ABSTRACT
When discussing models of corporate stewardship, people often ask why some firms that pursue triple bottom line agendas fail to achieve the performance results of Living Asset Management Performance companies. The ecocentric model of living asset stewardship is a key leverage point. Once companies fully adopt it in place of the old industrial capitalist model, everything indeed changes. The key insight in this paradigmatic shift is that economic, corporate, and financial systems are, in reality, subsystems of Nature and function best when they function as natural systems. Climate change and ecosystem destruction, like the plague, is a harsh wake-up call that has catalyzed transformative new thinking. Whereas the plague threatened human life, today’s ecological degradation threatens all life. The fatal flaw of Renaissance humanism was its propensity to become self-centered. Although it liberated Europe from debilitating feudal tyrannies, from the Enlightenment onward it conveyed the erroneous message that humanity was above Nature.
