Profile: HRH Prince Charles

“Global Sustainability” is the theme of a new film being promoted by Prince Charles , who says we must deal with growing set of alarming problems  – like the “threat multiplier” of climate change – and “without a resilient approach to business and economics, I am afraid we run the risk of bequeathing those who follow us something far worse”. Read More

Prince Charles writes for Huffington Post on ‘Introducing ‘Global Sustainability”

His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales has today posted an entry to the Huffington Post blogs about ’Global Sustainability’. On his blog, the Prince also has a series of other posts which are centred around His Royal Highness’s life-long passion and interest in conservation and working to improve global sustainability.

The Prince of Wales’s latest post today explains how, “There is a growing set of alarming problems which, if not addressed with real urgency, will severely affect nature’s capacity to keep her life support systems running and thus guarantee the well-being of billions of people around the world.”

The Huffington Post is a news website and also blogging platform which many well-known figures take to to explain things how they see them.

In his latest article, the Prince says also, “If we are to guarantee the well-being of our grandchildren and their grandchildren, then genuine sustainability has to become embedded in the DNA of business and government.”

A film is also included on the post, however it requires a password to view it. The Prince says, “As this film shows, without a resilient approach to business and economics, I am afraid we run the risk of bequeathing those who follow us something far worse.”

Clarence House have not commented on nor tweeted themselves, the latest article.

‘Global Sustainability’

By HRH Prince Charles in Huffington Post (3 June 2013):

I have long been deeply concerned about the effect our modern, highly industrialised approach is having on nature’s capacity to sustain life on Earth. There is a growing set of alarming problems which, if not addressed with real urgency, will severely affect nature’s capacity to keep her life support systems running and thus guarantee the well-being of billions of people around the world.

It is worth bearing in mind that bodies like the UN have produced countless reports showing the damage we have so far been responsible for. In the last half century alone, not only have we depleted over a third of the world’s farmable soil, we have so intensified the way we produce food we are now using far more water than we did, even though there is less fresh water available.

In that same 50 years we have also burned down over a third of the world’s tropical rainforests and are still doing so – despite the fact that they are actually the lungs of the world. An area the size of a football pitch goes up in smoke every four seconds – that’s over 26,000 football pitches a day! As a result, we have destroyed more than 80,000 species on which, did we but know it, we depend for our long term health and welfare. Everything is interconnected.

Thus, because these forests produce billions of tonnes of rainwater every day, we now risk big consequences for our ability to grow all the food we will need to feed what will soon be a global population of nine billion people. And all of these problems are being compounded by climate change, an effect the experts ominously call “a threat multiplier.” For many years I have sought to highlight that this all adds up to something far more than an “environmental crisis.” We are fast engineering a global economic crisis.

This film demonstrates the work of those initiatives I have set up through which I aim to bring together leaders of organizations and government and those from the corporate world to share their knowledge and forge practical solutions. They range from trying to establish more sustainable fisheries and better ways of managing farming within tropical forests, to the creation of more sustainable approaches to food production and more local forms of food distribution, not to mention clever financial mechanisms that enable global corporations to do things differently for the good of the Earth and for their profits. This is the work of my International Sustainability Unit and of the British Asian Trust.

The film also profiles the Cambridge Programme for Sustainable Leadership, of which I have been patron for 20 years, and the work of a project I established in 2004, called Accounting for Sustainability. This works with the corporate world and within government to ensure we are not battling to meet the challenges of the 21st Century with the decision-making techniques and corporate reporting systems of the 20th Century. If we are to guarantee the well-being of our grandchildren and their grandchildren, then genuine sustainability has to become embedded in the DNA of business and government. As this film shows, without a resilient approach to business and economics, I am afraid we run the risk of bequeathing those who follow us something far worse.

www.princeofwales.gov.uk

www.accountingforsustainability.org

www.cpsl.cam.ac.uk

www.britishasiantrust.org

www.pcfisu.org

www.princescharities.ca

www.princescharitiesaustralia.org.au

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/

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