On June 11th, 2020, I had the pleasure of having a conversation with John Elkington, who has over 40 years of experience in working with business to transform corporations through the various consultancies he (co-) founded: The Environmental Data Service (1978), SustainAbility (1987) and more recently Volans.
We spoke about John's personal journey and the insights he had along the way.
We addressed the role of technology, how it is always a double edged sword, and how we can apply technology wisely.
John shared his perspective on how "leaning into the future and into technology" is also important in order to be at the table and share a more nuanced discourse on how to apply what technologies and where.
We also speak about biologically inspired innovation and how there are important systemic lessons from biology and ecology that can help us create healthier economies and societies.
We spoke briefly about how to transform the degenerative impact of cities.
John asked me about whether I was hopeful about humanity's potential to actually have a positive and regenerative impact.
We addressed how only cultural evolution will be quick enough to respond to the converging crises we are facing, biological evolution will be too slow, and technological evolution alone will be too full of unintended consequences.
John distinguishes between 'soft' and 'hard culture' and how we need to learn from history in order to see the future more clearly, and shares insights from a conversation he at with Bucky Fuller in the 70s.
We spent some time exploring the important insights that Frank Herbert shared in his science fiction novel 'Dune' ( dedicated "To All the Dry Land Ecologists of the Future"). This led us to speaking about large scale ecosystems restoration, and how a more systemic climate change response needs to go beyond carbon myopia and pay attention to heal the water cycle bioregion by bioregion.
Around minute 45, we start talking about 'regenerative capitalism' and the current conversation about whether capitalism can be reformed or transformed to be regenerative. This leads us to speaking about John Fullerton's work on Regenerative Economics/Capitalism and John's recently published book 'Green Swans: The coming book in regenerative capitalism'.
We address the difference between quantitative (economic) growth and qualitative growth that includes social and ecological regeneration.
John shared his conviction that we have to engage capitalists and corporations to navigate the transition to a regenerative human impact on Earth. "The closer to transformation we will come, the more the entrenched incumbent industries will fight back, and they won't to it cleanly, and they won't do it transparently. They will do it behind the scenes."
At his 70th birthday event, John said: "next 10 to 15 years are going to be by far the most exciting, and by far the most challenging, and by far the most dangerous of my entire working life."
We spoke about the need to break down the silos between not just different industries but between the different sectors: business, public authority and vivil society, and work together on integrated solutions that are bio-culturally appropriate to place.
John asked me what I personally plan to do based on "seeing the nature and scale of the challenge our species now faces" (1:04) ... and I might have surprised him by speaking to my personal commitment to re-localise and re-regionalise my work and my renewed commitment to focus on the bioregional scale and how this prompted me to choose the island of Mallorca 10 years ago as the place to explore how to bioregional regeneration can be catalysed.
John shared about the Volans 'Green Swan Awards' and his commitment to staying optimistic about how we can create systems of exponential improvement and regeneration.
We address the work of Common.Earth and the Commonwealth Secretariat in bringing regenerative development to the 54 member nations of the Commonwealth, the work of Commonland and Willem Ferwerda using the '4 Returns' approach to catalyse large landscape scale restoration of ecosystems; as well as the world of the Ecosystems Restoration Camps and John Liu.
John: "How can we limit the damage of these very big dinosaurs as they crash around the landscape - the large corporations and their supply chains and so on - and how at the same time can we feed this secondary and tertiary growth that is now starting to come through of people with much more innovative approaches?"
John shared how Volans is about to launch a 'Green Swans Observatory' to track and document such hopeful developments, people and movements.
We end on speaking to the enormous potential at the heart of the growing and diverse movement that is now forming around having a regenerative impact on the world.
More:
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Green Swans: The Coming Age in Regenerative Capitalism
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