Foreword to Environmental Tracking - by Professor Herbert Girardet
Money as a tool for good? Impossible! Or maybe? With Michael Gill I certainly agreed right away that "it will be very difficult to solve anything if we cannot get money to work for us, rather than against us."
Money is the secret agent of many of our actions. Yes, we all like good value for our money, and high returns on our investments. But as active or passive investors we may be unaware of our money having appeared in the guise of saw mills cutting up mahogany trees from fragile rain forests, herbicide factories with appalling environmental records, or leaking oil wells in the North Sea. But now, thanks to this book, we can see prospects for directing our money to benefit the environment and to enhance the lives of future generations.
Much of what defines our world stems from the power of money. All technical innovations arise from the capital invested in them. But money does not take responsibility for itself, and people rarely account for its environmental impact. "The only possible route for persuading money to start solving rather than causing the problem is to create incentives for our economy and the people who work in it to serve and respect the natural environment on which we all depend." Who can fault that point? But where does it lead us?
Well here we have a new tool in our hands: Environmental Tracking. I agree with Michael that once applied to the full that it does have real potential for getting the stock market, and therefore the economy, to change its behaviour patterns.
In my own work as an environmentalist I have come to realise that we have tried to use many tools that turned out to be blunt and rather ineffective. For too long the environmental movement has tried to tinker with symptoms rather than homing in on the key role of capital in shaping our world. How it is invested is a decisive factor in what the shape of the future will be like. "We do not have a hope in hell of solving the environmental crisis until we find a practical strategy for incorporating environmental priorities into the financial and economic system." I believe that here is a tool that could be as sharp as a Samurai's sword, even if it is kept away in its sheath much of the time.
This is one of the rare books that conjures up a new world in the reader's mind, that opens secret doors that have been there all along if only we had seen them. Money as a tool for good? Well maybe yes after all. After reading Environmental Tracking it seems perfectly feasible to create new instruments for taming the power of money, or, to quote the author, "to re-programme the system that is causing the damage in the first place... it is a book for investors, whether they want to invest in the planet or simply for themselves and their families."
This book will do its important job if enough people read it and tell each other about it. It is full of striking social invention. I like its idiosyncrasies as well as its deeply serious message. Let us make sure that it reaches the large influential readership it deserves.
Professor Herbert Girardet, Chairman Schumacher Society, Author and Film Maker, former UN Global 500 Award Winner.