of these emissionsChemicals and petrochemicals also make significant contributions

Global business begins to reduce product sizes, avoid waste in packaging & increaseproduct lifetime

Required to be on track for a sustainable 2050 Global business and governments agree on a set of indicators & rules for accounting about resources, energy and materials. These rules establish the true cost of primary and secondary materials.

Accounting standards begin

30%

All other sources

ManufacturingCO2 emissions

Required to be on track for a sustainable 2050Energy Efficiency (Buildings and Appliances)- Implementation of mandatory minimum efficiency performance standards- Revisit international standards periodically to ensue continous improvement- No delays in legislation of strong regulations and enforcement is the most cost-effective policy Key Areas of International Collaboration:-Common standards set to discourage trade in sub efficient appliances.

Required to be on track for 2050 Carbon has a price - cap & tradeor carbon tax begin to transformelectric power generation Maybethrough a comprehensive treaty or perhapsa series of multilateral agreements

CO2

$

MOBILITY - Low carbon Required to be on track for a sustainable 2050Transportation energyefficiency:- Mandatory efficiency standards;eventually harmonized globally athighest efficiency level- Incentives for new technologyother than increasing size, weightor power- Standards set for medium and heavy duty trucks (logistics, on-road efficiency)

R&D and more deployment for low carbon mobilityPanama canalextensioncompleted (2015 +/-), the maximum breadth of ships increases to 49m (from 32,26m), and max length to 366m (from 249m).

49 meters

Required to be on track for a sustainable2050Internationalstandards for sustainablebiofuels are adopted, and monitoringsystems installed

Required to be on track for a sustainable 2050 Integrated rail networks spread. Infrastructureinvestments keep up with growing demand of passenger andfreight transport

Required to be on track for a sustainable 2050 Development and deployment of efficient internal combustion vehicles improve new-vehicle carbon intensity up to 30-40%, enabled by better policies and introduction of Electric Vehicles(EV)/ Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV)

Integrated urban planning, especially in the fast-growing cities, improves transport and allows for more choice among appropriate modes

• Intelligent TransportationSystem (ITs)connectsvehicles to each other and to infrastructure

Required to be on track for a sustainable 2050Policy makers and industry partner to speed up research into and deployment of alternative drivetrains and advancedbiofuels

The yellow boxes designate the Must Haves - “required to be on track for a sustainable 2050.”

MacroVU® AnalyticsRobert E. Horn, Stanford University

hornbob@earthlink.net415-775-7377

WORLD BUSINESS COUNCIL FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (WBCSD) VISION 2050 PROJECT

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DOWNLOAD

The Report: The Vision 2050: The new agenda for business report is available in more than 10 languages:

http://www.wbcsd.org/vision2050.aspx

The information murals:

WBCSD VISION 2050-Pathway muralwww.stanford.edu/~rhorn/e/uc-PathwaysMuralWBCSD.pdf

WBCSD-The Vision of a sustainable 2050 mural-posterwww.stanford.edu/~rhorn/e/WBCSD-VISION-2050.pdf

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FOR PRINTED AND LAMINATED COPY OF WBCSD PATH WAY MURAL AND VISION POSTER SENT ANY PLACE IN THE WORLD

If you want to order a full size printed and laminated copy, contact Ruben Nelson, Foresight Canada.

RUBEN NELSON <RubenNelson@shaw.ca>

___________________________________________________________________________

LOOK AT MURAL ON THE INTERNET

If you want to see the Pathway mural on the internet on a new, easy-to-use software platform, click on:

http://zoom.it/foTF

(To zoom in and to move around on the mural, use the icons in the lower right hand corner.)