The Three-Legged Stool of Sustainability: Can We Keep All the Legs Balanced?
The concept of sustainability has become increasingly critical in today’s business landscape. It mandates striving for a balanced approach that integrates environmental, social, and economic factors along with profitability as key drivers of long-term success. Imagine a three-legged stool: environment, society, and economy. Its stability represents a company’s ability to thrive in the long run.
Although concerns about resource use and environmental impact of industrialization did exist for centuries, the term “sustainable development” wasn’t widely used until the 1980s. The concept gained popularity in the late1980s when Brundtland Commission, a group formed by the United Nations, published their report titled “Our common Future”. In this report the commission put forth the definition as: “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
Albeit expressed in a single sentence a deep dive into understanding sustainable development reveals its mammoth gambit. The image depicted below attempts to simplify and make understand what Sustainable Development is all about in a manner simple enough for a layman to understand. Most importantly it attempts to make one understand the metrics for measuring sustainable development.
Sustainability in terms of care of environment, taking judicious calls for investment and ensuring social equality in respect of rights and resource access are the three parameters on the basis of which Sustainable development can be defined and measured. Various frameworks are available to report the performance of an organization on these parameters. The three most common frameworks are:
Triple Bottom Line (TBL): This is a framework for businesses that considers the three pillars of sustainability: environment, social responsibility, and economic profit. Unlike traditional business models that focus solely on profit, TBL encourages businesses to consider the social and environmental impacts of their operations. It’s like a company looking at its success through a three-lens telescope – financial performance, social impact, and environmental responsibility.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): These are 17 interconnected goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a blueprint for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all. These goals address global challenges like poverty, hunger, inequality, climate change, and environmental degradation. They’re like a to-do list for the world to achieve a more sustainable future.
Doughnut Economics: It talks about planetary boundaries for resource use and emissions This concept, developed by Kate Raworth, proposes a framework for human progress that meets social needs (the social foundation) without exceeding the Earth’s ecological limits (the ecological ceiling). It’s visualized as a doughnut – the space between the hole (social foundation) and the outer edge (ecological ceiling) represents a safe and just space for humanity to thrive.
Although, Sustainability might seem like a big concept, but it’s really about making choices that benefit everyone, today and tomorrow. By working together towards sustainability, we can create a world that’s healthy and fair for all generations to come!
