Mark Tercek is the president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy. You can follow Mark on Twitter @MarkTercek and find more of his writing on The Huffington Post.

I’ve long believed that the private sector has an important role in addressing critical social and environmental challenges.

Like everyone else, most business leaders want their companies to be good neighbors and respected members of the community — commitments long reflected in corporate social responsibility policies.

But today the drivers of environmental action go deeper than philanthropic motives, or doing the right thing. They also go beyond regulatory compliance. For a growing number of companies, “going green” is now a core business strategy. Those companies committed to minimizing their environmental footprints and factoring the value of nature into their business plans are the ones that will lead their industries in earnings growth, productivity, innovation and employee satisfaction in the decades ahead.

At the World Environment Center’s (WEC) annual Gold Medal Colloquium last week, I joined a number of business leaders who “get” this point. This year WEC recognized IBM for its commitment to integrating environmental sustainability throughout its business practices. Past honorees include Coca-Cola for its far-sighted efforts to protect the watersheds it depends on for its business; and Nestlé, which has embraced the concept of Shared Value — looking beyond short-term financial gains to create long-term value for both shareholders and society.

What do companies leading the way in environmental sustainability have in common?

• They almost always have an inspired leader in charge of the company’s sustainability agenda. As companies get more serious about their environmental strategies, the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) has emerged as a key player in developing win-win solutions that benefit both business and nature. I think some of the boldest and most innovative business leaders today are CSOs. They are changing how business is done.

• It’s not an easy job. He or she must have deep knowledge of the company’s core operations; a real commitment to the environment; and strong relationships with NGOs, communities and other allies. A good CSO finds ways for a company to strengthen business outcomes and environmental outcomes at the same time. A great CSO builds a true culture of sustainability across every aspect of the business, embedding environmental thinking into employees’ goals, measures and incentives.

• Of course a great CSO must work alongside a great CEO committed to building that culture and making sustainability a top priority for the company. They have what sustainability experts Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston call an “eco-advantage mindset” — they take a long-range view of timeframes and payoffs when evaluating environmental decisions; they look for opportunities for improvement across their entire value chain; and they adopt the “failure is not an option” motto — establishing tough environmental goals to which they hold themselves accountable. If they fall short of these goals, they are fully transparent to the company’s stakeholders and the general public.

• These sustainability leaders fully integrate nature into their core business strategies, using tools and resources grounded in solid science. They do so because they recognize the value of nature that sustains industries: the oceans that provide seafood; the forests that provide trees for paper products; the healthy soils that grow crops; the rivers that provide fresh water. They understand that investing in the long-term health of these resources will well-position their companies for the future.

• These sustainability leaders are resolute and don’t back down in the face of criticism. Big, global businesses are complex organizations. Perfect outcomes are not in the cards. Even the best performing environmentally-focused companies will have setbacks — mistakes, accidents or other disappointments. When this happens, critics will pounce. (Not a bad thing — criticism can lead to good improvements.) But their leaders don’t waver from their long-term game plans.

Just as successful businesses are making conservation a core part of their business strategy, conservationists should adopt as a core strategy collaborating carefully with businesses to lend expertise and help speed up the adoption of sustainable practices.

Collaboration does not mean, however, that companies should expect a free pass from environmentalists. Watchdog NGOs that push companies to do the right thing play an important role in exposing bad practices and using publicity to drive change. Even companies leading the way on sustainability efforts still have a long way to go. There, no doubt, will be occasions when honest attempts between environmentalists and companies to collaborate will prove disappointing. But to not work with companies — whose footprints and influence are vast — to improve environmental sustainability is to miss an essential opportunity to help them make better decisions, understand the value of nature and create real conservation gains around the world.

In my view, we are in the midst of a defining moment for the private sector. Great Chief Sustainability Officers, working with strong CEOs and collaborating with smart conservation organizations, have the opportunity to demonstrate that healthy lands and waters are good for nature, people and business.

[Image: Pronatura Noreste Reserve located in the Cuatro Cienegas valley, state of Coahuila, Mexico. Image source: Mark Godfrey/TNC]

Mark Tercek is the president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy. You can follow Mark on Twitter @MarkTercek and find more of his writing on The Huffington Post.

How can we meet the world’s increasing demands for food, water and energy without degrading the natural systems we depend on for survival?

Last week I had the privilege of addressing this question at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference, where hundreds of business, government and nonprofit leaders gathered to discuss the intersection of business and the environment.

There is general consensus on the nature—and urgency—of the challenges we face. The world’s population is expected to grow by an additional 3 billion by 2050. World food supply will need to double by then, not just to feed these extra people, but to support the more resource-intensive, protein-rich diets of an expanding middle class. Over a few short decades, agriculture must find ways to convert less habitat; use water more efficiently; and manage land, soil and water in ways that strengthen, not degrade, the environmental services they provide.

Solving these challenges will require sound science, innovation and partnership. To that end, I was pleased to share the stage at Fortune Brainstorm conference with Cargill CEO Greg Page. Later in the week, I joined General Mills’ CEO Ken Powell in kicking off the company’s sustainability summit. In the past, these might have been unusual pairings. But today, agricultural and food companies like Cargill and General Mills are collaborating with conservation organizations like The Nature Conservancy to develop a smarter world food system.

What would this agricultural system look like?

The buzzword for this system is sustainable intensification. Simply put, we need to produce more food with fewer resources, in an environmentally sustainable way.

Doubling food production by doubling agricultural lands is not an option. Beyond the ecological havoc this would wreak, there simply isn’t enough land available. Agriculture already uses 40% of the world’s land, and much of the remainder is unsuitable for planting or grazing. Water presents a similar picture: agriculture accounts for 70% of global water consumption. As global water scarcity intensifies, companies risk running out of clean water for their operations.

So agriculture has to get smarter. Between now and 2050 it has to convert much less habitat, increase yields on existing farm and pasture lands and use water and other resources more efficiently. Fertilizer has to be used in a way that minimizes pollution. All this has to be done while adapting to shifting weather patterns and a more unpredictable climate.

Of course, this intensification has to be sustainable. This is not easy. An increase in returns per acre can stimulate agricultural expansion and damage nearby lands and waters. To avoid these negative impacts, The Nature Conservancy is working both to minimize further conversion of land by conserving natural habitat and to help farmers and ranchers improve their productivity and reduce their impact on surrounding areas.

In Brazil, for example, we are working with Cargill to help soy farmers comply with the country’s Forest Code—a law stipulating that farmers and ranchers maintain percentages of their land in native habitat – up to 80% in the Amazon – or compensate for past deforestation by preserving native habitat elsewhere. Since 2006, Cargill has purchased soy only from farmers it verifies are complying with the Forest Code, with the Conservancy helping the company to design the tracking and monitoring systems they need to make their compliance commitment work. This successful collaboration, which began with 180 local farmers, has been a model for similar projects across the Amazon, Cerrado grasslands and the Atlantic Forest, covering over 100 million acres and engaging tens of thousands of farmers.

Another example is the Keystone Field to Market initiative, a diverse alliance of producers, agribusinesses, food companies and environmental organizations. Working across the agricultural supply chain, the group is developing collaborative solutions to help increase agricultural productivity while minimizing environmental impacts. For example, the initiative’s Fieldprint Calculator shows growers how management decisions on the farm affect soil quality and levels of water use, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity habitat, as well as their bottom line.

The ultimate success of these kinds of initiatives will depend on reaching many thousands of farmers. That’s why we believe it is critical to engage the large companies who source from and sell to those farmers. Influencing the decision-making and business practices of companies that play a major role in the way the world’s food is produced magnifies our reach far beyond what we could accomplish alone.

Finally, the environmental community must continue to demonstrate the important benefits and services that healthy lands and waters provide to people. For example, in the Mississippi River Valley—the heart of our nation’s agricultural economy—our work to help farmers improve their sustainability efforts is about more than protecting wildlife habitat. Agricultural runoff is a major contributor to the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, an area of low oxygen that costs the U.S. seafood and tourism industry an estimated $82 million per year. The smart use of cover crops during winter months can significantly reduce nutrient pollution without reducing the amount of land in agriculture. Restored wetlands also play a key role in filtering this pollution from the water, providing valuable fish and wildlife habitat, and helping mitigate flooding downstream.

Venues like Fortune Brainstorm Green are encouraging signs for the kinds of collaboration that will be necessary to ensure that nature continues to provide the food, clean water, energy and other services our growing population depends on for survival. To feed that growing population in a sustainable way, agricultural companies must think more like conservationists. And likewise, conservationists must recognize that doubling the world’s food production means we need to work collaboratively with farmers, ranchers and agribusiness to identify where and how to do that most responsibly.

(Image: Pio Stefanello is one of the soy farmers working with the Conservancy in Santarém, in the state of Pará, Brazil to implement strategies to control deforestation and promote the responsible production of soy and beef among farmers and ranchers. PImage credit: © Palani Mohan/Cargill Inc.)

1. Sounds like climate change really has it out for rainforests.  (Mongabay)
2. Say goodbye to Greenland’s giant ice sheet.  (Christian Science Monitor)
3. Not a drop of beer– or its waste grain– will go to waste if this big-time brewer gets its way.  (Grist)
4. Philadelphia makes a play for the country’s greenest football stadium.  Fly, Eagles, fly!  (Treehugger)
5. Starling flocks in flight behave like magnets(?), says a new study.  (Wired)

1. How’s this for wacky weather?  It snowed in Libya.  (Green)
2. Ratu, one of the last remaining Sumatran rhinos, is in her 11th month of pregnancy.  Only five more months to go!  (Mongabay)
3. Yesterday, one of the world’s most climate-conscious leaders was forced to resign in a coup d’état.  (Grist)
4. At least in California, green jobs weathered the recession much better than conventional jobs.  (GreenBiz)
5. What are the greenest cars on the market today?  (CleanTechnica)

Mark Tercek is the president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy. This week he’s at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where he was invited to participate in a panel on innovative ways to tackle water, food, mineral and energy challenges.

See interviews with Mark and all of his blog posts from Davos on nature.org.

Resource scarcity has been a frequent topic at the World Economic Forum in recent years, and for good reason.

Between now and 2050, the world’s population will grow by an additional 2 billion people. Over the same period, millions of people will be lifted out of poverty. By 2030, nearly two thirds of the global population–as opposed to today’s one quarter–could be middle class.

Rising incomes, of course, are a good thing. But a rapidly growing and more affluent population are straining the natural systems on which natural diversity, human health and prosperity depend.

The good news is that corporations and governments increasingly recognize the need to balance development with sound ecological standards and are seeking advice on how to effectively achieve these twin goals. I saw strong evidence of that trend today in Davos, where I led a panel that included CEOs of multinational beverages, food and mining companies, and senior government environmental ministers, and leaders of international aid organizations.

Despite the diverse range of perspectives, the panelists all agreed on one thing: Nature conservation isn’t just an aesthetic “luxury”–it’s an essential investment in human well-being and economic growth.

Take water, for example–a resource already in short supply. More than 1 billion people worldwide currently lack access to clean water, with rising temperatures only further compounding the problem.

And water challenges affect more than basic human and ecological health. Water is essential to economic productivity and virtually every aspect of our quality of life, including growing the food we eat, manufacturing the products we buy and supplying electricity to our homes. As global water scarcity intensifies, multinational corporations are increasingly concerned about their water-related business risks. Companies risk running out of clean water for their operations, and their water use can impact other water users and ecosystems.

Until recently, diverse stakeholders–governments, businesses, development organizations, and conservation organizations like The Nature Conservancy–have tended to address these challenges in a one-off “siloed” manner. That doesn’t work. As one panelist noted, companies can save enormous amounts of water by using more energy, or save energy by using more water. The key, however, is figuring out how to do both. Likewise, reducing carbon emissions can unintentionally hurt the food industry’s ability to feed hungry people, as more and more lands are converted for biofuel production.

Balancing such tradeoffs isn’t easy. But it’s clear that we need more integrated approaches to resource management. And integration must go both up and down the supply chain. Panelists agreed that reducing resource use should continue to be a top priority for their companies — and they are making great progress — but their suppliers are also key players. Companies must tackle resources challenges on an integrated basis with suppliers and customers.

Fortunately, tackling these challenges doesn’t always require high-tech, expensive intervention. For example, according to one panelist, better roads in developing countries — in order to reduce extraordinary traffic jams — could be an important way to address air pollution and carbon emissions in many emerging markets. Likewise, wasteful water leakage in agriculture can be addressed most quickly and effectively by better valves and pipes rather genetically-modified crop varieties that require less water.

What’s also clear is the need to move quickly. As one CEO noted, for example, it’s time to stop debating the future impacts of climate change. We are already seeing those impacts. From rising sea levels to rivers running dry, rising temperatures pose urgent and serious threats to natural systems and to the people, plants and animals, and economies that they sustain.

I’ve been encouraged by the sense of urgency, coupled with cautious optimism, that I’ve seen in Davos this week. Key players in government, business, and civil society understand that integrated approaches to resource management need to be accelerated and prioritized. Positive impacts are already being achieved. If we can enhance and improve collaboration, focus on holistic approaches, scale up programs, and recruit more participants, there is reason to be encouraged.

The good programs we’re hearing about this week really do work. Now they need to be taken to scale, urgently.

(Image: A wood products processing plant glows during the night shift at the Great Works Dam on the Penobscot River near Old Town and Bradley, Maine. Image credit: © Bridget Besaw)

Mark Tercek, the Conservancy’s president and CEO, is attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week. This year’s Forum brings together top business, government, academic and civil society leaders to discuss new models for addressing social, political, economic and environmental challenges.

Mark was invited by the Forum to participate in a panel on innovative ways to tackle water, food, mineral and energy challenges. Below is a post he wrote for the World Economic Forum blog.

At this week’s World Economic Forum, the food-energy-water nexus will be a common theme running through many conversations, and that is a good thing. Water, food and energy security are chronic impediments to economic growth and social stability. But now we need to take the next step, and look at what underlies that nexus.

The answer is natural capital.

People have typically valued nature either sentimentally, or else as raw materials whose value is based on their extraction costs and ultimate market price, with the assumption that they would be available forever. Now, everyone from farmers and fishermen to bankers and financiers are waking up to two vital facts. First, we are dependent upon nature far more and in far more complex ways than we knew. And second, natural capital –– the stock that yields a flow of services like flood control, and resources like a healthy, regenerating fish population––is not inexhaustible.

We need a more sophisticated and nuanced calculation, one based on sound financial principles from the private sector and a deeper appreciation for how nature’s resources and services contribute to economic and ecological well-being. Leaving natural capital out of the equation imperils both ecosystems and the economies built upon them.

Given this new reality, we should not be surprised that the innovative thinking in conservation is coming from unlikely corners. Successful businesses, livable cities, and thriving wildlands all rest on the same living foundation: nature.

Consider floodplains, for example, and their relation to food, energy, water and economic risk. Before levees, floods spread fertile silt across the floodplain, while wetlands removed impurities from the water. With levees, silt stays in the river, eventually clogging hydropower turbines. Crops on the floodplain require more fertilizer, water quality worsens downriver, and the risk of catastrophic floods rises as more and more levees are built and pressure on the whole system rises.

Far better, in the words of one farmer from Iowa –– a community not often considered environmentalists –– to “let floodplains be floodplains again.” Working with nature is more effective, less expensive, and offers more potential benefits than business as usual.

For too long environmental issues have been seen as separate from everyday concerns, but they are intertwined in everything we do. They intersect in places like Iowa when floods underscore the true value of functioning floodplains. They intersect for ranchers in the Northern Great Plains when they see that conservation and ranching can coexist and even thrive, for nomadic herders in the the Gobi Desert working with huge mining companies, for cocoa growers on West African plantations.

The challenges and opportunities revealed in the simple idea of letting floodplains be floodplains extend beyond any single river basin or country. But working at the scale necessary to effect real change is impossible if we approach it farmer by farmer, no matter how innovative and forward-looking they may be. The real impact of rethinking the value of nature and incorporating that new thinking into investment, development and policy decisions will come as entire industries see the necessity, from a business perspective, of viewing nature in a fundamentally different light.

I look forward to our discussions in Davos this week, where those decision makers and industry leaders will come together to find common solutions to ensure that nature can continue to provide the food, clean water, energy and other services our growing population depends upon for survival.

(Image: A farmer stops water in an irrigation canal. Image credit: ©Ami Vitale)

1. Bet you didn’t know our president/CEO Mark Tercek is an amateur singer-songwriter (we sure didn’t!).  (The Atlantic)
2. What’s the deal with “green jobs“?  This infographic breaks it down.  (CleanTechnica)
3. Grizzly bears are the new polar bears.  (Christian Science Monitor)
4. Microplastic threads in your fleece jacket are causing big problems for oceans.  (Grist)
5. A two-degree global warming limit is still a “prescription for disaster.”  (Scientific American)

1. After 20 years, consumers are finally getting greener.  (Maybe Green Gift Monday had something to do with that…?)  (GreenBiz)
2. COP17 just began, but is it doomed already?  (Scientific American)
3. Headline win of the day: “E. Coli: What doesn’t kill us, makes us biofuel.”  (CleanTechnica)
4. Climate change and crazy weather are driving up food prices.  (Green House)
5. Journalist Andy Revkin responds to critics questioning his role in the latest “Climategate” emails.  (DotEarth)

There are lies, damned lies and statistics, as Disraeli memorably observed. Brazilian senator Katia Abreu, interviewed for Business Week in New York on the latest steps in the debate around Brazil’s Forest Code, was a veritable blur of figures, all of them huge:

• $100 billion dollars of losses to Brazilian farmers if a proposed deforestation amnesty didn’t pass as part of a reformed Forest Code
• 173 million hectares of land likely to be taken out of production as Brazilian farmers are forced to reforest

It went on and on.

Is this true? More to the point, why would the readers of Business Week be interested in an arcane debate over Brazilian environmental law?

Some context. Brazilian legislators are currently debating a reform of its Forest Code. The name is misleading: it actually sets out the environmental obligations of all private landowners, especially farmers. Parts of the law date from the 1930s, and all parties agree that it needs to be updated, but that’s about as far as agreement goes. For two years now Forest Code reform has been one of Brazil’s hottest political issues and the debate is moving towards a close, with some defining votes scheduled over the next few weeks. Since Brazil is both an agriculture and a biodiversity superpower, with much of that biodiversity on farms and ranches, this is a big deal for conservation and the Forest Code debate is being followed around the world.

Senator Katia Abreu is a leader of the ruralistas, a farming lobby which has waged a campaign to weaken environmental regulations on farmers. The details are complicated, but revolve around obligations to keep certain areas of farms in native habitat. However the votes go these obligations will remain in some form, which means that in international context even a revised Forest Code will be an advanced regulatory framework for farming, in environmental terms. But there is one major unresolved issue: a deforestation amnesty, being pushed hard by the ruralista lobby.

The salient question is why Senator Abreu feels obliged to go to New York to give an interview to Business Week on a very Brazilian debate, and the answer is bound up with the deforestation amnesty.

This is only partly a political debate; it also reflects a cultural shift in Brazil. In last year’s presidential election, the Green Party candidate, Marina da Silva, won almost a quarter of the vote, mainly in the cities where three quarters of Brazilian live. In a process that has parallels to recent US history, Brazil’s rural population is falling fast, as land ownership consolidates and economic opportunities in Brazil’s increasingly dynamic cities pull people off the land.

The result is a political and cultural fracture in Brazilian agriculture between modernizing and traditionalist wings. Traditionalists feel insecure, undermined as the rural population declines, misunderstood by an increasingly urbanized country, and angered by the refusal of many of their compatriots to buy into the traditional line that environmental considerations should take second place to the rush for development. They find it difficult to understand, for example, why many supermarket chains in Sao Paulo are demanding deforestation-free beef.

The modernizers tend to be larger farmers and ranchers, with capital, technology and close links to the agribusiness companies they sell to and source from. More than anything else they want clarity about their environmental obligations, so they can get compliant as quickly as possible. They are very wary of a deforestation amnesty: they know how it will immediately be used as a cudgel by American and European competitors to damage Brazil’s image in the cut-throat commodity markets they operate within. Plus they don’t like being played for suckers: most of them have made serious efforts to get into Forest Code compliance and spent serious money in the process. If a deforestation amnesty goes through, they wasted their time and resources.

That’s why Senator Abreu is in New York. The modernizing wing of Brazilian agriculture both attracts international investment and is itself a major investor in agriculture around the world. Investor opinion in New York has impacts all the way down to Brazilian farms, and Senator Abreu, no fool, knows that perfectly well. She knows the hostility the idea of a deforestation amnesty meets with in Manhattan, and the need to shift opinion there as well as in Brasilia.

So the only thing she can do is justify the amnesty in terms of the economic hit it would allegedly represent to Brazilian farmers if it doesn’t pass, since that’s the kind of argument she thinks investors will understand. But the sources of her figures aren’t clear, and Disraeli would certainly have something witty to say about them: the 173 million acres allegedly lost to production if an amnesty doesn’t go through would represent almost three times the total area of soy in Brazil, Brazil’s biggest crop in terms of planted area. Such wild exaggerations are characteristic of the ruralista approach.

The real issue here is that Brazil is successfully intensifying production and has been for years: the ethanol industry is a textbook example of how to expand planted area over pasture, and the soy industry is now following the same path. There are places the Conservancy is working, such as Paragominas in the Amazonian state of Para, where output is being increased at the same time as smart conservation is preserving biodiversity. The idea that the only way to expand production is by expanding planted area has long passed its sell-by date: the modernizers know the way forward is sustainable intensification. Far from representing an economic hit to farmers, not passing a deforestation amnesty gives exactly the right signal.

It  rewards compliance, intensification and the most efficient use of land, and encourages farmers to increase returns by focusing more on yields and efficiency, as well as expanding planted area more carefully and responsibly, channeling expansion into areas that have already been cleared.

There are many other things one could say in response to Abreu’s scaremongering, such as pointing to the wide array of subsidized credit lines available for farmers needing to get into Forest Code compliance, or the fact that the majority of Brazilian farmers are smallholders, who all parties agree should be dealt with more leniently when deforestation limits are applied.

But perhaps the key observation is that Brazil’s rather impressive new president, Dilma Roussef, appears to understand the central issue perfectly well: any amnesty carries within it the seed of another. The precedent it sets will encourage all farmers to ignore any limits on land clearance in the revised Code, and lobby for another amnesty in the future. Even the modernizers, reluctant to be played for suckers a second time, will think twice. In other words, the worst possible outcome for Brazil’s international image, the competitiveness of its agricultural exports, the productivity of Brazilian farmers, and specific agricultural sectors in Brazil, like ethanol and soy, which have made painful choices and moved towards greater environmental responsibility in recent years. With Brazil’s national interest in such direct play, and the international spotlight about to fall on Brazil with the Rio +20 conference scheduled for 2012, the World Cup for 2014 and the Olympics for 2016, even if the amnesty passes in Congress a presidential veto looks the most likely outcome.

(Image: Southern Bahia forest cover on the Nova Angelica farm, Bahia, Brazil. Image credit: © Gilbert Tiepolo)

1. When it comes to climate change, do your eco-friendly choices really make a difference?  (Grist)
2. So now maybe marine reserves don’t promote coral recovery, according to a controversial new report.  (Mongabay)
3. For the first time in 75 years, an entire genus of mammal may go extinct.  (National Geographic)
4. As the population gets older, carbon emissions may subside a bit…maybe, says a new study.  (Green House)
5. Facebook’s adding solar panels to its new headquarters.  Like!  (EcoGeek)