Collaborative innovation

As nature's dominant species, James Leape, Director General of WWF International says that's it's up to us to preserve the environment

Just as humans appear to have achieved our greatest dominance on the planet, we are facing our greatest challenges. To a large part, we are the victims of our own success, able to muster more and more resources for our purposes and slow to realize that the resource base we so vitally depend on has limits.

Humanity as a whole must now face the prospect that without ever intending to have these impacts, we are threatening ourselves with runaway climate change, a wave of extinctions, shortages of freshwater and the economic and ecological death of our seas.  

“Collaborative innovation” is a particularly pertinent choice of principal theme for the 2008 World Economic Forum. It stresses the one resource we have which does not have limits, human ingenuity.  It stresses also that on all of these issues we will make at best only limited progress unless we work together on common goals.

At WWF we are committed to partnerships.  WWF works with scientists, governments, business, international institutions, other civil society organizations and a host of local communities in pursuing our basic goal of a world where humans can live in harmony with nature.

Unity of purpose
But at an international level, the world is a long way short of the unity of purpose that we need to see on combating climate change, realising millennium development goals or building a sustainable and harmonious world.

With more than 1,000 projects in over 100 countries, WWF knows that, as the global environmental threats continue to take their toll on vulnerable communities and ecoystems, we must not only expand our partnerships but we must strive to more ambitious and creative in our solutions.

Thus, we are reaching out to a number of key corporations and asking them to dramatically reduce their emissions through our Climate Savers Programme. One of these is Lafarge, one of the world’s biggest producers of building supplies. Cement production accounts for about 5 per cent of human-caused CO2 emissions. Lafarge has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and has made real improvements given the increasing demand for its products. It is improving energy efficiency by modernizing production plants, is using alternative fuels and raw materials in the production of its cement, and is investing in research to find new ways to reduce emissions.

Smaller footprints
Responding to climate change is, of course, a major focus for WWF. So is the related task of reducing our human footprint to one that can be accommodated indefinitely without damage on this earth.

To this end, we are working with the leading financial services group Allianz to look at carbon risks in banking, asset management and insurance. Together, WWF and Allianz are working to show how financial companies can help to manage the transition to a clean energy economy. Allianz itself has pledged to increase its investment in renewal energies from €300m to €500m by 2010.

Also, last June, in Beijing, WWF and The Coca-Cola Company announced a partnership under which the company pledged to replace the water its uses in its beverages and their production. Water is a vital human need, and its withdrawal is part of our footprint upon the planet. Throughout the world, more than one billion people lack adequate access to safe drinking water, and the degrading of freshwater habitats threatens wildlife, plants and ecosystems that people depend on to survive.  

Part of the WWF tradition is a commitment to acting in accord with what the science is saying.  In the current context, this means we have a key role to play in communicating new findings, and in helping others to understand, the threats to the natural world.

For example, we are facing a global fisheries crisis, with three-quarters of the world’s fish stocks fished to the absolute limit or already collapsed, and major marine ecosystems under threat.  From the Baltic to Belize, WWF is working with scientists to determine safe levels of fishing and to design and implement marine protected areas that will help preserve fisheries for future generations.

By demonstrating the benefits of conservation, WWF has attracted some influential partners.  Ten years ago, the Marine Stewardship Council began as a joint initiative between WWF and Unilever, which was one of the world’s biggest buyers of frozen fish.  We had different motivations but a common goal.  Now the MSC is an independent not-profit organization, promoting responsible, sustainable, fishing practices around the globe that help to keep our oceans healthy.

Around the world
The blue MSC label can be seen in supermarkets around the world, assuring careful shoppers that the product they are about to buy has been harvested in a responsible way. Globally, 24 fisheries have received MSC certification, and these, along with those still in the assessment and pre-assessment phases, represent four million tonnes of seafood.

WWF supports these efforts and, as well, has partnered with leading retailers, such as WalMart and Carrefour, to help ensure that successive generations of seafood consumers will have a sustainable supply.

Environmental issues are coming to the fore as never before and the world seems to be awakening to the fact that our global economy is inextricably linked to our environment.  

Whether you care because you value the intrinsic worth of the earth’s rich biodiversity, or because you admire the beauty of nature, or you appreciate that these environmental systems contribute to your well-being and are essential for human development and healthy markets is immaterial.  Where we need to go from here in facing the global problems threatening us is to the realization that we cannot make the changes needed, on the scales needed or in the timeframes needed, by working separately and in isolation.
 
We need much greater collaborative innovation, and I have no doubt that together we can meet the challenges ahead.