Understanding Social Sustainability and Its Importance

In continuation of our series on understanding sustainability, this article focuses on one of the 3 pillars of sustainability: social sustainability.

As we noted in our introductory article, it is not immediately clear how social issues relate to sustainability. Things like access to adequate food, water, healthcare, education, shelter, and opportunities are human rights issues certainly, but how do they become sustainability ones?

What is social sustainability?

Social sustainability is the consideration of how any system affects human beings. The human beings in question could be employees of an organisation, citizens of a country, or a community in general. The definition is fluid and thus social sustainability can vary according to the context.

For instance, if there is a business entity looking to incorporate sustainability into its processes, there are several stakeholders, whose interests it must consider. The most obvious groups are the customers and employees. Next, there may be contractors and suppliers. Less obviously, there are competitors. And finally, the community at large.

The social sustainability goal of a business should be to have processes or operations that create, impact, and/or foster thriving communities. The quality of life of employees should be to a high standard, which includes factors such as liveable wages, work-life balance, growth opportunities, opportunities to engage with their communities, health, and safety, among other human rights.

Principles of social sustainability

The characteristics of social sustainability in communities are equity, diversity, access to resources and places that foster wellbeing, democracy, connectedness, and the prospect of a healthy and liveable future.

Why is social sustainability so important

Sustainability is built on the premise that to protect and save the environment, we need to ensure that humankind is taken care of. Any endeavour that seeks to solve the larger issues plaguing the environment without considering the human factor is doomed to failure. As a matter of fact, it will not be sustainable.

How to achieve social sustainability

As social sustainability is difficult to pin down due its changing definition across different settings. However, certain guiding principles are necessary regardless of context:

• Education: To incorporate sustainability successfully, it is important to inculcate these principles in young members of communities. They learn about sustainability at a developmental stage, and thus are able to incorporate it more seamlessly into their lives. Sustainability becomes a guiding principle on a deeper cultural and behavioural level.
• Participation in democracy: For people to be invested in any changes, they must participate in self-governance and community decision-making. Decisions that affect them and those around them must come from within and with consensus. This is harder to orchestrate, as communities may have diverse groups of people, and to effect governance that adequately addresses everyone’s needs is challenging but necessary.
• Governmental oversight and policy: Affirmative action and policies that reward sustainability initiatives will motivate businesses and communities to adopt them. Additionally, government bodies are better able to see the larger picture, and bring that perspective to a grassroots level.

Challenges of social sustainability

Again, because of its highly contextual definition, social sustainability challenges are mostly specific to a certain setting. However there are generic challenges that afflict most situations:

We see that diverse populations have varying needs and perspectives. For instance, people who live in areas prone to natural disasters have different needs from those who live in secluded communities far from resources.

Another challenge is to overturn the established status quo. If there is a drive to uplift marginalised members of a community, there is resistance to a perceived shift in power balance for the majoritarian members of that community.

Finally, while it is easy to identify social issues that need to be solved, it is tricky to develop models that can adequately measure success. For this reason, it remains the most amorphous aspect of sustainability. There have been several moves to create a framework for measurement, like the one developed by WACOSS, but these are individual attempts and not universally accepted as the norm.

Who does social sustainability impact?

The short (and comprehensive) answer to this question is: everyone. But, although the response is succinct, it doesn’t convey the magnitude of social sustainability’s scope. Social sustainability affects every human being on the planet. It is as simple — and as complicated — as that.

Sources

1. “Five Things You Need to Know about Social Sustainability and Inclusion.” n.d. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2020/09/02/five-things-about-social-sustainability-and-inclusion.
2. ‌“Social Sustainability and Inclusion.” n.d. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/socialsustainability.
3. ‌“Environmental and Social Sustainability — UN Environment Management Group.” n.d. https://unemg.org/our-work/internal-sustainability/environmental-and-social-sustainability/.
4. ‌United Nations. 2015. “Social Development for Sustainable Development | DISD.” DISD. 2015. https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/2030agenda-sdgs.html.
5. ‌Sen, Amartya. n.d. “SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT and OUR RESPONSIBILITIES.” Accessed July 8, 2022. https://www.unipol.it/sites/corporate/files/document_attachments/sen_2010_eng_ugf_01-01-2010_en.pdf.
6. ‌Rice, Paul. 2013. “Why Social Sustainability Should Be Part of Every Business.” Fast Company. Fast Company. July 22, 2013. https://www.fastcompany.com/2682494/why-social-sustainability-should-be-part-of-every-business.
7. ‌Gonzalez, Juan. n.d. “Social Sustainability Assessment Framework Outline of Presentation ! Social Sustainability? Conceptualising Sustainability.” Www.academia.edu. Accessed July 8, 2022. https://www.academia.edu/34843379/Social_Sustainability_Assessment_Framework_Outline_of_presentation_Social_Sustainability_Conceptualising_sustainability.
8. ‌Peterson, Nicole. 2016. “Introduction to the Special Issue on Social Sustainability: Integration, Context, and Governance.” Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy 12 (1): 3–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2016.11908148.
9. ‌United Nations Global Compact. 2019. “Social Sustainability | UN Global Compact.” Unglobalcompact.org. April 11, 2019. https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/our-work/social.