The Core Concepts of Strategic Sustainable Development

This piece is the first of a series aimed at providing you a quick, understandable overview of the world of strategic sustainable development. This introduction is aimed getting you started towards realising your own organisation as a sustainable one.

That journey starts with some of the core concepts and tools you'll need to work through it. In particular, we will cover some of the whys and hows of strategic sustainable development.  I will cover a cascading strategic planning model called the 5 layer model, or 5LM, used to bring order to a complex world, let's call that a tool which provides us the skeleton of a strategic sustainability plan.  And I will introduce you to a workshop tool called the ABCD tool, that can be used to ideate - to hang the flesh - on the skeleton. And we will cover the 8 defined Sustainability Principles that help to define for us what we have NOT to do to breach our planetary boundaries.

Over the coming weeks, I will dig a little deeper on each of these pieces, including especially the 8 Sustainability Principles. So stay tuned for that.

Before we move ahead, I want to share a very important, and simple, understanding so that we are on the same page. The phrase Sustainable Development itself as distinct from Sustainability. These are often used interchangeably, but they’re not the same.  A metaphor to help differentiate them is that Sustainable Development is to Sustainability as the Road to Damascus is to Damascus. 

Sustainability is a destination, and Sustainable Development the journey.  

When your organisation is on the road towards sustainability, you are planning and strategising, using many of the tools I will briefly cover today, to become more sustainable. That is a PROCESS, not an OUTCOME. 

It is highly likely, thanks to the complex, changing world we live in, that Sustainability is actually a destination never to be reached. Our world is a complex system, which means change is a feature, not an aberration, so the goalposts are going to constantly move. In strategic planning terms, we could realistically talk about Sustainability as a "Stretch Goal". 

It's difficult to argue today that we are on a sustainable path where the planet‘s fine, we as people and societies are all good. The science of it tells us from every angle that we have to take action, and pretty radical action, at that. 

At the same time, few would argue that we can – or would want to - stop human development. That is a price most are unwiling to pay; our own desire to develop is arguably part of what makes us human. Living up to our potential is not the enemy here. The carelessness of our path to reaching our potential is. Because of our careless approach to the planet and each other, scientific consensus clearly is that our planet – environmentally and socially - is in a dire state.

The problem is not that we want to develop but around HOW we do. 

The limits to how we develop, where we need to rein ourselves in, have been determined in what are called our planetary boundaries. The more we infringe on these boundaries, the more we court disaster.  There are now 9 established Planetary Boundaries: climate change being one of the best known. You may recognise others, such as freshwater use, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, and land system change. They are captured in this graphic some of you may recognise.

To make human growth and development possible without infringing these boundaries is what is called our Sustainability Challenge. I think of this challenge as Our Big Squeeze. In this squeeze, we consider the systematic impacts of human development that increase our problems, and the systematic impacts of human development that reduce our ability to respond to and be resilient to those problems. 

With these boundaries, and how we have challenged all of them, we need to find a path to defining what the world COULD and SHOULD look like. And what we are doing wrong.  We then need a way to work out what we need to do to improve, to actually be sustainable - to provide a planet and society that both works for us and all our future generations. 

The Sustainability Challenge, threatening our own survival as it is, is both complex and emotional.  We need a way to order that complexity, and sideline our emotions. Our challenge is often described by way of a funnel metaphor. 

What it quite starkly depicts is our Big Squeeze: the rapid closing of the walls on our options. The farther into the funnel we proceed, the fewer our options are. As the image makes plain, we are on one wall witnessing systematic decline in resources, restorative capacity, fairness, equity, and social cohesion. At the same time on the other wall we are witnessing the systematic increase in demand for those things that are in decline, such as population, demand and consumption, energy demand, and production. 

Our journey to Sustainability - our Damascus - means recognising these systematic degradations, and adopting sustainable development strategies that limit the unsustainable progress of these phenomena. And, at the same time, take advantage of new and emerging options for countering systematic problematic increases and decreases.

Let's take a quick real-world snapshot of our Sustainability Challenge: 

• 1 in 3 people on Earth do not have access to safe drinking water.  And despite innovations such as desalination, that number is set to grow, in particular because of the rapid warming of the planet. 
• Our global population will be 9.6 billion by the year 2050. We have to feed them. 
• It took over 200 years from the start of the Industrial Revolution to reach a 25% increase in CO2 emissions in 1986. By 2011 the increase reached 40%. Now after just one more decade it’s reaching 50% (WEF).
• Already there are almost 700 million people in hunger (Action against Hunger), and 160 million children in child labour (UNICEF).
• Global temperatures have risen an average of 0.85 degrees from 1980 to 2012 (NASA). This increase in global average surface temperature might seem small, but it means a significant increase in accumulated heat.

Let's look in a little more detail at just this one boundary; climate change, specifically planetary warming. The 2015 Paris Agreement commits countries to limit the global average temperature rise to below 2°C, but to aim for 1.5°C. Scientists have repeatedly warned that crossing the 1.5°C threshold risks unleashing far more severe impact on people, wildlife, and ecosystems. There is a growing argument that we are already past being able to limit ourselves to 1.5°C.

But what’s the actual difference between 1.5°C and 2°C of warming? 0.5 degrees doesn't sound like much. Well, that 0.5°C degrees – i.e. 2°C instead of 1.5°C degrees (Climate Council of Australia):

• Increases extreme heat events 2.6 times.
• 2 x the rate of plant species loss. 
• 3 x the loss of insect species.
• 10 x more sea-ice melt, dramatically raising sea levels globally.

These are each, alone, environmentally and socially damning increases. At 2°C, climate change will create 1.5 billion climate refugees by 2050, displaced from the parts of the Earth that have become simply unliveable; climate refugees. The increase in global temperatures increases social pressures, reduces our ability to feed a growing population, putting more people into hunger and increasing the disparity not just between rich and poor, north and south, but actually between fed and unfed.

Capping the planet average temperature rise, as just one very real example of planetary boundaries, is a matter of survival. So, what do we do?

We need at the very least to stop doing those things to the planet and society that are systematically changing for the worse. 

Enter the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, or FSSD. The goal of the FSSD is to provide a scientifically-tested path to strategically planning our journey on the Road to Damascus, the journey from planetary boundaries to sustainability principles. The FSSD then helps us arrive at concrete actions we can all take to stop being unsustanable. 

The FSSD starts with a strategic planning model called the 5-Level Model, or 5LM. The point of this model is that in our working lives there are so many variables that interact with each other, we need tools for ordering that complexity. Planning in a complex world requires focus and discipline. The 5LM is a planning tool that provides 5 layers. A mnemonic, 3SAT, can be used to recall the 5LM layers: System, Success, Strategic Guidelines, Actions, and Tools. 

The System Level is our operating context.  This includes the big things in the world around us, like our planetary conditions and constraints.  It's the biosphere.  It’s the lithosphere.  It’s the laws of science.  In the intelligence world, we use PESTEL analysis at this level of abstraction to help describe the world around us. As a rugby player, I like adopting rugby analogies, so the System is the rules and ethos of the game, the governing body, the features of the playing field, and the equipment.

The second S, the Success Level, is about our vision of what sustainable looks like. In my rugby analogy, the Success level is very simple: what does winning the game look like?

The third S, Strategic Guidelines Level, is about guidance and frameworks that we are bound to be governed by in implementing actions. At this Strategic Guidelines level it’s the playbook for a rugby team; it guides the players in their on-field options. It is also the instructions from the referees, what they will be policing more. We should work within the refereeing priorities. In the FSSD, the playbook includes the strategic planning methods we might adopt, like Backcasting from the SPs. 

The A, Action Level, includes the concrete paths we will take towards sustainability. Actions are effectively the "types" or classes of rugby plays available to us within our rugby playbook, but not the actual plays which can only be decided on-field. 

The T is for Tools Level which we can define as an Implementation Layer, or, as I like to call it, the Doing Layer.  Tools include specific methods or measures, such as in rugby, the training and drilling, fitness techniques, the diet. 

I like to deconstruct the 5LM by using this framing: Understand - Envision - Guide - Act - Do.

To Understand, the System level, we are taking stock of the world in which we have to operate. At this level, concretely the context includes the 9 Planetary Boundary conditions I mentioned. This would include for example, the warnings that fossil fuel extraction and burning is building atmospheric CO2 to catastrophic levels.

At the Success level we Envision. What does our world, and our organisation, look like if and when we have reached our destination of sustainability? What could an ethical and green organisation look like? What does our business look like if we can be carbon neutral, or carbon negative, if we can take carbon dioxide out of our business altogether?

At the Guide level, we are effectively framing our options. We are all limited and governed, some actions are open to us, some are just not tenable. We reduce planning complexity by what limits or delimits our potential actions. At this level we are talking about potential legal, regulatory, or shareholder demands to reduce carbon emissions. 

At the Act level, we’re imagining what paths we could take within the Guide level constraints.  For example, if at the Guiding level we are subject to increasing regulations imposed restricting carbon emissions, then at the Action level we make the decision to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy. 

At the Do level, we then take the actions to implementation. The actions to switch from fossil fuels to renewables might include replacing our diesel fleet with electric vehicles. But perhaps we cannot afford that in every town but only in major urban centres. Constraints like time and money shape what we do. Or connecting our recharging stations to a solar grid might in fact save us a good deal of money, so savings become a factor in prioritising.

You see the cascading nature of this strategic planning structure brings the world down from macro-level phenomena such as scientific information about planetary boundaries, down to the micro-level action of replacing our diesel vehicle fleet with electric vehicles in major urban centres.

The 5LM tool has helped provide a strategic planning structure reducing the complexity of our situation based on the planetary boundaries, but how practically can do we do this?

Again, we can adopt a tool. In the FSSD it is the ABCD process. This is just one process option, there are many strategic planning tools out there. The ABCD is a tool that describes an analytical process for implementing the strategic planning method called backcasting. For several decades, backcasting has been the go-to strategic planning process for vision-led organisations, particularly nonprofits.  I run an international NGO, slavefreetrade International, and we have always used backcasting for our planning. 

This process lends itself to defining what flesh we hang on the skeleton provided by the 5LM strategy model. To become a more sustainable organisation, we can frame our vision more concretely by couching the desirable future in the Sustainability Principles (SPs). We can become a vision-led sustainable organisation by casting backwards from a future that is bound by them. So, the ABCD can be used to embed the Sustainability Principles in our vision-based planning.

We will move to the SPs shortly, but just to say the SPs give us the means to hook our planning into the boundary conditions we are seeking to address. 

...the SPs give us the means to hook our planning into the boundary conditions we are seeking to address.

Backcasting from the Sustainability Principles means describing the sustainable world for us, our Damascus, and all getting on the same page about that vision. What does sustainable mean for us? How can we, as an organisation or as individuals, contribute to addressing the Big Squeeze? 

Then we do the actual ‘backcast’, if that can be used a verb. We look back from that ideated vision and ask: “well, where are we on that road now?”. What are we presently doing that is breaching the SPs, that is reducing or adding to the sustainability challenge? 

Then we have to bridge the gap for moving from the current state to the ideated one. There are two things we do at this point. We work out WHAT we need to do to bridge the gap, and then CHOOSE from those based on whatever constraints exist around what we do; shareholders, technical resources, time, cost. etc. There will of course always be more things we might do than we can do.

So the ABCD model is a descriptor for this "backcasting from principles" strategic planning method. Like the 5LM, the ABCD model exists itself at the tools level of the 5LM; it’s a method you can use, for instance in strategic planning workshops and brainstorming sessions, for helping take a step-by-step approach to building a bridge from the now to the future. 

In the ABCD,

• A stands for Awareness and Defining Success, and is the ideated vision - where do we want to be? Are we all on the same page? What does our Damascus look like? For strategic sustainable development, this is where we inject the SPs, as foundations for our vision.
• B stands for baseline current state, and is the actual backcasting process - we are defining where we are now compared to our vision. Just how far are we from Damascus?
• C stands for creative solutions, and is identifying solutions, often through a rather freewheeling "no idea is a bad one" brainstorming. What could we do to move towards that future? What do we need to do to reach our Damascus?
• D stands for deciding on priorities. This is a distillation process, from the likely huge number of brainstormed options, deciding what we can feasibly do, taking account of our limited resources and context. There are dozens of things to do on the road to Damascus; which ones are the most suitable for us?

Like all good planning, the ABCD is not linear but cyclical.  While we advance in implementation, we can regularly revisit our plan. A strategic planning process is always changing because the world in which we operate is always in flux. As an old soldier, this as the "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy" idea. And it is true of any strategic plan; things change.

New technologies are a very good example for things that can change our plan. Especially if we are talking about, for instance renewable energy as opposed to fossil fuels, there is constant innovation there. We can use the ABCD to iterate and re-iterate. Our shared vision might also change. Change can happen at the vision level, and it is usually top-down, for example shareholder demands, a “new broom” CEO, or legal/regulatory shift such as an EU Directive. 

Now, if our A has changed because of one of these top-down enforced changes, then we are in the B, backcasting, again; where are we against that new, changed, shared vision? Have our options changed? Have our constraints and opportunities that shape our chosen activities changed?

I have several times mentioned the Sustainability Principles. Let's take a very quick look because for strategic sustainability, we need to be casting our vision in terms of the SPs, addressing our planetary boundary conditions.   

The SPs are a set of 8 principles, 3 environmental and 5 social, developed through a process of global scientific exploration, refinement, iteration, and peer review. 

An organisation is sustainable when it is not eroding, conflicting, or contradicting any of the 8 Sustainability Principles.  

When we are defining our Vision in the ABCD, we should be framing our vision with what we SHOULD look like as an organisation to NOT contribute to the systematic degradation of planetary conditions. 

Our vision must include 3 ENVIRONMENTAL principles - or ESPs - that we are not breaching. 

• Firstly, we should not be increasing concentrations of substances dug out of the ground, for example, through coal mining. 
• Secondly, we should not be increasing concentrations of substances produced by society that are harmful to the planet, like carbon dioxide or ozone. 
• Thirdly, we should not be degrading the planet by physical means, for example acidification, salination, species extinction, and desertification. 

The 5 SOCIAL Sustainability Principles – or SSPs - set out what in our vision we should ensure we are NOT breaching. We should NOT be contributing to social unsustainability by creating or perpetuating structural barriers to 5 things:

1. health,
2. influence
3. competence,
4. impartiality, and
5. meaning-making. 

An example of a barrier to HEALTH unsafe working conditions. An example of barriers to INFLUENCE include unreasonable limits on free speech.  An example of barriers to COMPETENCE include restricting access to education and training. An example of barriers to IMPARTIALITY include all forms of workplace discrimination. An example of barriers to MEANING-MAKING include repression of cultural expression.

Modern slavery is the existence in workplaces of structural obstacles to many or all of the SSPs.

So, the FSSD brings us this structure. The 5LM gives us a way of ordering complexity. The ABCD gives us a practical strategic planning approach that starts from a vision. And the SPs help us root that vision in sustainability and frame the planetary boundaries we must not breach.

While Thoreau's realm is the utopic, the FSSD is plainly rooted in realism.  The message - and the hope behind the FSSD - is that we need not be overwhelmed by the complexity and emotion of the global dangers we face.  We can do this!

Planetary boundaries, global warming, climate changes, extinctions…. all very big issues that very quickly overwhelm people. There is a need, just like in battle, to have coping techniques to focus and reach our objectives. These techniques always come back to reducing complexity, to reduce the mission to bite-size pieces.  We do this by taking logical step-by step planning actions that are focused on a vision of the world we want.  What is our Damascus? And how do we get there?

And just maybe move us a little closer to Thoreau's vision. In the coming weeks, I will take you into some of these concepts, in particular the SSPs, and how human rights and slavefreetrade International fit into the FSSD.

Stay tuned!

Sources: Robèrt, K. H., G?ran, B., Ny, H., Byggeth, S., Missimer, M., Connel, T., ... & Oldmark, J. (2012). Sustainability handbook. Studentlitteratur.