What is Sustainability?

October 30th, 2007 · No Comments

The first blog entry will try to make more sense of what the concept of sustainability is and what in my opinion the three main components of it are.Please bear in mind that this is based on my experience working in the sustainability field and what I consider as the main components of sustainability as we see it today. Other people may have a different opinion, but I guess that happens with every subject.

So what is Sustainability?

Well, there are many definitions and different opinions out there. But for me sustainability is the end product or result of a combination of the following areas (no worries I will keep it short.

Sustainable Development
Corporate Social Responsibility
Environmental Responsibility

1) Sustainable Development:

The term sustainable development really came into the spotlight when in 1987 a UN commission, formally the World Commission on Environment and Development headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland former PM of published the so called Brundtland Report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brundtland_Commission. The report sets sustainable development in the context of the 19^th century and changes need to be done to achieve a higher degree of sustainable development. The definition of this term in the report is quite well known and often cited in the sustainability field:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Now sustainable development as a subject comprises many different elements such as third world country aid and development, etc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development). The UN has been the main driver in sustainable development in the past 30 years with major outcomes such as the Agenda21 and more many more(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21). Its popularity has varied significantly and is sometimes now being overpowered by the next component of the sustainability concept, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

2) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Corporate Social Responsibility also known as CSR is a fairly new concept (10-15 years) where companies are demanded mainly by government and stakeholders to take more responsibility of their own actions and to consider their impact of their business practices on the broad range of their stakeholders. Stakeholders are all people, communities and organisations that are in a shape or form involved or affected by the decisions of this company.

Well but how do companies do that? A main part of this “taking more responsibility is the preparation and publication of the annual CSR report. This report is intended to be a reflection of the company’s actions to be more responsible. Or the course of the last 10 years these reports have become the norm for companies with a wide range of stakeholders and for those that are listed on the stock exchange. A great resource for thousands of reports is corporateregister.com (http://www.corporateregister.com if you want to take look a sample report.Other ways is the as they call it, Stakeholder Engagement. Stakeholder engagement is essentially making sure that you as the company talk to all of your stakeholders and take their opinions and views into account as best as you can when make making present and future business decisions. For a energy company that for example means that need to be aware of their impact they have on the environment and that they have a responsibility to keep the prices as low as possible to ensure a secure supply of energy to everyone (sorry everyone, I had to bring this example as I work for a energy company).

3) Environmental Responsibility:

This is really so to say classical part of sustainability….caring about the environment. The past ten have really shown us that our earth will not sustain our constant over consumption and pollution for much longer. That is why we need to start taking better care of our environment and need to convince others that we need to change our ways of living to suit the current and future constraints of our earth’s resources. I am of the opinion that everyone can make a difference and that we need to start in our own lives to make changes to minimize the impact we have on the environment. If this is recycling, less CO2 emissions or buying organic it is really up to us to make a difference now.

All of these three parts together in my opinion form the concept of sustainability.

This is all for my first entry but there is more to follow in the next few weeks on this basic discussion of sustainability. I am trying to post a new blog entry at least once a week always covering what I feel is a logical next step to further get to grips with the concept of sustainability or writing about something other related to sustainability.

I might even write something about myself and what I am currently do. There are a lot of changes coming in my short term future and I would like to share of these events and experiences if you don’t mind!

Back to the subject: Please let me know what you opinion of this categorization is or any other matter and get in touch by sending an email to fabian@sustainabilityblog.org or post comment here underneath this post.