Creating Sustainable Organizations

Creating Sustainable Organizations - Sara Schley and Joseph Laur

How can we develop a community of learners who are colleagues and collaborators in the pursuit of creating sustainable development processes, practices, and results in business?

Achieving a new vision will not be easy. But it is a vision profoundly worth fulfilling, and a legacy that this society will be proud to pass on to the next. It is a legacy that can and will endure through the seventh generation and beyond.

Two Potential Futures'

Scenario 1: It is the year 2050. There are 10 billion people on the planet. Pollution of air, soil, and ground water has risen to levels high enough to damage the land's ability to yield crops. Governments have been forced increasingly to shift investments into agriculture simply to feed their populations. Famine runs rampant in developing nations. Physical capital such as roads, factories, and other infrastructure is deteriorating faster than it can be restored, particularly in older industrialized nations. Industrial productivity is in a tailspin. Since 2020, the use of nonrenewable resources such as petroleum and natural gas has doubled, depleting reserves and increasing emissions of carbon dioxide and other toxic compounds. Global temperatures and sea levels are at all-time highs. Renewable resources continue to be harvested at rates that exceed their ability to regenerate, and their capacity to restore themselves is eroding. All world fisheries have collapsed or are in decline. War has erupted between nations everywhere over increasingly scarce basic resources and displaced populations. Global population is plummeting as death rates soar.

Scenario 2. It is the year 2050. The world's human population has leveled off at 8 billion. The average standard of living equals that of Europe at the end of the 20th century. People routinely expect to live over 80 years. Technologies such as superinsulation, fuel cells, and hypercars ensure the efficient use of material and energy resources like metals, wood, and fuels. Waste streams such as carbon dioxide, mercury, and sulfur dioxide have decreased dramatically. Global temperatures are leveling off, and forests are thriving. Land erosion has been controlled and food production increased so that all human beings enjoy a sufficient, healthy diet. Use of nonrenewable resources such as petroleum has declined as markets reflect their true costs to society more accurately. Solar wind and hydroenergy sources are meeting people's energy needs. Most industries and nations are collaborating to increase efficiency and to practice conservation. The Earth's soil, water, and air are consistently regenerating themselves and are free of pollution. The world is at peace.

The Systems View of Business: Seeing Constraints as Opportunities

'A closed system like the Earth's cannot withstand a systematic increase of material things, but it can support exponential increases of information and knowledge."
- Robert Shapiro, CEO,
Monsanto Company
Harvard Business Review, Jan.-Feb. 1997

As you read "Two Potential Futures" above, which scenario did you find yourself thinking will come true in the year 2050? To focus on this question, imagine that this is the last

day of your life. Think about how well you have taken care of yourself and your natural surroundings, and the legacy that you have left to the children in your life. What were the purpose and message of your time on Earth? And what is the quality of life that you envision your successors inheriting? What have you done to ensure that humanity as a whole heads toward Scenario 2 above?
Your responses to these questions may reveal your own vision of a sustainable future. According to the World Commission on Environment and Development, sustainability is defined as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." The root meaning of the word, sustain, means "to support from underneath." The opposite of sustainability, therefore, is collapse.

On Earth, we live in a closed system with respect to matter; there are certain physical limits that we must respect if all life on Earth is to thrive and prosper for generations to come. To describe the implications of this reality for business, Karl-Henrik Robert and his colleagues at The Natural Step introduced "the funnel" (see "The Funnel"). The concept behind the funnel is that while exponential population growth is causing increasing demand for products and services, the Earth's capacity to provide water, fisheries, arable land, food, forest cover, and waste absorption is declining. As time moves forward, the narrow portion of the "funnel" puts more and more pressure on business

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