About Rob Abbott
ROB ABBOTT is one of Canada’s leading sustainability strategists, writers, and speakers. An expert in the integration of sustainability with organizational and competitive strategy, Rob works with senior executives and their teams across a wide range of industries, including energy, utilities, mining, manufacturing, renewable energy, technology, and financial services. He is also a trusted advisor to government agencies, NGOs, and academia. Rob is a frequent media commentator on sustainability and green economy issues, and he is recognized globally as a compelling and motivating speaker. He is also an expert conference moderator and content weaver for large-group processes.
Rob believes that the world – and the world of business – is at a hinge point of history and that profound change in the way strategy is created, implemented, measured and reported will become commonplace as human society confronts manifold changes in the environment-energy-economy nexus. He has honed his thinking and approach in this regard over 25 years of consulting practice and is known for his ability to quickly absorb and distill vast amounts of information from all areas of a business and focus leadership teams on what truly matters. His interest, emphasis and expertise lie in creating the conditions for transformational rather than transactional change.
Rob is a certified management consultant, and a leader who has helped craft national environmental policy, certify environmental professionals, and guide environmental NGOs. He is a former sustainability practice leader with two of the world’s largest and most respected business advisory firms (Coopers & Lybrand and Deloitte and Touche); he led the Western Canadian operations for Stratos, a leading sustainability consultancy; he served as director of strategic environmental management for Golder Associates, one of the world’s most respected consulting engineering firms; and he led one of the Networks of Centers of Excellence in Canada. A prolific and passionate writer, Rob has published two books, Conscious Endeavors: Essays on Business, Society and the Journey to Sustainability (2009) and Uncommon Cents: Thoreau and the Nature of Business (2008). The unifying theme in Rob’s undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral research was the integration of sustainability with competitive strategy. He remains fascinated by this topic and continues to develop tools and techniques to bridge the gap between the world of strategy and business and the environmental or sustainability community.
He divides his time between the Prairies and the Coast of western Canada.
Sustainable Mining Now
It is often said that “If it’s not grown, it’s mined”, a telling reference to the fact that human society is more dependent than many might like to think on mining. Indeed, virtually every electronic and mechanical device in a home or office; school or hospital; plane, train or automobile would be difficult or impossible to create without the products of mining. And so it is that my friend and colleague, Gord McKenna of BGC Engineering, and I have a very particular interest in contributing to a dialogue about the evolution of the mining industry – an industry that is increasing resource extraction geometrically – such that we better reconcile the need for the products of mining with the need for natural capital assets and the flow of life-sustaining ecosystem services provided by nature. Very shortly we will be publishing our new book, Sustainable Mining Now, that we hope will spark real dialogue within the industry globally about how to think about, and achieve the seemingly impossible: sustainable mining – mining that creates financial and social wealth and wellbeing in a way that does not undermine or otherwise damage the aesthetic and productive capacity of natural capital for present and future generations.
