Resources for Teachers and Students on Paul Hawken
Prepare: Paul Hawken is an entrepreneur with a deep
commitment to environmental sustainability. Best known,
perhaps, as the Hawken in "Smith and Hawken,"
the garden retail catalogue, he has emerged as one of the
world's foremost experts on the relationship between business
and the environment. His biography
can be found on his personal website.
Read:
Paul Hawken wrote an
original essay for the Architects of Peace project.
In it, he discusses the unique origins of the sustainability
movement.
Explore: Paul Hawken founded the Natural
Capital Institute, an organization dedicated to
researching principles and practices that will lead to social
justice and environmental restoration. The institute is
particularly concerned with the concept of "green business,"
exploring how environmental and social-justice concerns
can ultimately lead to less costly ways of doing business.
The institute's website contains information on their current
projects.
Write: At the end of his Architects of Peace article,
Hawken claims that sustainability represents a powerful
new worldview, and that sustainability is the work of peace.
How is this possible? Could sustainability, taken as a worldview,
lead to global peace in ways that other worldviews, such
as Marxism or Christianity, have not been able to? Are there
ethical dimensions of sustainability that extend beyond
environmental concerns? Write a three-to-five page reflection
paper on these questions in which you conclude with your
own definition of sustainability as a worldview.
Expand: Paul Hawken is chair of the United States
component of an international organization called the Natural
Step, which seeks to educate and consult with corporations
regarding sustainability practices. Their website contains
an excellent section, called "Why
Sustainability?" that outlines an "upstream
approach" to solving environmental problems.
Additional resource: Resurgence, a magazine connecting
ecology, art and culture, maintains an online archive of
articles from its past issues. One of these articles is
the magazine's interview with Paul Hawken, titled "Gold
in the Shadow,".
Biography of Paul Hawken