Corporate sustainability: what are boards trying to sustain?

Board chairs and directors face an unenviable task when thinking about sustainability. First and foremost, their prime responsibility is to ensure that the organisation continues to exist. At the very least, this means turning a profit year after year, regardless of the costs elsewhere. 

Corporate sustainability has thus become a means of, to quote Rex Weyler - one of the original founders of Greenpeace - pretending “to be solving the problem while we carry on business as usual”. We know this is not sustainable because our actions are placing increasing pressure on planetary boundaries:

Source: Stockholm Resilience Centre

Ignoring these boundaries does not just threaten far-away ecosystems and threaten our own species, it also undermines the very foundations of current business models.

Ecological sustainability is different. It means contributing to a society “that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. It means giving a voice to the natural world so that we have a planet on which business is possible.

What then is your board trying to sustain?

In other words, is the organisation pivoting toward a genuinely ecologically sustainable—and therefore future-resilient—enterprise?

More likely, is your organisation merely tweaking existing business models to appear ‘green’? 

Both paths carry risks and opportunities but only one has any future.

This article is also published on LinkedIn and the author's website. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.