Public Goods, Sustainable Development and the Contribution of Business
Roland Bardy, Arthur Rubens, Raymond Saner & Lichia Yiu
310 pages, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021
How can we relate public goods to the sustainable development agenda? What can businesses contribute to the progress of humankind beyond economic growth?
In our new book, Public Goods, Sustainable Development and the Contribution of Business, we highlight the inherent linkages between sustainable development and corporate responsibility for improving the current and future welfare of communities both at home and abroad. Coming from different countries, different backgrounds, and different perspectives, the four authors are united in our recognition of public goods and their importance to the sustainable development agenda, as well as how businesses must move beyond a singular focus on economic growth to contributing to the well-being of the larger community. It is this diversity of backgrounds that brings strength to important discussion about building better futures post COVID-19, as well as our decision to write a book with a holistic perspective. One of the authors spent 30 years as a senior executive in a large German multinational, another is a retired business professor from the US, and two others founded and direct a 27-year-old think tank in Geneva, where relations to international organizations are routine matter.—Roland Bardy, Arthur Rubens, Raymond Saner, and Lichia Yiu
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In the preface of this book, Beat Bürgenmeier, Professor Emeritus at the University of Geneva, refers to public goods as usually being not for profit in nature and generally available to all with nobody excluded from using them. He states that although the public expects the ongoing provision of public goods such as roads, defense, the legal system, police, education, etc., it is during times of crisis when the need for, and the emphasis on, receiving these goods and services are greatest. In the last decade, we have seen many events that have demanded a need for public services and goods because of natural disasters, such as hurricanes in the U.S, tsunamis in East Asia, earthquakes in Italy or manmade disasters such as the influx of migrants from war-torn regions and the great economic recession in 2007/2008 when almost all the nations of the world were impacted by the financial downturn. However, no event, albeit since the Second World War, has challenged nations greater to provide public goods and services than the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged all nations of the world. The effects of this pandemic, compared to previous worldwide events (wars, diseases, etc.), are yet to be fully realized and understood; however, there is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic will not only change how we work and live around the world, but will surely change how we provide public goods and services in the future.
The title of Professor Bürgenmeier’s preface is: “Conflicting means and common goals,” in which he reflects that the historical antagonism between the means employed by public and private entities and the increasing reality that although public and private entities address issues differently and might have a different mission, there are “common goals” in regard to the promotion of public goods and services. Professor Bürgenmeier points to several reasons that have contributed to public goods and services being ranked high on many countries’ political agendas. They are the rise of deficit spending and expansionary monetary policy worldwide; the financial sector disconnecting from the real economy through interconnected global markets; persisting and increasing social inequalities among the world’s nations; and the growth in environmental pollution around the world. The efforts needed to address these issues, as well as future issues like climate change, water shortages, population growth, etc., will require a different socio-economic model that goes beyond market-oriented policies driven by special interests, but rather a model where policies reflect established linkages between the public and private sectors. Historically, Bürgenmeier continues, the study of business and economics has controversially discussed the arguments for or against non-market approaches to any economic activity, especially in the delivery of public goods. One of the reasons for this controversy stems from the fact that many business and economic practices cannot be reduced to a simplistic contrast between market and public goods. Similarly, a dichotomous contrast between individual private activity and collective public activity is equally simplistic. Business activities are delivered in a variety of forms, ranging from social operational patterns to the establishment of efficient markets. Therefore, any delimitation of the field of economics and business activities deserves special attention. While for some, any social fact can be analyzed by economic science, for others this discipline has a limited scope. For the former, economics is a discipline like physics, and their normative implications must be strictly treated separately from its scientific analysis. For the others, economics remains a social science, and their normative implications must be explicitly part of it. Professor Bürgenmeier, like the authors of this book, clearly and steadfastly follows the latter perspective.
Holistic Approach to Public Goods and Sustainable Development
While there is a relatively large number of books that have focused on the topic of public goods, in these books many of the authors principally focused on the socio-economic concept put forth by the Nobel-laureate Jean Tirole or the perspective from the book of the famous American management authority Philip Kotler (which bears the sub-title of “Strategies for Businesses, Governments and Non-profits”), that primarily narrates examples of well-known leaders to emphasize the need for action. Conversely, our team of authors, approached the topic from various angles, not least of all from the dimension of measuring. Our idea offers a holistic perspective that covers the macro- and the micro-economic, the political and the developmental aspects, that shows which range of action is available at different levels of decision-making and what outcomes they may provide. Thus, when relating the topic of public goods to the sustainable development agenda, a multitude of perspectives needs to be dealt with – apart from the economic, the social and the ecological perspectives: they are the ethical, the institutional and the measurement dimension. All of these are interlinked, as are the endeavors for sustainable development by businesses, governments, and international institutions. While this is not new, the formats of these linkages and interdependencies – and the consequences of such interconnectedness – have not been exhibited in a comprehensive way that is presented in our book.
Public-Private-Civil Society Partnerships and the Sustainable Development Goals
The mainstream discussion on sustainable development very often does not fully highlight that securing sustainable development is equal to providing, preserving, and maintaining public goods. Also, we hear repeatedly that businesses cause harm to the environment and to social structures, and that, if they act otherwise, this only comes from their self-interest. This rhetoric jeopardizes social coherence and delays progress in the economic, the ecological and the social spheres of life. Our book uses a different manifestation. For achieving lasting outcomes in the endeavor to promote sustainability, businesses, individuals, and state actors must participate fully in communal efforts on all levels without preconditions. The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 17 (SDG-17) reads: “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development”. In pursuit of this the goal recognizes multi-stakeholder partnerships and the promotion of public-private, and civil society partnerships “as important vehicles or essential ingredients for mobilizing and sharing knowledge, expertise, technologies, and financial resources to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, particularly developing countries”. Pandemics, like COVID-19, presented both a unique opportunity and global health challenges that created a need for immediate short-term public-private partnerships, that potentially can serve as a catalyst for the creation of long-term public-private, and civil society strategic partnerships.
COVID-19, Public Goods, and Commons
The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that there are many interdependencies and interrelationships which are essential for the survival of mankind, and many of them relate to public goods and the concept of “commons” which are often thought of as synonymous. Although the legal structure that protects the commons is a public good”, conceptually they are not the same. Where public goods are defined as commodities or services that are provided without profit to all members of a society, either by the government or a private individual or organization, they are characterized as being non-rivalrous and non-excludable (open to everyone and not subject to competition or rivals). However, commons may be excludable and rivalrous (for example wild game or fish stock in international waters, both subject to rivalry and does not include everyone). Similarly, global commons are a term used to describe international, supranational, and global resource domains in which common-pool resources are found. Global commons might include the earth's shared natural resources, such as the oceans, the atmosphere and even outer space.
As the COVID-19 virus and its various variants are infecting people in countries across the world, the policy makers, global public health experts, and business leaders have an opportunity to analyze and assess the varied public-private-civil partnerships that have been created to address this pandemic. Which ultimately can serve as models for future pandemics. Although the path of transmission of COVID-19 is universal, how countries responded, and how the public-private partnerships created varied - the idea of one size fits all does not apply. This fact, of countries needs being different, is particularly important when looking at these public-private arrangements between developed, high-income countries and less developed, middle to lower-income countries. In fact, with this crisis amazingly we are seeing developed, high-income countries facing many of the pitfalls that historically affect their lower-income counterparts: lack of access to equipment, space, staffing shortage to name a few. While, other countries, much smaller and less prosperous have shown some success in addressing the virus. There needs to be an after-virus report on how public-private-civil society partnerships responded to the pandemic and from this a broader global health security agenda needs to be built to address future pandemics.
Re-Assessing Public Goods Theory
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that many problems of the world are global problems which require a global solution. Re-visiting theory and pertinence of Public Goods and Common Goods Theory is a worthwhile and much needed task as we are facing the tremendous negative impact on health and wellbeing and negative economic impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Climate change, food shortages, and water scarcity are all issues that will have to be faced by future generations. In order to survive the current and future pandemics, governments, businesses, and civil society must come together for the common good. The sustainable development agenda of 2030 puts forth specific goals for the next decade. With this must come specific actions that will bring the government-private and social sector together to address the many challenges that face the world (many induced by the shortfall of public goods provisioned around the world). To build better futures, the concepts and theory of public and common goods urgently need to be brought back into the public discourse to ensure a better and more sustainable life for future generations.