Insurmountable Opportunities?

The document evaluates the state of global sustainability in 2001, highlighting a severe decline in ecosystem services and the rise of 'overshoot.' It identifies five key achievements since the Rio Summit—including the growth of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), civil society, and socially responsible investing—while warning of imminent climate instability, water shortages, and health crises. The authors advocate for 'Natural Capitalism,' a shift toward resource productivity and whole-systems governance, to replace the current industrial model that prioritizes labor productivity over natural capital.

• Global ecosystems are in rapid decline, with half of the world's wetlands and forests lost in the last century, and 70 percent of major marine fisheries depleted.
• The global economy is in a state of 'overshoot,' where resources are extracted faster than they can be restored and wastes are released faster than the earth can absorb them, potentially leading to collapse if throughputs of material and energy are not reduced.
• A shift is occurring from the first industrial revolution's focus on labor productivity to a 'Next Industrial Revolution' based on total factor productivity and resource productivity, where businesses that avoid liquidating natural capital become more profitable.
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has moved into the mainstream, with some business networks, such as Ethos in Brazil, representing nearly 20 percent of the national GDP.
• Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) has grown significantly, with a 1999 estimate that over two trillion dollars in the US are invested using social criteria, often outperforming conventional investments.
• Traditional economic measures like GDP are inadequate for tracking sustainability because they fail to distinguish between transactions that increase or diminish wellbeing.
• Climate change is expected to cause unprecedented floods, droughts, and severe storms, while water shortages are predicted to heighten regional tensions in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and northern China by 2015.
• Industrial agriculture is creating severe health and economic risks, exemplified by the BSE crisis in Europe, which cost Britain over $1 billion and led to a collapse in consumer confidence in the agro-industrial system.
• The manipulation of the genome through transgenic technology risks shifting evolutionary pressure from nature to markets, potentially allowing pathogens to cross species barriers.
• To achieve sustainability, the authors propose five steps: implementing Natural Capitalism, reinventing governance through NGO-business-government coalitions, expanding micro-lending, reforming education, and adopting the Precautionary Principle.

APA

Lovins, H., & Link, W. (2001). Insurmountable Opportunities? RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_B01-18_UNPaper-InsurOpp.pdf

Chicago

Lovins, Hunter, and Walter Link. Insurmountable Opportunities? RMI, 2001. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_B01-18_UNPaper-InsurOpp.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Lovins |first1=Hunter |last2=Link |first2=Walter |title=Insurmountable Opportunities? |publisher=RMI |date=2001 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_B01-18_UNPaper-InsurOpp.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{lovins2001insurmountable, author = {Lovins, Hunter and Link, Walter}, title = {{Insurmountable Opportunities?}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2001}, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_B01-18_UNPaper-InsurOpp.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }