Gunter Pauli
Gunter Pauli is an entrepreneur, global speaker, economist, innovator and bestselling author whose projects and activities can be found all over the whole world. He is most widely known for his book The Blue Economy (2010), in which he proposes a new type of business model in order for our society to become more sustainable. The Blue Economy philosophy is based on these three guiding principles:
Be continually inspired by nature
Change the rules of the game
Focus on what is locally available.
What makes The Blue Economy so interesting, is that Pauli proposes a whole new kind of business model. The current business models cannot solve the problems we are facing at the moment. Or as Einstein put it: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” The current business models are all linear models and what we need is a total shift in mindset, away from this linear model.
Gunter Pauli is fluent in 7 languages, has 6 kids and holds a degree in economics (1979) from Loyola University (today University of Antwerp) in Belgium and an MBA from INSEAD at Fontainebleau (1982, France). Under his leadership, Ecover pioneered an ecological factory in 1992, featured on CNN Prime Time News. The facility was also used as theater hall. Reedbeds and a grass roof processed waste water and the profits funded whale research. One year later Pauli leaned that palm oil was used in the detergent, so he felt awful. He realized green wasn’t so green after all. Pauli: “In the past I was fighting for the Green Economy. It was my dream, but the reality is that in the Green Economy everything that is good for you and good for the environment is expensive. That means the Green Economy is only for the rich. That is not what I intended, because the Green Economy was supposed to be for everyone. So, why was it not succeeding? Everyone was saying: “Well, these local producers can only produce small-scale; they don’t have the economies of scale that permits them to sell for a lower price”. Then my thought was, if we only want to compete on the basis of a low price against China, Brazil etc. you’re never going to be the cheapest if you want to produce organic, fair and with nature in mind. You are always going to be expensive. Unless you’re cutting corners, meaning cheating! And that is not the way forward, so we had to redesign the economic system.”
This realization made him want to do more than being green and organic. So in 1994 Pauli founded the "Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives" (ZERI) at the United Nations University in Tokyo, and subsequently established The Global ZERI Network as a foundation, redesigning production and consumption into clusters of industries inspired by natural systems. His latest initiatives include the design of a solution for the plastic soup floating in the oceans and the creation of a protective zone with islands to avert rising sea levels. He is actively involved to ensure that the largest herd of rhinos (2,400 in Kaziranga National Park in India) will be free of poachers thanks to an intensive economic and community development program in coordination with organic tea plantations.
An important pillar of The Blue Economy is that everything we need to learn is already out there, in Nature. Nature is a continuous inspiration. Pauli: “In nature there is no such thing as waste. Everything is used as everything has a value within the system. This creates cascading flows: that what is not used by one, can be used by another. This optimization principle of the whole that nature has been using for millions of years cultivates the best opportunities for the entire system. This is the approach that the Blue Economy uses. The current linear business model does not make full use of what is available. A non-linear business model approaches a growing business and responds to people’s needs. Nature is amazing and we can learn so much from observing what she has proven to work for so much longer than that we humans have been around.”
The Blue Economy suggests that we can alter the way in which we run our industrial processes and tackle current environmental problems, refocusing from the use of rare and high-energy cost resources to instead seek solutions based on simpler and cleaner technologies. The book proposes to focus on the generation of more value, instead of blindly cutting costs. Pauli aims to inspire entrepreneurs to adopt its insights, by demonstrating ways in which this can create economic benefits via job creation, reduced energy use, and more revenue streams from each step of the process, at the same time benefiting the communities involved. At the moment more than 200 projects worldwide have been set up with The Blue Economy principles, with an investment of 4 billion USD creating 3 million.
We need a shift in mindset, not only when it comes to business. “I hope that people will realize that a pandemic such as the current one will happen again if we keep on treating nature as we are. But at the moment most people are still too concerned with what is going on now. Media plays a big role in this concern, as most of the messages being put out there are based on fear,” mentions Pauli about the current pandemic. “People are afraid, they are scared of the virus, they are afraid of dying. When people are afraid, they don’t think about the long-term, they just want to get through what affects them now. And climate change or the environment is not on their minds right now. But you have to ask yourself, why is there so much focus on testing, on getting vaccinated. Why is nobody speaking about being healthy, eating healthy, being out in nature. You always need to keep asking questions. You might not get an answer, but keep asking questions anyway.”
Parts of this article were originally published on Plastic Oceans´ blog.
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