A New Conservation for a New Era

Imagine walking into a job interview at a major manufacturing company. You've already gotten the tour of the administrative offices and are surprised by the absence of modern technology, let alone the large stacks of papers heaped on employees' desks. You've just completed the interview, answering all of the CEO's questions. Now it's your turn to ask some questions.

"Of all the widgets you manufacture," you begin, "which have been the most and least profitable?"

"I'm not sure," the CEO says.

You try to hold back your amazement. "Who are your biggest competitors?" you ask.

"Oh, there's a handful," she says, her voice trailing off.

You shift in your seat, trying to hide your discomfort. "What are your long-term goals for the company, and what threats could undermine your success?"

"We've been meaning to develop a business plan. It's just that we've been so busy managing our day-to-day affairs."

In today's world, it's hard to picture a business of any kind making these mistakes. What twenty-first-century corporation could survive if it neglected to define its objectives or analyze its progress? How long would it take for a business to tank if it failed to gauge market trends?

Yet this is exactly the way we approach our environmental problems. We lack real awareness of the situation; we don't fully understand the current state of our natural areas or what our actions might mean for their future. We don't precisely define our goals for improving the environment or use innovation and technology to help us achieve them. Nor do we adequately analyze our progress to make sure we're obtaining quantifiable results. It's like driving without a dashboard. We don't know how fast we're moving or whether we'll ever reach our destination.

The consequences of the current approach are devastating. Despite well-intended efforts by numerous environmentalists, policymakers, and philanthropists, the health of planet Earth continues to deteriorate at a startling rate. Sure, the environmental movement has won many notable battles. Yet, over time, the significance of these wins has declined to the point where we are now rapidly losing the war. Although today's environmental realities have changed, modern environmentalism keeps plugging away with the same outdated toolkit, and it is reaping an ever smaller return on its investment.

So how has the situation changed since the dawn of the environmental movement? Consider the following:

• World population has doubled to 7.2 million.

• U.S. population has grown by more than 55 percent to 316 million.

• The amount of pesticides used in the United States has tripled to 1.1 billion pounds per year.

• The number of worldwide dead zones has spiraled from roughly 30 to more than 500.

• The total number of freshwater species has declined by 50 percent.

• Global Atlantic salmon catches have fallen by 80 percent.

• Total acreage of U.S. wetlands has decreased by more than one third.

• The amount of U.S. land consumed by urban development has doubled.

• Annual carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming have risen by more than 80 percent.

If a time machine landed a human being from 1970 on today's planet, this passenger would find himself thrown into an almost unrecognizable world. The planet we live on today is dramatically different from that of a generation ago, when the modern environmental movement was born. To address today's realities, we need a radically different approach, not just an extension of the one we've used in the past.

To put it bluntly, we need to wake up and smell the future — because it's already here. We have entered a new environmental era, one with far more daunting problems than we faced 50 years ago. Yet we continue to muddle along like the manufacturing company described at the beginning of this chapter, doing things the same old way, failing to adapt to the new reality before us.

Adapting to the new reality requires implementing bold, innovative approaches that are a true match for the severity of the problems we face. It also means being adamant about obtaining results. For the environmental movement to continue to be relevant, it needs to remake itself into a more agile force that continually reevaluates the current situation and then adapts its practices to achieve the highest possible return on its conservation efforts.

It's not just environmentalists who need to change. Governments and philanthropists working on these issues need to get serious about demanding results. And agriculturalists and businesses need to recognize that it's in their own interest to conserve natural resources on which their livelihoods depend. If we're to survive a future in which 10 billion humans call planet Earth home, we must all work to solve our problems, and we need to begin now.

The good news is that, with the right focus and tools, we can achieve a more resilient environment. Think about all the human and financial capital that has been poured into the economy since the end of World War II. The resulting economic growth has been astounding. From 1950 to 2011, the gross world product — the combined gross national product of all countries in the world — has mushroomed from $7 trillion to $77 trillion. These staggering numbers have come about because we've made financial gain our priority and consequently have spent the past several decades perfecting a set of practices that ensure businesses achieve the highest results.

Quantified conservation is about applying that same laser focus to achieve similar gains for the environment. It's about leveraging the best practices used by today's successful businesses and social sector organizations to overhaul the state of our natural resources. And it's about embracing the same sophisticated set of tools to bring about measurable improvements that ensure both a healthy environment and a thriving economy for decades to come. Simply put, quantified conservation is a twenty-first-century approach to solving the twenty-first- century problems that confront us. It offers a framework built on the following five principles, all of which the business world relies on for its success:

• Situational awareness to provide an objective understanding of the real- time environmental problems we face

• Bold outcomes that define the results we seek

• Innovation and technology to achieve our desired outcomes at the pace and scale needed for success

• Data and analytics to prioritize those environmental projects that have the most impact, measure our results, and monitor our progress

• Gain, which...