The role of business leaders in community sustainability coalitions: A Historical perspective

Abstract

The environmentalist Paul Hawken recently published an article in Orion Magazine in which he lauded the hundreds of thousands of organizations in the USA and countries around the globe that are working to find solutions to an array of increasingly serious environmental, economic, and social justice problems. These groups come from all parts of civil society, including business. As Hawken puts it, they include research institutes, community development agencies, village- and citizen-based organizations, corporations, networks, faith-based groups, trusts, and foundations. They are part of broad-based, grassroots movements that are working, often collaboratively, at the local as well as national and international levels, to restructure communities and economies to ameliorate poverty and avert the looming social and economic crises that will result from - or be worsened by - the great environmental problems of our times: climate change, toxic air and water pollution, and the depletion of natural resources. © 2009 Springer-Verlag New York.