via flickr user aslinth

After Dr.Karl-Henrik Robèrt, a leading Swedish cancer researcher, noted the strong correlation between environmental issues and human health, he decided to go to the root of the problem. Choosing to focus on the systemic causes that connect health and environment, Dr.Robèrt founded the Natural Step to lay out the guiding principles for a sustainable society. He just might know how far we can push the limits, or even better, avoid them all together.

JG:
Do you believe we are reaching physical limits in our natural world, which will hamper our economy’s ability to grow?

KR:
The life-supporting ecosystems on the planet are in systematic decline. At the same time, our demand for the services and resources of those ecosystems is systematically increasing (due to increases in population and per capita consumption). So, yes, since the carrying capacity is declining we have already trespassed the physical limits of growth. It’s as if we find ourselves in a funnel, with decreasing room to maneuver as time goes on. The collective challenge we face is to chart a course for the opening of the walls of the funnel—to step-by-step reduce and eventually eliminate our contributions to the unsustainable activities upon which we are currently so dependent economically. This is essentially a design challenge—it means redesigning products, services, processes, organizations, communities, business models and so on in such a way that they come into a respectful balance with nature.

The narrowing walls of the funnel described above imply increasing pressure on companies to pursue more sustainable practices or suffer the economic consequences.

JG:
Is capitalism in its current form sustainable?

KR:
If those two main systematic trends I mentioned above continue, then no, it will not be sustainable. For very large parts of the world, inhuman living conditions are already the norm due to our unsustainable societal course. [...] We need not agree on a timeline and scenario for social and ecological disaster in order to understand that time is running out if the trends continue. Rather than debating these details, we should rather focus on what can be agreed upon and has been agreed upon by many scientists around the world — scientifically rigorous principles for sustainability which define the basic constraints of our natural and social systems and which define the successful outcome to which we must direct ourselves today immediately.