Key take aways R3.0 Conference

Event

As an advocation partner of R3.0 we were looking forward to the annual conference, and to be honest we weren't disappointed.  There was a great line up of international speakers, active participants that fueled into the debate and even yoga to keep the body and mind fresh until the end of the day. There were a few insights that we gained, that we would like to share with you. 

There are no sustainable businesses in an unsustainable world 
In this complex world, everything is connected. This also means that business is connected to society in a way that you cannot distract yourself from the wicked problems the world is facing today. Companies should focus on solving societal problems in order to be sustainable themselves as a company. 
 
Sustainability reporting should accelerate systemic change, which is not the case at the moment 
Most of the current sustainability reports are focusing on incremental change, as it mostly a description of the current status quo, without a forward-looking lens and without a systemic approach. Companies cannot operate in isolation, why does sustainability reporting focus on the company on a stand-alone basis? 
 
Thresholds & Allocations (context based) 
Sustainability requires contextualization within thresholds. An approach is needed to report economic, environmental and social performance in relation to generally accepted boundaries and limits. A shift is needed from setting ambitions based on what is feasible to what is really needed. A good example of context based sustainability is setting science based climate targets to stay below 1.5 degrees. 
 
We have to ‘Bounce Beyond’ instead of ‘Build Back Better’ 
With the COVID-19 pandemic raging around the world, many people are talking about Build Back Better. This frames the post-COVID era as an incremental change where we need to go back to the new normal as soon as possible. If we really want multi-capitalist, regenerative and distributive system in which we can all thrive, we need to Bounce Beyond and aim for a transformational change, beyond the current paradigm. Bouncing Beyond inspires us to imagine what that might look like and then to go for it.