Environmental Sustainability: Affirmative Action For the Future

When considering each of the three pillars of sustainability, it soon becomes clear that the environment is the foremost consideration. Humanity simply cannot survive without the environment, whereas the environment can very easily survive without humans.

However, in the discourse about the climate crisis, solutions prior to sustainability failed to take in the economic and human factors necessary to make those solutions viable. Because if these aspects aren’t considered, realistically, humankind is unlikely to stick with these solutions. Therefore sustainability emerged as a holistic solution, taking into account the environment, in addition to economy and society.

What is environmental sustainability?

Environmental sustainability comprises practices and processes that protect the environment from further depletion, while simultaneously sustaining the economy and humankind. It looks to guarantee the longevity of natural resources to ensure that future generations can also survive and thrive in ideal natural environments, with a quality of life that matches or exceeds that of the current generation.

While the other two pillars of sustainability are focused around development, environmental sustainability is oriented around protection. This is a key difference in the way to think about the needs of environmental sustainability. It highlights the importance of the environment, as the other two pillars are dependent on the environment.

What are the goals of environmental sustainability

It is one of the challenges of sustainability — more of which we will see later — that there is a lack of precise definition. However, there are some goals which we can all agree fall within its purview.

The first is the use of resources in such a way that they have time to regenerate. Essentially, the rate of use should be less than the rate of regeneration. This is for renewable resources.

For non-renewable resources, the rate of use should not exceed the pace of development of equally good alternatives, which have a more positive impact on the environment.

Another is not to overload the environment with so much waste at a time that it cannot assimilate that waste effectively. A good example of this is carbon emissions.

Redesign systems, in both business and daily living, that are closed-loop systems. From raw material extraction to product repair, reuse, and recycling, companies can opt for better, more eco-friendly systems for product lifecycle management.

The need for environmental sustainability

Rather than speaking about the benefits of environmental sustainability, it is well worth spending a few minutes thinking about what would happen if we didn’t course-correct.

We are now all witnessing extreme weather events globally: fires, floods, tsunamis, heatwaves, and so on. Life can be overturned in minutes by any one of these events, and many people have lost theirs in the aftermath.

Pollution of our natural environment — land, air, water — is accelerating so fast that nature itself cannot absorb and convert the waste fast enough. Therefore, these resources become noxious, causing illnesses, outbreaks, and death. This is the impact on just the human race; the impact on flora and fauna that share this earth with us are collateral damage.

We can reasonably expect food quality and availability to diminish significantly, as the land becomes unable to produce yields to match demand as it degrades due to unsustainable farming practices.

The challenges in front of us

The biggest challenge of sustainability adoption and initiatives is the amorphous, conceptual nature of the term sustainability. What does it mean to be sustainable? How do you measure it? How long should it take to make an impact? Who is responsible? How do you legislate it?

As of now, the efforts around sustainability are scattered and isolated from each other. This doesn’t diminish their value by any means, but essentially means that the effort is not united. We are each tackling the problem in different ways, so how do we know we have succeeded?

In most successful paradigm-shifting projects, the key is to have a framework. Also, there needs to be transparency, measurability, accountability, and traceability. Impactility is working on leveraging the latest tech to solve these very issues.

Environmental sustainability in business

As individuals, we have little to no impact. This is true of anything, whether it is moving a rock up a mountain or making sweeping changes to how the world conducts itself. However, as groups, we hold immense power, and with that power comes responsibility.

Corporations are mostly responsible for the ecological precipice we find ourselves at, so it stands to reason that they have the most work to do in mitigating the situation.

Here are some of environmentally sustainable initiatives which businesses can adopt:

• Change processes to have net-zero or net-positive impact on the environment: sustainable supply chain; reducing travel and commuting; opting for renewable energy
• Invest in environmental solutions
• Lobby for environmental change

Of course, this list is merely indicative, and by no means meant to be exhaustive. The point is that sustainability in business is tied fundamentally to their economic aspects. We can all agree that no business is going to take a loss in order to safeguard the environment. Any and all initiatives need to be economically viable.

However, if environmental sustainability initiatives bring about opportunity in addition, businesses are more likely to adopt, develop, and continue with them.

Environmental sustainability and governance

This is a tricky topic to talk about, because what you can’t measure you cannot legislate. On top of that, we already know that the biggest pockets drive changes in any nation. Our responsibility as global citizens is to elect representatives that will effect change, but there are significant roadblocks in the way to that progress.

First of all, countries with higher per capita GDP tend to appear more environmentally sustainable. This seems logical, as their larger populace is more affluent overall and enjoys the fruits of development, as compared to poorer nations.

On the flip side, there is also deeply entrenched corruption. Metrics are manipulated and clever verbiage is used to present facts to help further the interests of lobbyists for instance. One of the ways of furthering corrupt practices is to use more than one metric overall, with overlapping data. This, again, can be laid at the door of lack of clear and measurable objectives for environmental sustainability.

Environmental at a community level

Even though a great deal of education and emphasis is put on what individuals can do, the truth of the matter is that companies are responsible for over 70% of carbon emissions. As individuals, our only power is in making sure we elect governance that legislates companies more stringently.

That being said, there are still things we can do at a ground level

• Home and community involvement for grassroot-level change
• Support for clean and green initiatives
• Choosing governance that espouses these principles
• Opting for companies that practice sustainability

The question that arises from that last point: how do you choose which companies to support? It is easy enough for companies to claim that they are implementing sustainability in their supply chain, for instance, but how do you check?

Well, the answer is to make sure they build transparency and traceability into their systems. More on that in future articles.

Conclusion

This article barely scratches the surface of environmental sustainability. It serves as an introduction. And perhaps, it may answer the question: “What can we do about the climate crisis?”

In our next article in this series, we will talk about the third pillar of sustainability, economic sustainability. You can read about the fundamentals of sustainability and social sustainability, in case you missed them.

Sources

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