Changing Course is a practical introduction to new and necessary methodsof running businesses so that the realities of business and the marketplace supportthe realities of the environment and the needs of human development.Gathering theexpertise of more than 50 leaders of multinational corporations and backed by anarray of case studies showing existing best practices, Changing Course provides anextensive analysis of how the business community can adapt and contribute to thecrucial goal of sustainable development - which combines the objectives ofenvironmental protection and economic growth. All of its recommendations are linkedby the belief that only by allowing market forces to operate freely and integratingthe "polluter pays" principle into environmental and economic policy can sustainabledevelopment be achieved.Changing Course focuses first on the often adversarialrelationship between business and government in chapters that discuss full-costpricing and market signals, energy, capital markets, trade, and managing change. Itshows how environmental costs, which are often invisible, can best be factored intoproduction, investment, and trade. And it calls for a rational long-term energystrategy that balances the energy needs for economic development with a policy shifttoward the payment of pollution costs and energy efficiency - changes that demandnew thinking and increased flexibility by policy makers in both the public and theprivate sectors.Changing Course then explores business to business relationships, beginning with the sensitive topic of corporate reporting in environmental areas anddiscussion of how an environmentally conscious firm is managed. Chapters look atoptimal products and processes, product stewardship in retail and trading companies, at new practices for such renewable resource industries as forestry and agriculture, and at the need for new long-term partnerships to boost economic development andenvironmental standards in the developing world.Changing Course concludes with adetailed look at the implications of sustainable development for business in thedeveloping world, where, as former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi pointed out, poverty itself is a great polluter.Stephan Schmidheiny is a Swiss industrialist, Chairman of the Business Council for Sustainable Development, and the PrincipalAdvisor for Business and Industry to the United Nations Conference on Environmentand Development (ECO'92).

This book is on these lists:

• January 2012 Indie Next List
• December 2011 Indie Next List
• November 2011 Indie Next List