Environmental challenges as business opportunity
I. INTRODUCTION “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.” - Mahatma Gandhi The above quote rightly points out the role of environment for the mankind and the responsibility we need to shoulder for its sustenance. We've come a long way in recognizing that and now almost every business has a statute of doing something good for the environment as part of their CSR initiative. But companies who think of the environment as a social responsibility and not as an imperative are not going in the right direction. The global climate changes and the gradual scarcity of resources have come to light as major disruptions in the business environment. These challenges have opened up new opportunities for companies to sell solutions to these problems. Businesses prosper with the motive of growing their profits at an infinite rate. But environment considerations should not be left while garnering those profits. The role of Environmental ethics come into play here which focuses on the MNCs' ethics in running their businesses as well as keeping the environment untouched to the extent possible. Environmental Ethics The field of Environmental Ethics has grown since the early 1970s. The scholars who have categorized the natural environment include Alan Marshall and Michael Smith. Marshall has used the following terms to describe these categories: Libertarian extension, which commits itself to extend equal rights to the community which consists of humans as well as non-humans, Ecologic extension, which places equal emphasis on human rights as well as the interdependence of all biological objects and their diversity, and conservation ethics, which focuses on the worth of environment only in terms of how it is useful to mankind. The concept of Anthropocentrism places humankind at the centre of the