Setting New Standards for Sustainable Growth

Introducing the Sustainable Growth Summit at the India Economic Summit, 12 November, Mumbai

By Randall Krantz*

India is booming. By 2025, it is forecast to be the world’s third-largest economy. On one hand, the country’s growth implies a unique opportunity to bring hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. On the other, it means that India will face increasing environmental challenges.

For example, to meet forecast energy demand by 2030, India will need to expand its power generating capacity by 400 GW (equal to the current combined power generation of Japan, South Korea and Australia).

Can this emerging powerhouse set a new standard for driving sustainable and responsible growth?

Entrepreneurship and social innovation proved to be the driving forces behind India’s economic expansion in the last decade. The resulting insights on how to deliver practical models for environmentally sustainable growth at scale could benefit other emerging players.

With the Rio+20 meeting in 2012 set to decide on goals for sustainable development over the coming decades, now is the time for India’s green business innovations to be shared on a global level.

At the Sustainable Growth Summit taking place on 12 November 2011 in Mumbai, leaders from business, social and youth activism, academia and international organizations will come together to discuss new forms of scaled collaboration to meet India’s impressive economic targets, while setting new standards for environmentally and socially minded growth.

Co-chaired by Jamshyd N. Godrej, Chairman and Managing Director of Godrej & Boyce, and Ben J. Verwaayen, Chief Executive Officer of Alcatel-Lucent, the Summit will focus on innovations that have the potential to deliver sustainable economic growth through improved water, agriculture, commodities, waste and renewable energy management in the Indian context, with an aim to provoke new thinking on global partnerships.

Challenges bring opportunities. Faced by an open and creative mind, these challenges can encourage the search for new solutions. Finding such ground-breaking solutions is the aspiration for those who will gather at this first Sustainable Growth Summit in Mumbai.

* Randall Krantz is Director Sustainability Intiative at the World Economic Forum.