Why Sustainability tastes different to each one of us.
Happy Language Day!
For those of you that speak English, today is a special day. You might not be aware of it, but the UN is observing April 23rd as the English Language Day. And because English is supposed to be the ‘lingua franca’ of the 21st century, we can all celebrate a bit.
I’m coming from a Judaeo-Christian tradition, where language has this weird origin story. The ‘Confusion of Tongues’ was some sort of punishment from God. As we were reaching for the heavens together, we were spread across the globe through the ‘spell’ of languages. I remember looking as a kid at images of this Tower of Babel. To be honest it didn’t feel particularly sinful to me. I just looked in awe at this huge tower with people running around below like an army of ants, making it even taller.
It is in our nature to build linguistic constructs to understand the world around us. It shapes our world views, our definition of right and wrong, and how we build community. We can literally make our world as big or small as we want. Our world can stop at an imaginary line on a map or it can cover the entire planet. There’s no real authority that tells us how we shape our own world. Surely, the invention of internet has been a catalyst for building tribes likeminded people across the globe. That’s why there’s apparently room for ‘Flat Earthers’. Or you can play the World Series in baseball only in the US. Or institute Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (‘GAAP’), that are mainly accepted in the US. Or use an Imperial System while everyone else uses a Metric System. Not picking on the US here. Well, a little.
Even though we have gone through this globalization wave over the past decades, we will keep building our own linguistic constructs to make sense of new things. I think the current COVID-19 crisis is another example. So many different approaches around exactly the same virus. Physiologically we are all the same, as far as we know the virus itself did not mutate as soon as it crosses a border. Still almost every country has a different approach to the pandemic.
There will always be a new crisis, emergency or need. We will then first try to figure out how to deal with it within our own tribe. Only then we start talking to other tribes on how we can do it together.
There are other emergencies we have identified under the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Accord. For the sake of argument I will refer to them as the movement towards a sustainable future. Some of us believe that due to a rise of global consciousness we all think alike on sustainability. Even if we think that’s true, we all try to make sense of Sustainability in our own way. As Governments, Private Sector or as a Citizen. Sustainability is almost like taste. It’s very difficult to convey the concept of taste to someone else if he or she is not using the same reference points. Inuits have many words for ‘snow’. I only know ‘snow’ and ‘wet snow’.
So, is there a Theory of Everything for Sustainability? Can we connect economic, environmental and social impact? How can all actors in society communicate about Sustainability and have exactly the same understanding of the concept.
Taking stock on Language Day, for some reason feels like we are wandering in this middle world between our unsustainable present to our sustainable future. Will we truly one day know what is Sustainability?
Efforts on standardizing sustainability is still trapped in the silos of academia, industries and government agencies. Each of them are making strides, but little coordination is happening. Each of them have different motives for developing their own tools.
Right now there is no lack of protocols, instruments, practices and standards. Most international development agencies, multi-lateral institutions have developed tools, or even better entire toolkits. Increasingly, countries in the developing world are asking their Investment Promotion Agencies to do something similar. The efforts to start measuring Environmental and Climate impact is great. But as a Social Enterprise (ie. Project Owner) it is very costly if there is no universal way for reporting on your impact. Each donor, funder has its own format.
Just to give you a little example on the natural resource of Water. According to Global Compact there are currently 4 main standards for Water Accounting Practices: i) Water Footprint, ii) Life Cycle Assessment, iii) Global Water Tool (WBCSD, iv) Local Water Tool (GEMI)
And then there are of course industry specific Water Accounting rules for sectors like oil & gas. But why stop there? We have Carbon Accounting Practices, Food Waste Accounting Practices, and the list goes on.
We are still missing the Universal Power Adaptor that allows us to plug all these different tools into one resource. In the end we all share the same objective, and that is our need to communicate to the world how we are achieving Sustainability.
Different organizations are working on building platforms, umbrellas, integration tools to unify all these efforts. This is important, but we are still a long way from coming with a unified system.
Right now the Environmental, Social and Governance (‘ESG’) criteria look like a winner as a set of standards. It’s pooling ahead of many other standards. But the proof will be in the pudding.
If history has taught us something on standards become standards, is that we need a couple of crises and scandals (unfortunately) to improve them drastically.
There are the accounting examples of Enron and Parmalat. Or Bre-X, and Lehman Brothers that were the result of lax performance by supervisory authorities.
It is not a question of if, but when this will happen. With the nascent sustainability standards and tools this will probably be sooner than later. And ESG, just for being the biggest, is most likely to have to deal with it first.
Many people in the space are talking about green washing. It is happening. But is it against the rules? It is more of an ethical norm. We need to wait for this perfect case that can be prosecuted or a particularly smug CEO with zero empathy during a public hearing [please insert your Martin Shkreli meme here].
Looking at the long way ahead in developing a lingua franca for a sustainable future, I’m thinking back to that Tower we were not supposed to build. Maybe I shouldn’t.
For those of you that are feeling left out, here are some other language dates to put in your agenda.
The days are as follows:
- Arabic (18 December)
- Chinese (20 April)
- English (23 April)
- French (20 March)
- Russian (6 June)
- Spanish (23 April)
Y para todos Ustedes de países habla hispana, también feliz día del Idioma!