We cannot avoid a global crisis… so let’s wake up and deal with it by Sophie Vorrath

The following is a speech by Paul Gilding delivered to the AGM of World Business Council for Sustainable Development Seoul, South Korea on October 31st, 2012.

G’day. It’s great to be here with you, to help open this meeting and set the scene for your discussions.

I last spoke to the WBCSD Council meeting about a decade ago in Berlin. Then, as now, I looked around the room and concluded that if you wanted business leaders to help lead the charge towards sustainability, to drive the change we need to see, to be bold and brave in challenging times, then this, here in this room, is as good as it gets – and this is good enough.

Before I share my thoughts on why, let me give you some context to my remarks.

I have spent nearly 40 years working on sustainability issues, nearly all of them deeply engaged with the business community. The first 15 years I was a traditional activist, starting on human rights questions. In my first protest at the age of 17, I chained myself to the gates of the South African embassy in Canberra, after the shooting of school aged children in peaceful anti-apartheid demonstrations in Soweto.

From there, after serving for some years in the Australian Air Force, I focused on environmental issues, blockading nuclear armed ships from entering Sydney Harbour. I then joined Greenpeace, protesting against corporate pollution by plugging up toxic waste discharge pipes. I must have been good at my then chosen profession, as I was appointed at the age of 33 as the global head of Greenpeace in Amsterdam. This was the last laugh on my former colleagues in the Australian Air Force, with Greenpeace having it’s own navy!

Throughout this period I engaged with many corporate CEOs, including at the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, as I saw great potential in the power of markets to drive positive change.