‘Learning from nature – the new agenda for business success: a Tomorrow’s Natural Business Conference’ This event will focus on how businesses can succeed in an increasingly challenging climate.  Businesses will learn from the resilience and sustainability of nature to survive unpredictability.  The day promises to be inspirational and exciting with keynote addresses, high quality panels and practical workshops.

Corporate leaders are challenged to step up to greater commitments on sustainability, and to ensure they have performance measures for behaviour directly linked to responsibility and trust if they are to succeed. With sustainability driving trust and innovation, companies are making it core to their strategies and activities, so having stand-alone CSR (corporate social responsibility) departments looks like a fast-declining trend. This is according to global reputation auditors Echo Research, in their latest report, "A World in Trust - Leadership and Corporate Responsibility" with the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF).

Dialogue between Anthony Alexander, writer, consultant and Director for Research for Alan Baxter & Associates engineering and planning consultancy; and David Vigar, report author.   AA: My work in the built environment sector is focussed on the practical delivery of carbon reductions. This is affected by a number of factors including: the extremely long development cycles in planning, urban design, architecture and construction, the need to transform the working practices and business models of the commercial property sector, and the institutional inertia and steep learning curve related to any change in policy.    Hence, I thought your analogy in the introduction to the Beyond Peak Carbon report that the government was like an architect and business was like a builder was rather an interesting one. 

What difference do sustainability reports make to business strategy?

We manage what we measure (and report) - it's a truism, but no less valid for that.  We believe that the time is now right to ask whether we have been measuring the right things in the right way and communicating them appropriately to the right people.