Co-ops may sometimes feel that, when it comes to competing with commercial companies, life is a permanent succession of away matches. The massed ranks of investors spectate and cheer on the plcs, whilst the even-handedness of those who referee the contest can sometimes be called into question.

But on the issue of sustainability, co-operatives may be able to enjoy home advantage. Advocates assert that co-operatives are innately a more sustainable form of business, one that is able to plan for the longer-term and avoid the pressures that come from the demand for immediate profits.

It's a view that has been supported by the international thinktank SustainAbility in its report Twenty Business Model Innovations for Sustainability, published last month. SustainAbility calls for new, more sustainable, ways of doing business. "Many existing business models are predicated on the assumption that natural and social capital are in virtually limitless supply," the report's authors say. "To truly create a more sustainable world that can thrive over time, we need business models that operate within planetary limits and are sensitive to their roles as economic, environmental and social linchpins." Co-operatives, they suggest, can meet those conditions.

In Britain, the retail co-operative movement has arguably been concerned with social as well as economic aims since the original Rochdale Pioneers in 1844. In more recent times, it has been an early supporter both of the Fair Trade movement and of ethical banking (even if the Co-operative Group's leadership role in areas like these is now in question).

Today's equivalent big issue, according to Co-operative UK's Ed Mayo, is the idea of fair tax. A new Fair Tax Mark, to be awarded to companies that meet their corporate tax obligations fully and transparently, was launched last month and significantly the first three adopters of the scheme have been from within the co-operative and social enterprise family (Midcounties Co-operative, the Phone Co-op and Unity Trust).

"That's co-operative business at its best," says Paul Monaghan, director of the consultancy Up the Ethics and one of the people behind the Fair Tax Mark initiative. Paul Monaghan was, until last year, the senior Co-operative Group manager who had much of the responsibility for developing the group's and the Co-op Bank's ethical policies.

Monaghan argues that, when it comes to issues of sustainable growth and the "triple bottom line" (social and environmental as well as financial returns), senior managers in co-operative businesses can have greater leeway for action than their opposite numbers in investor-led companies. Nevertheless, co-ops don't have a monopoly of good practice. Monaghan points to the early work undertaken by business leaders such as Anita Roddick of Body Shop, and more recently to CEOs such as Paul Polman of Unilever.

Co-operative member democracy may also not always encourage visionary leadership. Indeed, the Co-op Bank's pioneering ethical work in the 1990s owed as much to the bank's chief executive of the time, Terry Thomas, as it did to direct member pressure. Paul Monaghan sees a risk that British co-op members can take a keen interest in local issues but ignore the big internationalist issues, such as trade justice. He recalls during his time at the Co-operative Group feeling that members should have been pushing him harder than they did in relation to the Group's ethical stance.

More broadly, the argument could be levelled that co-operatives have no duty beyond simply meeting their members' needs – or in other words that they are inherently no more ethical than any other business form. Co-op history and current best practice worldwide would suggest otherwise, although the internationally agreed co-operative principles still talk in only the broadest of terms of concern for community. Moves towards strengthening co-operatives' commitment globally to environmental good practice are now being discussed by the International Co-operative Alliance.

The International Co-operative Alliance and the COOP branch of the International Labour Organization are also lobbying for the contribution of co-operative businesses to be recognised by the UN as it draws up its proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Simel Esim, head of ILO COOP, says that co-operatives were not adequately acknowledged in the UN's Millennium Development Goals programme (the initiative which ends next year) and the co-operative voice needs to be much more audible in relation to the SDGs. "This is now the most important discussion that is going on in the United Nations' system," she says.

The role of co-operatives in sustainable development is nowhere more relevant than in relation to food, now one of the most pressing global policy concerns. Of all the sectors, it is in farming and agriculture where the co-operative business model is most widely utilised (co-operatives together have an estimated 32% of global market share). Whatever solutions the world devises to feed its growing population, co-operatives will need to be engaged and participating as key players.

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