Ducan Austin has a new article in the Responsible Investor, entitled “From win-win to net zero: would the real sustainability please stand up?” In it, he argues that conventional “win-win” approaches to corporate sustainability rely on a narrow view of sustainability as “more sustainable than before” and fail to grapple with ecological limits.
He concludes,
With today’s clash between the demands of net zero and the hopes of win-win, we have reached the decisive moment. Contrary to early hopes that a win-win narrative might stimulate sufficient voluntary action to constitute ‘enough sustainability’, the learning has emphatically been that win-win cannot scale to deliver enough ecological improvement, fast enough. This difficult truth can no longer be ignored.
The challenge for all organisations aspiring to be sustainable – from governments to businesses to non-profits – is to clarify for themselves and their various stakeholders what definition of sustainability they intend to work to. Are they ‘more sustainable than before’ organisations or are they organisations committed to creating a world that is ‘sustainable enough before it is too late’?
The ramifications are enormous. To persist with the former definition, which has been the tacit default for the sustainable business movement, is to propagate an increasingly untenable win-win narrative that suppresses the recognition of the emergency situation we now face. It also perpetuates complacency about economic growth at a time when most growth is not green at all and ecological thresholds are fast approaching. In contrast, to adopt the latter definition is to accept we now must do everything possible to catalyse science-based policies and behavioural change, and work back from there to new definitions of ‘growth’ and ‘profit’.
Moreover, the situation is not static. In a race against time, every moment of inaction, or even of insufficient action, is effectively a costly delay. We are fast approaching the time when ‘more sustainable than before’ is ‘not sustainable at all’.
