Big Sustainability Summit

London, St David's Day 2011

What will it take to get sustainability up to speed. Jonathan Porritt up first. Where's the real stuff happening? Unilver, M&S Plan A, the Coop commitment to increase its membership from 8m to 20m by 2020 and put sustainability deep, and fully into its supply chain. When are people (in government?) going to understand the scale of their ambition? If we don't draw down optimism from that source, we'll be blind to what is going on.

Transition Towns are forming an extraordinary collective of organisations who seem to be immune to the despair that's abounding elsewhere. Community groups thought that selling off the forests was utterly unacceptable - not one of the national NGPO's spoke out - what the community groups was astonishing.

Business and community groups are shaping the context around the issues, aggregating them to a scale where they overcome the powerlessness. The scaling up that's most important is in our minds - helping people see it as a framework for making sense. How do we get SD into that shaping place at the front of our minds.

What's key?

Instinctive connectivity - being able to join the issues quickly and overcome the disjointedness

A default empathy position - this is not a one person, a one community position - it's a one world problem that requires us to stop seeing others as the other.