As I contemplate over Eco-Generation's powerful 2014 theme, "The Power of Young Crowd," I believe that as environmental advocates, we should all immerse ourselves into not only making our lives more environmentally sustainable, but ensure that our voices and our call for cleaner environment be heard. In other words, we, as active environmental followers, should inspire and bring in more people to care for our Earth and the environment.

In the article titled, "What we need in 2014: fewer leaders, more followers," Pavan Sukhdev is lamenting that the world economy is still mainly driven by corporate capitalist model, exposing the world to worsening environmental risks and increasing ecological scarcities. The argument goes further, saying that "the single largest sustainability challenge of our time is this: today's corporation, the main agent of today's economy, generating two-thirds of global GDP and jobs, needs to be redesigned." 

According to the Sukhdev the corporate redesign begun in 2013 as evidenced by such initiatives as Tropical Forest Alliance. However, the article highlights that these leaders and their supply chains account for perhaps no more than 5% of the world economy and that we need more sustainability followership rather than leadership.

It is true that business led reforms to push the envelope for further enhancing the sustainability of economic development and growth are critical to ensure environment friendly growth and development model such as "green growth".

In my view, this initiative should, however, be complemented by proper government policies in place to facilitate the smooth transformation of economic  and business model and by voices of non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations as instrumental inputs to this reform process. Not only should the government or NGOs put pressure on these corporate leaders, we, regardless of our age, should actively inspire and encourage these corporate leaders to pursue more environmentally sustainable approach. Let our voices be heard, not only among ourselves, but also throughout the world. This is one of many ways to exemplify the theme "The Power of Young Crowd". Only then, business led reforms for sustainable growth model can be pursued in its full-fledged manner.