Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Cecilia Bernabeni
[Action Calls, Generates, Creates, Inspires Action]
[The countdown leaves no way out]
[We can stop climate change]
I recently turned 50,
and I was never a budget person,
or looking back and taking stock of life.
But in this period, perhaps even for my age,
I'm thinking about how important the time when a person lives is,
epochal things happen,
historical periods that are, and will be remembered,
because they are unique
and trigger changes,
which are then forever remembered as important moments.
Think, for example, of the women who voted for the first time
when women were granted voting rights.
You think you're part of that historic moment.
O in South Africa,
when Mandela finally won the social and cultural revolution,
and peacefully reversed the status quo.
Think about who experienced those changes.
Think of those who lived the Industrial Revolution,
and suddenly moved
from an agricultural production method to a suddenly different one,
and they were part of history.
Unfortunately, there are also those who lived the wars.
My grandmother lived through two wars.
It's important, the time when you live.
Here: I feel that this is an era
when a perhaps quieter, but very strong revolution is going on,
the revolution of sustainable development, of the green economy.
And I also think I'm very lucky.
And I think you are, too, but I'll tell you why later.
Now, why does this revolution of sustainable development happen?
It is true that it is a revolution,
or is it our idea, my idea, my dream?
To understand this, let's see together what a revolution is.
When can we say that we are in the middle of a revolution?
In my opinion,
a way to define a revolution
is when, at a given time,
some things that seemed impossible suddenly seem normal.
Look, for example, at these images.
Look, for example, at this high school class from 1966.
Look how they're dressed, the length of their hair,
the smile, the look, the length of the skirts,
of the girls' clothes.
And look at this class from 1969, three years later.
Everything changed.
The length of the hair;
look at the way they laugh, look at the way the girls dress,
look at how they stand in relation to life.
And if we're not convinced yet,
look at a '66 band and a '69 band:
then they were all like that, three years later, the music bands.
Everything changed in just three years.
Why?
Because undoubtedly 1968 was a real revolution.
Now let's see if this revolution, from the economic viewpoint, is true.
I got the Economist's covers,
the most important magazine
of the world of economics and finance,
with a European but global focus,
and look what the covers of the '90s were.
Financial risk; privatisation; value of shares and shareholders.
Look at the same magazine in 2000,
with the same target and property,
what it is posted on the cover:
"The lungs of the world"; "Forests, and how to save them";
"Happiness, and how to measure it";
"Stop climate change."
The Economist!
Not Greenpeace or WWF magazine.
So, this revolution is happening
because suddenly, no one would have thought,
the economy and business - and now also finance -
are on the side of the revolutionaries, and not on the side of resistance.
This is very important,
and this tells us that we are going through a revolution,
the one of green economy and sustainable development.
But what is this revolution?
This revolution arises from the fact that suddenly,
the economy needed to always have another word nearby.
Do you remember?
We have been talking for 20 years about
"new economy", "soft economy", "blue economy", "green economy";
and the economy always needed an adjective
because it means that the economy, by itself, no longer worked.
Because the centre of the revolution is what the economy
discovered that we need a new relationship with the planet,
a new relationship with the environment we live in.
And so, the continuous search for adjectives to add
is simply because it no longer works:
it's like we have to call a car
A "pseudo-car", or a "car of the future" -
but never a normal car.
Because it's gone, the normal car.
Behold, we are in this particular moment;
And now I tell you why I'm lucky.
When I graduated in Environmental Law in '93,
I was a law student and I chose a thesis in Environmental Law,
they all gave me like a half crazy
because no one thought that was an interesting subject.
But I felt one thing: I felt that since I had
a strong passion for the environment and forests,
I was fine when I was close to nature,
I simply wanted to combine this passion and the law school.
And so I tried the only thing
that could possibly combine these two dimensions of mine:
Raimondo going into the woods,
and Raimondo who holds a degree in Law from Luiss in Rome.
Launched into the future - probably, hopefully, successful -
graduating in environmental law.
Here: I was lucky,
because I didn't know that a revolution had begun.
I was still believing in that
extractive, emissive, linear economy model,
which is what you see.
There was still the prevailing economy - which, alas, still rules the world,
because the revolution just begun -
where we take natural resources, build and make products,
we use them, we get rid of them not even knowing where they go
and we don't care,
and so we pollute.
Extractive, emissive, linear model:
the brown economy.
I was right in that middle, but I was looking forward.
And little did I didn't know about that new "green economy":
an economy in which recycling, renewable sources,
organic farming, regenerated cities,
were coming to life;
and therefore it was a challenging time of transition to the green economy.
And so I was lucky because then I got a job,
and in fact I combined these two aspects
and I was able to carry them forward, let's say, fairly successfully.
But above all with inner satisfaction,
which is the most important thing.
But the thing I want to tell you today,
is that this important revolution is in a third phase.
A phase that we do not yet know,
but you will hear a lot about it in the coming years.
We are moving from the "green economy",
therefore the economy of sustainable development -
that we are trying to implement:
with difficulty, but we are in this step -
to the regenerative economy: remember, regenerative.
You'll hear that term a lot.
Why does regenerative economy matter so much?
What is an example of a regenerative economy?
Here, let's think about this gentleman named Kenneth Bodin,
who in 1966 -
that is, before all this, and before I was born -
introduced, as often happens,
a theory that at the time was not fully understood,
that is, the one where our land, our planet, is like a spaceship.
We have to consider it as a spaceship moving through space by itself,
and therefore has the necessary resources
that were given in order to survive and move.
But it has a whole internal mechanism
to recycle, reuse, regenerate these resources.
Otherwise it stops moving:
It explodes or implodes, and in any case it ends his journey.
And then, the Earth is like that spaceship.
For the regenerative economy -
and look at this explanation attempt:
the regenerative economy is the economy
that instead of thinking about not harming the planet,
like the green economy,
tries to go further.
Not only we do not damage it - and this would already be a lot -
but we even regenerate some environmental factors
which were damaged by the brown economy before,
when Raimondo didn't even know why he felt this ambition.
And the aspects that we are going to regenerate
they are rivers, seas, soils, the quality of the land.
They were contaminated, [but] they can be regenerated.
Because these stocks of natural capital, which we use to produce,
that we need,
we are getting them free.
If we are believers, God gives them to us.
if we are atheists, they are still given to us by the planet, by nature;
but we still get them free.
We use them: but we are contaminating them,
so we're consuming all that energy and all that capital
which makes it possible for this spaceship to continue to travel.
The regenerative economy
tries to reconstitute them, regenerate them, then purify them,
through economic actions.
Think about organic farming.
Think about those forms of agriculture
that instead of absorbing soil quality,
and then destroy it -
because after 20 years, for example,
Intensive farming destroys the land
and you have to change area -
instead it constantly regenerates it,
through biodiversity that is nourished.
Think of a site reclamation activity,
reclamation of the seas, reclamation of rivers:
these activities are an engine for GDP, jobs, employment.
And they bet our future will be guaranteed.
This is the silent revolution.
So many companies are moving in this direction,
there are many of them;
and the effort we have to make is really huge.
Look at the greenhouse gas' emissions curve,
how far it's going up:
it's still coming up.
And look how much it has to go down in the next 10 - 15 years:
a complete shift, a reversal of course.
But we can do it, because underway there is this revolution
that we have to interpret and make a reality.
So my message today -
that comes from my experience and that's what I'm trying to do:
but the good thing is that we are in many and many companies -
is that in our lives,
not only family and personal life
but in our work, whatever work we do,
we should try to add the principles of the "green economy",
and above all of the "regenerative economy".
In whatever work we do -
and I saw it, being a lawyer, wanting to be a lawyer -
there is always a chance to do something for our planet.
Let that sink in, and put it into practice.
And I would like to close by telling you this very short story
I was told by the Chinese ambassador,
and I hope that China will actually make this story come true.
He told me if I knew the history of the mountains.
I learned many of these stories;
but the one of the mountains was admittedly new for me.
And he said,
"Before, to build the Golden Mountain we destroyed the Green Mountain.
Then we understood, after doing so much damage,
that while building the Golden Mountain
we had to protect and preserve the Green Mountain:
it was important to keep it as it was.
Today we are in a third phase.
Now we have understood,
the Green Mountain is the Golden Mountain."
Good luck to all of us.