Corporations key to rescuing nature, says WWF chief

PARIS: A generation ago, the idea of a veteran international banker leading a global organisation charged with saving the planet’s dwindling and besieged wildlife would have seemed far-fetched. For some, it still does.

Even Pavan Sukhdev (pic) – recently appointed president of World Wildlife Fund International after a quarter century at ANZ Banking and Deutsche Bank, followed by a decade working with the UN – didn’t see it coming.

“Today, I realise this is a natural place for me to be,” he said during an interview at the headquarters of WWF France, on the outskirts of Paris. “Ten years ago, I didn’t.”

Sukhdev, 57, no longer manages money markets or conjures up derivatives, but he has not turned his back on the business world.

Indeed, the Indian-born economist is convinced that it holds the key to saving the environment – and our place in it.

“Corporations are the single most important institution of our times,” he said, noting they account for two-thirds of global economy, and an equal share of jobs.

“Their leaders – CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, the ‘C-suite’ generally – are setting the direction in which we are driving.”

Up to now, Sukhdev acknowledges, that direction has mostly taken us down the road to environmental ruin.

Our species is emptying the sea of fish, disgorging 40 billion tonnes of planet-warming CO2 into the atmosphere each year, and relentlessly polluting soil, sea and air. “Today’s corporations inflict significant negative externalities on the planet,” said Sukhdev.

“They need to recognise that responsibility.”

If C-suite executives are only now beginning to think that way, it’s partly because of the “conventional wisdom” that a corporation is merely a machine to make money for shareholders – a notion he rejects.

“Its purpose goes way beyond profit. Its purpose is societal – solving problems, adding value, serving society.”