Politicians make the policy. But it’s often left to business to implement it. For this reason RioPlus Business is featuring submissions from business across the globe in the lead up to Rio+20.
The aim is to demonstrate how Sustainable Development is becoming a reality on every continent, country and city.
Here Felicia Jackson explains that with progress on the international level proving too slow to effect the change needed, cities could step up and provide the alternative approaches needed.
Cities have a crucial part to play in implementing a global framework for sustainability.
In their role as hubs of commerce as well as home to billions, cities consume upward of 75% of the world’s energy.
They’re also growing in size and importance – by 2008 over half the world’s population (over 3.3bn people) lived in cities, a number expected to reach nearly 5 billion by 2030.
Many of today’s economic, social, environmental and demographic problems are concentrated in cities.
These are often interrelated and have a significant impact on sustainability.
In order to develop an acceptable framework for growth that works both for the developed and the newly industrialising world, we need to accept that the system is dynamic, and that solving these problems will require a paradigm shift in the way people live, work and travel.
Guy Battle, head of Deloitte’s sustainability practice believes that cities are the key battleground.
He says, “The battle of sustainability will be won or lost within city limits.”
As cities have developed, there has been a rush to implement short term infrastructure solutions, slow [...]
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