“A leader is someone who crafts a vision and inspires people to act collectively to make it happen, responding to whatever changes and challenges arise along the way. A sustainability leader is someone who inspires and supports action towards a better world.”
Our collective struggle as a society to urgently and effectively tackle the world’s most pressing challenges points, at one level, to a failure of individual leadership. We have lacked the quality and quantity of bold leadership in business, government and civil society that would enable us to shift towards a more just and sustainable 21st century lifestyle.
CPSL sees the task of creating a more just and sustainable world as both a serious challenge and an enormous opportunity. We are convinced that without bold and effective leadership – at a political, institutional and individual level – we will fail to resolve our most serious social and environmental crises. And yet we have seen some great examples of sustainability leadership emerging (although not nearly enough) over the past few years.
Our experience shows that sustainability leadership is fraught with paradoxes. As the competitive landscape shifts and global challenges evolve, companies that were lauded in the past as sustainability leaders may be discredited in the present. Similarly, today’s targeted villains may end up being tomorrow’s sustainability heroes.
