Chapter 14, Problem 19E

Achieving sustainable development will likely require the cooperation of communities, governments, and businesses. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) claims that ecoefficiency is “the business contribution to sustainable development.”

Required:

1. 1. What is sustainable development?
2. 2. Explain why the WBCSD’s claim about ecoefficiency may be true.
3. 3. WBCSD has recently noted (http://www.wbesd.org): “the good news is that ecoefficiency is working in the companies that try it. The troubling news is that it is not being tried on a large enough scale, even though it makes good business sense.” Why do you think the ecoefficiency paradigm is not as widely accepted as it perhaps ought to be? What would you suggest to increase the number of companies involved in ecoefficient projects?