Hi 

 

 

 

 

 

The notion of sustainability has been around a long time, and logically since the beginning of human development. Two hundred thousand years ago we lived in a sustainable way or perished. Our ancestors must have got it right or else we wouldn't be here today!

 

Sustainability has become very muddled in our modern world. We now talk about sustaining things that have nothing to do with those things that we once knew were critical to maintaining our existence, while existing in harmony within nature. In the past, there were so few of us too. 5000 years ago, we as a species were largely engulfed by nature.

 

Today we overwhelm nature and work hard to sustain our own creations and abstractions. That which we now call business as usual or 'BAU'. Getting to this point, particularly over the past 150 years has been easy, as abundant energy, technology, money and marketing has supercharged our activities...totally exploiting nature itself. A minority of us, concerned about achieving a balance within nature, have been brushed aside in the rush for a dominant anthropocentric system (apparently a sustainable one?).

 

When we are abstracted from nature itself, we can indulge ourselves in denial, deflection and delaying.  This concept of 'Modern sustainability' (beginning in the late 1800's and expanding rampantly today) often becomes entwined in these activities, and may even be used to disguise unsustainable activity, or seek to deceive ourselves, customers or stakeholders by creating the illusion of 'being sustainable', without being clear about what that means. It means we ignore the fundamentals.

 

 

• Sustainable finance, when trillions in additional debt and money are created annually? (into a finite and dying ecosystem)
• Sustainable emission offsets, when there isn't enough land to forest a fraction of what would be required to offset our current GHG output?
• Sustainable consumption at levels anything like those at present, when nearly everything we consume relies in some way on diminishing fossil fuels
• Sustainable global development, when there is massive inequities in the distribution of wealth and of the negative impacts from climate and economic change
• Corporate sustainability and social responsibility programs that are a disguise for 'business as usual' that are in reality unsustainable
• Sustainable development, when those in charge wish to maintain the same economic system that delivered the current predicament
• there is a long list...you will be able to it for sure

• Is there any type of regenerative activity associated with what we are doing? (if not, we are faking it, we are no where near going hard enough)
• Are we really behaving long term? (or in financial report cycles?)
• Are we serious about reduction of harmful and wasteful activity, and the the preservation of options for future generations?
• Are we doing sustainability to look like we are doing sustainability?
• Are we just doing sustainability for the sake of our business model, brand or own bonuses?
• Is sustainability just an add on to our business as usual? perhaps to enhance our competitive position?
• Have we figured out our role in transition, are we sustaining that true purpose? if not, what are we doing?...and why?
• Are we working collaboratively across networks and ecosystems? (if not, we are likely to be self-optimising for our own interests, which it turns out is going to most likely be adding to some type of un-sustainability)

Perhaps it is as we engage in these these things and we begin to understand our role in transition, that we are able to shift towards what is truly essential and required, so that we leave a truly sustainable world for future generations.

 

This is the work of Real Transition Leaders.