The Sustainability Metamorphosis: Creating a Social License Butterfly

We began creating the cocoon for a #sustainability metamorphosis, perhaps as far back as 2015. Before COVID-19 struck, we were getting ready to enter the cocoon and begin our transformation in earnest, with Climate Action Plan 2019 being the milestone policy document to advance us.

Then we were forced in by COVID-19 instead. As we emerged from COVID-19, many perhaps hoped we were also emerging from our sustainability cocoon to a new and more sustainable way of life. Alas 1) we have not emerged from the sustainability cocoon, we are still in our process of metamorphosis and 2) our world is still that of the caterpillar, and not the butterfly we aspire to be.

In nature, the cocoon hides from view, a miracle that is also incredibly messy. The hungry caterpillar, once secure in the shell, is digested by its own stomach acid. This chemical process unlocks the DNA, that ultimately will reform to the beautiful butterfly. We are currently still in our #sustainability cocoon. The excess of years of fossil fuel exploitation, cheap energy, cheap food, cheap everything - this is the acid that is now in the process of breaking down the DNA of our existing social license and economic constructs.

Social license, the promise that we all sign up to for participating in society, is a function not only of laws and regulations, but also customs, traditions, habits, environment practicalities and so on. There are different manifestations of our social license in Ireland. One many will be familiar with is the notion that if you go to school, do well in your leaving cert, go to college, get a job, save your money and so on, that you will be able to own your own house and set down roots, have a family. Another would be that if you buy that house, you'll have electricity and services supplied to it, have access to childcare, schools, shops and more. We expect help when we call 999 and our hospital to accommodate us when we have a medical emergency. For those living in Ireland currently, it will be clear from these examples, that the social license for living in Ireland is under pressure, and in many instances, shifting. The debates and discussions in our media highlight the conflict points, the expectations versus reality.

Shifting the social license is something we have experience with. The smoking ban as one example, radically changed norms and behaviours across Ireland (and set the path for many other jurisdictions to follow). Hybrid working is another more recent and subtle example (a change embraced initially without legislation requirements), where a change was widely embraced to move away from the old social contract that dictates you live within an acceptable commute to work on a daily basis. Perhaps the major difference then with our #sustainability transformation, is that it impacts every aspect of our lives, root to stem. From the food we can eat, access to finance, how we heat our homes, the clothes we wear, the work we do, even the number of children we have – sustainability will have something to contribute to the dialogue and the decision making.

We are currently, as a society, in that "self-digesting" stage of metamorphosis. Our existing processes and systems are breaking down. Failures of the past have left current societal processes and our current social license with structural weaknesses - accelerating the breakdown in a number of areas. Fear and anxiety for the future is high. Previously unthinkable, unimaginable things are in public debate - such as changing the fundamental mechanisms of the energy market.

To be fair to all of us, we are in the middle of our metamorphosis. We are not the finished product, and at this current time things are messy and in a state of breakdown. As we approach the end of this decade, our new social license and societal processes must form around #sustainability principles. We must consume less of everything. We must promote reusing, repairing and sharing more than buying new. Our diets are likely to be different both due to cost and availability as much as due to emissions. Somethings will be in short supply (e.g. coffee and chocolate), functions of changing harvesting patterns and land use across the world, as well as the impacts of drought and storms caused by #climatechange . We will have dramatically #decarbonised all aspects of society - but we will be facing into even more dramatic reductions in #emissions beyond 2030.

To my mind, it is clear from the debates of the past months, that we are in danger of holding onto the expectations of the caterpillar when it comes to our #sustainability based social license. In response to the energy crisis, our focus is on "guaranteeing supply" and "capping prices". In other countries, rolling blackouts are already in effect (4 hours on, 2 hours off), or they are considering working day changes to spread load requirements over the full 24 hour period.

What we need to consider and focus on, is ensuring that at the end of this messy phase, that what emerges is a social license for a butterfly, not a caterpillar. COVID-19 showed us all how we can implement radical policy when faced with critical immediate issues. Now we need to exercise the same degree of imagination for setting out the new social contract in a #sustainable Ireland.

What radical policies could become cornerstones of our new social license butterfly? Would the three-day working week be more sustainable? Would individual #carbonbudgets or allowances drive better sustainability outcomes? Would we ever build our society around solar and wind energy - embracing the variability rather than seeing it as a barrier? These are very large questions, that no one person can really answer, but I will explore them in a subsequent article.

I will leave you with this: we are in the middle of a messy #sustainability #metamorphosis . A breakdown of our caterpillar DNA to allow for the transformation of our society to a #sustainable societal butterfly. We must stay focused on this change and continue to push ourselves to see with new eyes, for a new world when we emerge from our cocoon.