Sustainability Business Services are booming re: the very lucrative services designed to support – adding some value along the way – our entering into a sustainable society. Is it good or is it bad? Like any system it has its strengths and weaknesses and faces plenty of opportunities and threats. First and foremost they may accelerate the adoption of green products and sustainable practices, and that is its most important purpose. It is critical that the industries accounting for the major part of CO2 emissions reduce considerably their carbon footprint (food, transportation, energy) and suffice to say SBS providers have helped many large corporations better assess and manage their social and environmental impact including their carbon footprint. Now there is always the risk of self-contempt and self-righteousness, especially from industries or businesses that have nothing or little to do with sustainability. But the biggest threat has to be coming from the SBS providers themselves – and if you were wondering until now, this is why it is a changing moment in our views – whose role and influence have grown to threaten the “organic” sustainability approach (one based on actual observation not just on numbers). Understand we have been calling sustainability the paradigm shift of the 21^st century, and now we are entering what could become a paradigm paralysis if we refuse to approach the major problem of our time beyond the current models of thinking. Take carbon markets (cap and trade), which traded $120 billion in 2009 is now adopting the very same mechanisms that led to the home and financial crisis and you won’t be surprised to find the same institutions that drove us there. The problem for SBS providers and their clients is they keep on looking at the world with only one pair of lenses. They have taken the work of many environmentalists and NGOs and applied their business acumen to designing sustainability processes and developing metrics to assess their clients’ sustainability performance, and there is nothing wrong with that except when they attempt to name sustainable or apply sustainability principles to everything including mining and the use of GMOs in developing nations. So 2010 might see the raise of the old guards, namely the generation that has worked so hard at building environmentally and socially conscious businesses and has brought to the public and politicians’ attention the reality of a careless and greedy form of capitalism, and the raise of a new one known as social entrepreneurs or responsible capitalists.

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