Have we asked ourselves about the quality of life that we have? What is our commitment to the future leaders of our country? Where are we heading companies?
The challenge is great. It has been established that the vital elements for man are water, air and food and it seems that all its activities are leading to the reduction of these three components. The Rio de Janeiro convention in 1992 established that the main problems of humanity were:
- Hunger and Malnutrition Unemployment Pollution
As you can see, the three characteristics, hunger, unemployment and pollution, directly affect our profession; If the business manager's role is to produce goods and services with a social and economic benefit, then what is happening? Colombia takes advantage of its agro-industrial capacity in a very low percentage, and additionally we have high unemployment rates, while our industries produce more than 6,500 tons of hazardous solid waste annually.
However, the problem is not only in Colombia, a population growth of more than 100 million extra people per year is expected, Asia alone contributes 54 million extra per year, which is equivalent to a need for an additional 28 million tons of grains per year or 78,000 per day. The First Green Revolution involved irrigation processes, fertilizers, pesticides, and selected seeds. Between 1950 and 1990 the irrigated area in the world increased 2.5 times, which went from 94 to 248 million hectares.
World fertilizer use increased from 14 to 146 million tons, while two thirds of the world's irrigated area is in Asia. Of these, fifty million hectares in China and 48 million in India. The next few years will bring 400 million middle-class consumers to Asia, while the productivity of our businesses in raw materials does not exceed, in most cases, 10%.
A sustainable society, according to Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute, implies the capacity on its part to satisfy the needs of its members, without diminishing the opportunities of future generations. For many authors and researchers in production, environment and development, some ecosystems have already passed the point of no return. The companies in which the administrators participate have had a good responsibility in this, not only through factory production, but in e! design of products that generate waste, after consumption and that are difficult to recycle or biodegradable.
We are living this closely in our country, unemployment rates that point to 20% and professional unemployment close to 30%, inhabitants in absolute poverty that exceed the figures of 1,000,000 people in the capital and high levels of Pollution that leads to comparing a day's stay in the center of Bogotá with the effects of having smoked more than 80 cigarettes at the same time.
These reflections point to a new leadership role that begins in the business administrator from his stage as a student. Leadership then appears as that capacity of service, of those who exercise it, in search of a better society that is increasingly satisfied with its needs.
And it not only requires greater responsibility from all of us. It is necessary to establish new ways of relating to the reality that surrounds us, which operates in networks of causality that operate within complex and adaptive systems.
Finally, we allow ourselves to quote Fritjof Capra regarding the vision necessary to understand our interconnected reality: «The large-scale extinction of animal and plant species will continue as long as the southern hemisphere remains under the weight of massive debts. Resource scarcity and environmental deterioration combine with rapidly growing populations, leading to the collapse of local communities as well as ethnic and tribal violence, which has become the main feature of the post-Cold War period ”(The plot of the Life, p. 26).
