Sir Jonathon’s relationship with SBN goes back to meeting our CEO Rachel Brown in 1996. He was in the process of co-founding the UK-based Forum for the Future. The Forum’s system change approach to sustainable business has been an ongoing source of inspiration, as has their continued friendship.
As he spoke Sir Jonathon was one day away from stepping away from the forum and entering a new phase. He described this as a shift towards political campaigning, with an emphasis on young people and their concerns.
Born in London, he’s most renowned as a British environmentalist. His father was the Wanganui-born 11th Governor-general of New Zealand, Colonel Arthur Porritt. So his story is intertwined with Aotearoa New Zealand.
He was educated at Eton and Oxford. He became active in environmentalism after a short career as a teacher.
He chaired the newly formed Ecology Party in the UK in 1979, which became the Green Party in England and Wales. Five years later he became a Director of Friends of the Earth. He co-founded Forum for the Future in 1996. It has become a leading international sustainability organisation. He’s been a trustee of WWF-UK. He's chaired the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission. He's a patron and advisor for many other similar organisations.
In 2019, with the late Sir Rob Fenwick and Vicky Robertson, he founded Aotearoa Circle. Their mission: restore Aotearoa’s natural capital for future generations.
Along the way he’s authored numerous books. He's inspired countless others to take on the challenge of ecological sustainability. This has brought him considerable influence, some fame and a decent living. Thankfully, what it hasn’t afforded is complacency.
“Politics sometimes goes missing in our rather elegant discussions of business,” he said. “Sometimes that hard gritty bit of the politics of all this gets a little bit lost in the weeds. We should not do that.”
He wondered aloud how different the world might have been had Al Gore become President of the United States. He celebrated how independent ‘Teal’ candidates brought climate change back into Australian politics.
He asked: “What is the New Zealand equivalent of that? Where is that going to come from?” He urged his audience to consider how happy they would be if the next election brought in a government: “which may well not be as propitious as we would need it to be concerning everything that SBN stands for.”
“The reason we cannot set aside the politics of all this is that for us personally that is a form of denial about where we stand,” he said. “We know that we are all part of a global elite. That global elite has a certain set of entitlements. We’re somewhat uncomfortable with the fact that this forms part of what makes us the sustainability professionals we are today. Our movement is a predominantly middle class, relatively privileged social movement.
“Entitlement and knowledge requires of us a very heightened sense of responsibility. We have to try and make good things happen in the timescale we have left to us to do that. We need to better at inhabiting this space than we often are as corporate sustainability professionals. We need to understand the power of the corporate voice. With what voice does corporate leadership speak to government? Who’s going to represent the more committed, progressive, knowledgeable, future savvy sense of what corporates need from their politicians? It doesn’t come easy. It’s a hard thing to get right. But we have to find ways of doing it.”
This is imperative, he said. In the words of American climatologist Michael E Mann: “Everything is changing everywhere far faster than anybody could have possibly imagined.”
“Which is why our entitlement needs to be owned personally. Accepting the need for impatience, a sense of purpose that we sometimes have to balance out against other things, and a sense of anger. If we don’t put anger in the mix we’re really betraying people who depend on us, among others globally, to demonstrate what all this means for our societies and for our future.”
The solutions, he maintains, are all within our grasp.
“The technology story is truly astonishing,” he said. “Every single one of the technological breakthroughs we need to decarbonise our economy as fast as we need to do it. Every single one of those pathways are showing more promise, more progress than we would have imagined three or four years ago.”
It's up to us now, to push for those solutions to be enacted, against the dire future that will come if we don't.
“It’s manageable for us to think about this stuff in terms of our own career trajectories,” he concludes. “Considering the relative security we may have been able to achieve in our lives up until now. We have that sense of our place in the world, knowing who we are and what we are trying to do. But young people feel betrayed by our continued inability to seize hold of these solutions. It means their future is now seriously imperiled.”
At 72, it is clear that he is not about to settle for such a betrayal, and neither can we.
Sir Jonathon is due back in the country in June, when we plan to offer another event with him.
This event with Sir Jonathon Porritt was kindly hosted by Air New Zealand.