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Unfortunately, business collaboration has been the greatest contradiction within corporate sustainability. Numerous efforts by companies to collaborate on the most complex issues facing civilization, such as climate change, resource exhaustion, and biodiversity loss, have been unsuccessful mainly due to self-interest, lack of a shared purpose, and an absence of trust. Companies have embraced sustainability, and many have effective ongoing programs in areas they can tackle on their own — for example, rationalizing manufacturing processes or decreasing their fleet emissions. However, when tackling collaborative answers to systemic problems, little progress has been made.

Collaborative governance is often stressed as the answer to different environmental problems. However, cooperation around environmental issues in a complex world is difficult to achieve as different players want different things, diverse environmental issues are related to each other in dissimilar ways, and given groups have differing amounts of influence on certain questions. So, can collaboration lead to a better environment?

Research shows that the capacity to resolve environmental problems is in part associated with the way such networks are structured and in the patterns of collaboration between players. For example, where there is a risk of one player free-riding on the efforts of others, the conflict may be improved by linking such players with a third entity to form a triangular cooperation, in the hope that peer pressure will resolve the issue. It can also make a difference based on whether the problem is temporary or more permanent. When it’s temporary, it can be more successful where the network chooses a coordinator or leader to hold it together. The Environmental Collaboration and Conflict Resolution (ECCR) is a process whereby neutral, third-party facilitators work with agencies and stakeholders using collaboration, negotiation, structured dialogue, mediation, and other approaches to prevent, manage, and resolve environmental conflicts.

This decade will determine whether civilization can develop a more socially and ecologically sustainable society. A vital part of that target requires a better understanding of how cooperation can be improved and become more effective, both among private stakeholders and public institutions. Continued leadership from businesses, governments, cities, and regions is required to maintain leadership in areas such as deforestation; business commitments to act; science-based targets and zero pledges; policy reform to level the playing fields; and financial disclosure to allow markets to correctly price risk and capital to flow to more sustainable investments.