Success Quote by Maurice Strong

Strong’s line is the technocrat’s seduction in its cleanest form: if you can’t manage what you can’t measure, then build the ruler and you’ve already nudged the world toward your preferred behavior. The stated intent is almost disarmingly practical. An “environmental index” would translate the messy, contested reality of ecological harm into a legible score, something individuals, companies, even governments could track the way they track credit ratings, GDP, or quarterly earnings.

The subtext is power-through-standardization. Indices don’t just reflect reality; they define it. Once “performance” is quantified, it becomes comparable, rankable, punishable, marketable. You can reward “good” actors with investment and legitimacy and isolate “bad” actors with stigma, regulation, or higher costs. Strong’s business background matters here: he’s imagining environmental responsibility not as moral awakening but as an accountability system that can be audited, priced, and gamed - like any other metric that governs modern life.

Context sharpens the ambition. Strong wasn’t a backbench commentator; he was a central architect of global environmental governance, tied to the era when international institutions began treating the environment as a management problem requiring global coordination. In that world, an index becomes a diplomatic tool: it offers a common language across borders and industries, and it creates the appearance of neutrality.

The irony is that an index promises clarity while inviting disputes over what counts, who sets the weights, and whose lives get optimized away. It’s a blueprint for environmental action - and for a new kind of authority.