I have just been put into a position where my work was commercialised for the sole purpose of financial gain for another party, and while I acknowledge that newspapers, magazines and their marketing people exist for the purpose of making money, I also believe that to ring true the work of sustainability reporting should be done with a degree of heart and soul. Actually to be perfectly honest, for me this is sacred work with heart and soul coming first and money considerations following. How regrettable that so many people just don’t get what sustainability is about, seeing it as no more than a great marketing opportunity and a way to make money.

In 1992, 1600 scientists including 102 Nobel Laureates put their signature to a document titled “Warning to Humanity” which stated: “No more than one or two decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the new prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished. A new ethic is required – a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the Earth. This ethic must motivate a great movement convincing reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to affect the needed changes”.

Two decades later not much has changed in the way of attitude or a new ethic from a global viewpoint. But much is changing from an ecological perspective with scientists fearing that many tipping points have already been reached. I wonder what it will take for reluctant leaders, governments and people to finally understand the big picture … and then to make the monumental changes required to reverse this darkening picture? Never before has there been this degree of responsibility for humankind. I can only hope that we are up to the challenge!