In the second session of this morning’s Medinge Group Thomas Gad shared a very elegant model based on the collision (or collusion) of different aspects of the green economy - the market economy (financial capital), survival economy (human capital), and nature’s economy (natural capital).
In the intersecting dynamics of these triple economies sustainability is won or lost…
The ability to connect these systems into a virtuous cycle depends upon managing the interfaces between these economies. What Thomas represents as ‘megacities’ would be better understood as metacommunities.
In the centre of this diagram sits the deep, dark, but critical mass of the Social Economy - producing of destroying social capital which enables the delivery of sustainable outcomes.
NB - Thomas’s decision to entitle this slide Green Branding rather than Sustainability reflects the cowardice of marketing - a hesitation to call a spade a spade and the assumption that consumers cannot ‘get sustainability’. Around the Medinge table a third of the group buy into this; a third see is as pragmatic but dangerous and a third see sustainability as a trend that’s still ‘coming’ and needing better articulation. I am with the latter camp.
Sustainable Development - is the real agenda here - finding a better pathway to sustainability.
Social Communications (enhancing social capital) is the critical pathway in navigating Thomas’s collision of capitals.