Credit, begrudged by some, is due activists in government, non-profits (NGOs), churches and political parties for their success in focusing attention away from selfish ends towards the needs of others whether they are human or nature's resources. This activism manifests itself in as many ways as there are things for the human mind to dwell upon: social justice, the welfare of animals, food safety, public health and hygiene, the conservation of the environment, of late, climate change. No matter the subject, one common denominator can be found: respect for what ever it is that is the "other."

Some trace the mindset to the 1960s and the veterans of that era whose influence is most seen today in Academia. That simplistic view ignores such Mavericks in time as Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt to mention only two whose personal instincts seemed far advanced of the thinking and policies of their day.

Indeed, the roots of social activism extend further than the cultural phenomenon called Woodstock Nation, flower-power, long-hair and the salad days of psychedelic rock music. A common theme or two coursing through the core of modern activism runs the length of the history of man. Perhaps the most relevant modern starting point is the influence of the philosophers of the 19th and 20th Century who attacked social and theological institutions and championed the individual questing for a better world from Kierkegaard who turned toward the worth of the individual to Buber whose "I" gained meaning only in relation to a "Thou."

Critics of green earth and animal rights activists label those devotees as practicing a mindless form of Nature-worshipping with all the fervor of the great fundamentalist religions of the world. They also and quite correctly call them anti-corporate and anti-capitalist. Ironically, green activists condemn those same critics with similar derogatory religious terms. And, yes, they abhor their critics for their roles as corporate global traders and profit-driven capitalists.

Green activists sit in one corner of this ideological boxing ring content in the religious allusion of their being the Saviors of animals, the environment and humankind in general. Businessmen, private industry research scientists, farmers, loggers, fishermen, miners occupy the far corner of that same ring self-assured that they seek to save the world in their own unique ways by providing food for the hungry, medicines for the sick, building materials for shelter and energy to keep economies functioning and make a dollar or two in the process. There is truth and merit in both points of view. Not everyone sees their common ground or the importance of their innate synergism.

The negative stereotypes of business portrayed by NGOs are steeped in history with an endless archive of examples compounding industry's lack of respect for nature, animals or humanity. Unfortunately most of that history is a bit moldy with age.

Prior to the ascent of environmental, animal, and social activism, the earth and her oceans were considered storehouses of endless resources to be exploited to meet the needs of nation's advancing into global prominence. Marine and terrestrial resources as well as the unsophisticated cultures living closest to them were valuable only in terms of the goods and cheap labor to be plundered from them. Energy, minerals, timber, fish and wild life were taken with abandon and no thought to the possibility of depletion because they represented instant profit. Not a moment's thought was given to the then alien concept of "sustainability." Workers and their families had no value if they couldn't work.

Concern for the human element whether employees or cheap labor in foreign lands paid a pittance to exploit local resources did not exist among global corporations. It was the time of the Robber Barrons of the Industrial Age. Corporate heads who mined the ore to make the steel of cities, who took the oil, who clear cut the forests, and scooped up fish, crab, and shellfish by the hundreds of thousands and millions of tons indeed had little care for anything but profit. That is until they reached the end of their time and began to try and make amends via philanthropy lest they find themselves in less than heavenly quarters in the afterlife.

In the smog and labor intense days when nations vied for industrial might care for the oppressed labor force was largely shouldered by church-based missionaries. Care for the environment came first from the statesmen of Colonizing powers, hunters all, eager to preserve wild places and wild life so they and those who followed for generations could enjoy the sport of kings, namely, hunting the great beasts of Africa and Asia.

The end of the 19th and early 20th Century saw the emergence of a pantheon of individuals whose names are indelibly engraved in the annals of the planet's protection: Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, Joseph Knapp, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, David Brower, Ansel Adams, J. N. "Ding" Darling, C. R. "Pink" Gutermuth, and more. Their disciples continued the passion but too often lacked their balanced view of life. What should have been a mutual campaign with NGOs and Industry working together to make conditions on earth better became a multi-billion dollar finger-pointing game. Highly publicized efforts to "partner" with industrial power tend to be more an act of attempted appeasement by business to ward off controversial and negative publicity than one of action stemming from mutual respect.

If as mentioned in the first part of this series one accepts the concept of "sustainability" as Merriam-Webster defines it: 1. capable of being sustained and 2. of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged; or as Norway's Gro Harlem Brundtland's process that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" the question that begs an answer is who will pay and how?

Ten years ago, an environmental visionary, John Elkington spelled out the answer in his now all but forgotten, out-of-print work whose title was borrowed from Polish poet Stanislaw Lec's intriguing question "is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?"

Elkington's cannibals are the world's great and powerful corporations. He correctly sees business, not government nor non-profits, as key. Governments, churches and other non-profits are increasingly hard put to find sufficient funds necessary if the great blights (man-made and natural) working against a sustainable Earth are to be vanquished. Governments can only tax citizens and business so much before their economies begin to tank. Churches and NGOs depend upon donations from those with disposable incomes. Too many taxes, too little giving. In John Elkington's opinion only business can generate the sustainable capital necessary to fund such an undertaking. To achieve true environmental and social sustainability Elkington's formula calls for a "triple bottom line" based on a commitment by the corporate world on the three principals of economic prosperity, environmental quality, and social justice. Elkington suggests that his formula provides two alternatives: extinction or a difficult yet highly rewarding approach to business and life.

As simple and sound as that might seem as with any innovative idea, the "triple bottom line" has attracted a legion of detractors whose negativity seems grounded in very narrow and very likely mistaken views of the topic. Some critics don't believe business has any business delving into charity work, much less environmental altruism. Some think poor nations will be too preoccupied with the daily challenge of survival and that environmental stewardship would fall entirely on the shoulders of wealthy, developed nations. Others cannot fathom why anyone would do anything nice for parts of the earth where they don't live or for people who are not fellow citizens of their own nations. Still others believe it wrong to force a business to operate with one eye on the environment and one on business. The simply aren't enough eyes to go around if social justice is tossed into the fray.

Ten years ago the International Foundation for the Conservation of Natural Resources (IFCNR) read Elkington's work and embraced the merits contained within as closely compatible the Foundation's world view. In many ways the analogy can be made that Elkington's work is to industrial/environmental "sustainability" what Charles Darwin's 1859 publication "On the Origin of the Species" is to evolution. It's a theory designed as a means to stimulate the corporate imagination.

IFCNR took Elkington's theory and coined the phrase "ethical capitalism" as the mechanism by which that theory is put into action. IFCNR's adaptation of Elkington's message can be summed up in one phrase: "Ethical Corporations practicing Ethical Capitalism."

What Elkington calls the "Triple Bottom Line" is simply the ethical components that when combined with capitalism gives corporations, governments, in short every entity, the guidelines for sustainably using and protecting the planets resources and inhabitants.

The intrinsic flaws in the criticism of Elkington and his Triple Bottom Line - that governments will impose it upon business, that business has no business dealing in charity, that the poor have no time for environmental responsibility, that it is unenforceable - stem from not understanding the concept or the means of applying it. As mentioned above, Elkington's book "Cannibals with Forks" is all but forgotten and out of print but IFCNR believes its correct application is very relevant to the issues facing the Earth's inhabitants today.

Thanks in large part to the badgering of NGOs, consumers and corporations alike understand that any product's survival in the marketplace is increasingly being tied to right behavior of those who offer it for sale. Unless the product in question came from a process that treated the environment correctly and the people who produced it fairly, chances are good that it will be bathed in controversy and shunned by consumers.

The word most frequently tossed about at the 2007 International Boston Seafood Show was "sustainability." It was the first quality depicted in the "Emerging Trends" presentation by top seafood restaurant chefs. It applies equally to any and every product dependent upon Nature's resources. "Sustainability" in the global marketplace is the natural outcome of "ethical capitalism" practiced by the "ethical corporation."

The ethical corporation does not have to artificially graft the Triple Bottom Line to its corporate behavior. If that corporation is truly ethical then each of those qualities flows naturally through every aspect of that corporation's behavior: how it treats its employees, how it treats vendors, how it treats the earth. They are the essence of the ethical global trader's behavior.

Similarly economic prosperity is the essence of sustainable business. Every business looks beyond the present and strives to chart a course allowing it to compete in the marketplace for years and decades to come. To be sustainable that prosperity must extend to everyone involved in bringing a sustainable product to market from the craftsman, farmer, fisherman, miner, logger etc. to the processor to the retailer.

The goal is to generate long term (sustainable) profits that benefit everyone involved in the business. Corporate employees need sustainable jobs and salaries that flow from the corporation's ability to earn profits on its effort. That same principle applies to those "vendors" extracting the raw materials - fish, lumber, minerals, crops, etc - from Nature. Sustainability does not mean handouts or taking from those who have and distributing it to those that don't. It means good jobs and good salaries across the board. It's the old adage about teaching a hungry man to fish versus giving him a fish. The former is sustainable. The latter is not.

Environmental quality too is simply good business sense. The days of the Robber Barrons who could plunder at will with no regard to the affect of their actions on the earth are over. Certainly today bandits exist and they need to be punished. The ethical corporation knows that fishing the last fish, trapping the last lobster, felling the last tree and polluting the last stream is a formula for economic extinction. Consumers, alerted by a vigilant press or irate NGO, will not patronize those responsible for such unethical behavior. Plus by its very definition, the rape and run theory of business is short lived and completely antagonistic to sustainability.

Economic prosperity and environmental quality go hand in hand when dealing with raw materials produced in developing nations, especially so in those regions of abject poverty. Poverty is indeed the worst form of pollution. It pushes people desperate to survive, to feed, clothe, warm and shelter their families to strip forest cover, to butcher endangered sea turtles and rare rhinos and mountain apes and to empty rivers and streams and oceans and wild lands of edible life. Give those same people good jobs based on sustainably using their natural resources and they undergo an instant conversion from polluter and poacher to conservator.

Social justice is another given if the corporate global trader is to survive and thrive. The plight of women and children in impoverished nations can be appalling where there is no hope for economic opportunity. Provide sound jobs with good pay and the quality of life improves dramatically. Starvation is replaced with a secure and nourishing food supply. Health care improves. Educational opportunities appear. Water, wildlife and wild places are conserved. Hope prospers. As those living with nature see their present and future prosperity tied to conserving the resources around them and participating in global trade, their villages flourish. As rural communities grow in strength, wealth, good health, and job opportunities so too are their nations strengthened.

Global trade based on ethical capitalism and put into practice by ethical traders can truly contribute to helping the Earth, helping to eliminate poverty, and helping nations to cooperate and live in mutual harmony simply because of their ethical trade relationships. That ultimately is the meaning of "Sustainability."