This year Ecosperity, an annual conference held by Singapore investment firm Temasek, focused on getting the private sector to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Temasek’s chairman, Lim Boon Heng, made the case for sustainable business, pointing out that consumers are demanding it of the brands they buy, and investors are increasingly pumping money into environmentally and socially sustainable ventures.

Paul Polman, chief executive of the world’s largest consumer goods company Unilever, gave the keynote and pointed out that rapid wealth creation over the last 50 years had placed massive strain on natural resources.

One of the biggest barriers to achieving the SDGs is the gap between rich and poor, Polman noted.

But Polman was sanguine about the role of business to achieve the SDGs.

“If you want a long-term sustainable business, it makes sense to have a sustainable business model,” said Polman, who pointed to data showing that the average lifespan of a business had fallen from 67 years to 17 years in a few decades.

Polman also took a swipe at companies that are not committed in their sustainability efforts, and the practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

“Frankly, CSR is not what we’re talking about [in the realm of sustainability]; CSR is a side-project. It’s run by people close to retirement,” he said.

The clean energy revolution

Speakers and delegates at Ecosperity united on the issue: The resolve to confront key issues such as climate change with or without the United States.

Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean said that the Paris Agreement would live on without the US, but questioned how the Green Climate Fund would fare without contributions from the world’s richest country.

Resource-constrained Singapore has had to live by this strategy throughout its 51-year history, and the future of the city-state’s energy mix was at the centre of debate at Ecosperity.

Teo said that Singapore – which relies almost entirely on natural gas, with a small contribution from renewables – has explored wave, tidal and solar energy, with the latter the most realistic option for a country that receives year-round sunshine. But nuclear remains off the table, because of the warning sent by the Fukushima disaster.

Sir David King, the United Kingdom’s former foreign secretary’s special representative for climate change, said that there were a number of “missing technologies” needed in the fight with climate change, and suggested that Singapore might consider using small-scale underwater nuclear facilities off the coast as an alternative energy source.

Productivity and the haze

Ecosperity speakers also spoke on the region’s most high-profile environmental and social issue: deforestation.

The forest fires that have engulfed Southeast Asia in a toxic haze almost every year for the last two decades have been the result of poor productivity and “laziness” on the part of Indonesia’s agroforestry sector. This was the frank assessment by the chair of Indonesia’s government investment agency.

Indonesia, he said, is committed to raising palm oil production without deforestation or exploiting carbon-rich peatlands.

In an interview with Eco-Business on the sidelines of Ecosperity, Lembong said that the problem of slash-and-burn land clearing in Indonesia would not be solved “overnight,” and required a “sustained, persistent and consistent effort spanning many years.”

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Source: Eco-Business, 9 June 2017