The Future of Corporations: A change in the Natural Environment?

By Alain Fotso | January 10, 2010|

The world today faced a serious ecological challenge, politicians and business people have endorsed the solution of sustainable development, looking for economic growth without destroying the environment and natural resources where the future generation will depend.

The ambition to achieve the sustainable development need the integration of economic , environment and social components at different levels, this will be possible by developing continuing dialogue and actions in global partnership and sustainable development initiatives.

We distinguish few causes of environment degradation, the exponential growth of the world population is the main issue and statistics shows today that the large progression is coming from the less developed countries such as Africa, Latin America and Asia. Another cause is the inequality between rich and poor, the large number of world population continue to live on poverty, those populations are located in most parts in Africa, South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific. In the richest countries, people consume far more fossils fuels, wood and meat; where in the less developed areas people often misuse natural resources in order to survive.

Energy will be the main issue to achieve sustainable development objective in the coming years, many people in the world especially in less developed countries doesn’t have access to modern energy services, one of the challenge actions today is to develop and expand alternative energy technologies with the aim of giving a greater share of the energy mix to renewable energy and immediately increase the global share of renewable energy sources. We should also encourage executives at all levels to take sustainable development in considerations including decision making on investment in infrastructure and business development.

For example Canon, Inc has a huge program and genuinely committed to preserving the environment through what they make and what they do, they ensure that their business is tightly to fostering a sustainable environment, helping solve social issues and creating educational programs for student’s teachers, and professional’s scientist. Canon aims to minimize the impact their product will have on the environment by following energy efficient manufacturing process , they use recycled materials ,eliminate hazardous substances and try to maximize the energy efficiency of their product, the good news is : Canon is the world’s toner cartridge return operation, recently the introduced a collection and energy recovery program for canon plastic toner containers and finally canon extended the line of Business copiers through the business copier manufacturing program.

In the next few years while the economies will be growing and the standards of living will be increasing worldwide, is imperative is going to be required more energy, all actions will be essential to meeting this demand and protecting our environment. Many suppliers today provide products at high costs with energy –efficient such as copiers, computers and electronics devices; many corporations are working efficiently to meet the strict new international ENERGY STAR standards with their products. We also see interesting that savings energy can come from office buildings and in their infrastructure, maintenance services and installation process can reduce energy consumption at many organization as well.

To conclude this topic, I will say that the main issue is not only to evaluate the values of biodiversity but to integrate these values in a useful way, useful for decision makers who suppose to make decision on natural resources use, companies who need to know their footprint on ecosystems and finally consumers to understand their actions on natural resources.

^{*Alain Fotso is a Major Account Executive at Canon, USA}