Hi:
I want to offer some further opinion – long-winded as it may be – to stimulate some thought, and perhaps get some discussion going… This post is about sustainability in a larger, global context – rather than a former post that was oriented to business per se… I try to tie into PM at the end – i.e. where the ‘rubber meets the road,’ and one has attained the result of a project…
Sustainability is about using ethical and equitable means to meet the needs of the present with compromising social, economic and environmental needs for future generations’ quality of life. This definition is a work in progress.
It was the World Conservation Strategy (IUCN, 1980) document that first led me to the idea of sustainability and the notion of sustainable development. If you Ctrl-click through that latter link, and scroll a few pages down to read the Foreword, that’s the description that captured my attention back in 1992.
Thereafter, I obtained a copy of Our Common Future by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) / Brundtland Commission from a fellow student, and I read the oft-criticized definition that stated development was sustainable if it “…meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987, p. 43).
On February 27, 1987, the WCED issued the Tokyo Declaration in which eight principles were set forth as an international agenda for the future. These principles were published as part of the book Our Common Future and could have been published on February 27, 2010; they are, in many ways, as relevant today as they were when they were published over 22 years ago:
1. Revive growth
2. Change the quality of growth
3. Conserve and enhance the resource base
4. Ensure a sustainable level of population
5. Reorient technology and manage risks
6. Integrate environment and economics in decision-making
7. Reform international economic relations
8. Strengthen international cooperation
While the Brundtland Commission definition has been criticized as too general, the simple, powerful idea is that we are to meet our needs today while also acting so as to conserve and preserve resources (assets) for meeting needs ongoing – in perpetuity – for future generations. Of course, the term “needs” raises questions of value. Have I established a lifestyle of “wants” rather than “needs” that effectively externalizes the costs of my wants to someone else’s (or everyone’s) air, water, land, resources, economy and social life? Thus, there is a large, looming question of equity involved in consideration of sustainability – and perhaps this is how the connection between “sustainability” and “social responsibility” is made.
In the bigger picture, sustainability has various dimensions to me – several of which quickly come to mind: economic, social, environmental, ethical, and political; and also spatial and temporal scale. The notion of sustainability is a multi-dimensional concept that has application to many different contexts. Whatever the context, sustainability means having – or, perhaps, creating – a future with a suitable quality of life and avoiding expenditure of what we have today over the short-term – i.e. minding the store on financial capital, natural capital, and human or social capital – such that we are able to maintain a going concern for the long-term. Given where we are today, I think that sustainability is about channeling human activity in a different way; thus, there is a strong element of re-design in the notion of sustainability, and that re-design process is central to doing things differently for a sustainable future. Ultimately, though, sustainability in the overall view is about how many people populate the Earth and how, in the aggregate, all of those people choose (or do not choose) to live.
I believe that the definition of sustainability is likely to be a work in progress for me on an ongoing basis; especially, as I would like to find ways to operationally define and implement the concept. Perhaps I will then have an ostensive definition of sustainability: I’ll point to a particular project outcome and say “There… those numbers and the narrative regarding that project / program demonstrate what I mean by “sustainability”. At some point, I hope that we won’t need to even talk about ’sustainability’ per se, as it will be a part of culture and ‘business as usual’ in our larger global perspective.
