Contributing to Sustainable Development and the Use of Finite Resources

There are, of course, some who believe that business and the oil and gas business in particular cannot act in a sustainable way. A common challenge to Shell is How can you claim to be committed to sustainable development when you go on exploring for oil and gas That simply doesn t add up To answer that, one needs to go back to where the concept of sustainable development came from and its purpose. 

It was the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations in 1987 that defined sustainable development in inspiring but very open-ended terms as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Crucially, it acknowledged that economic development was necessary to generate the wealth for cleaner, more efficient technologies, and social improvement. Going back to pre-industrial times was not the answer to the world s problems. 

Shell saw that it could contribute in three ways using the fourth dimension of sustainable development - time. This perspective provides a readily understood framework for action for people who ask What can I do on Monday morning  

The second way is in the present - doing things better now. This generally involves incremental improvements to how things are done such as making products or processes cleaner and safer or in managing major projects in a more informed way. An example of the former is the development of a new process that allows 

An example of the latter is the development of the CSPC-Nanhai petrochemical project in China. This development between Shell and its Chinese partners is, with an investment of 4.3 billion, the largest ever Sino-foreign joint venture. Some 2.3 million tonnes of product will be produced in the plant each year, feeding local demand from manufacturers of telephones, TV sets, computers, cameras, car components, and so much more. 

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