Real sustainability is not superficial
May 1, 2021
On this International Workers’ Day, I wanted to share some reflections on the concept of sustainability, which has evolved a lot since the onset of the pandemic. If I can summarize my views on the concept, I would say that real sustainability is not superficial. What may look sustainable from the perspective of carbon emissions may actually be creating much more serious externalities from the perspective of humanity, democracy, peace and justice.
Real sustainability does not come from lawmakers
One of the biggest mistakes we are making is looking to the law to solve all of the problems of the climate crisis. While the EU’s Green Deal and climate law certainly set the right ambition, those solutions will not get us there alone and companies should be setting much more aggressive targets that go beyond what is required by the law. Companies must take substantive decisions that go to their core profitability models—standing up to activist shareholders, normalizing lack of dividends and instead reinvesting profits in employees and innovation. Corporate disclosure and due diligence regimes ring hollow today. Stop telling us what you are doing and show us how you evaluated several climate scenarios and chose to pursue the one that was the best for people, not profits. Show us how you treat your employees, your local communities, your business partners.
Real sustainability does not come from finance or experts
There is a misconception in the financial sector that “ESG” is sustainable, but it’s a very different concept. ESG comes from asset management and involves investment funds buying “best in class” assets based on criteria other than traditional profitability metrics. ESG simply discriminates differently—at the end of the day, the funds are still buying the same listed equities that they always have, keeping much of the world’s wealth essentially concentrated in U.S. investment funds. ESG doesn’t acknowledge that there are certain asset classes that are simply too precious to humanity to be for sale or subject to dividend pressures—health, pharma and education being the most obvious. ESG is also increasing the ecosystem of unnecessary value leak and value extraction, because it tells us that we need to rely on external advisors, brokers, agents and law firms to tell us what is sustainable. Every company knows how to make its business model more sustainable from a profitability and consumption perspective—they need the courage to do it as opposed to paying third parties to justify why their existing model is already sustainable.
Real sustainability needs independent and sovereign technology and culture
Real sustainability requires us to rethink the way big tech operates. Applying antitrust rules more effectively is probably the first tool in the framework to counter the power of big tech, although this requires time, political will and revising the “consumer welfare” standard to more meaningfully reflect benefits that are not purely economic. Applying data protection rules more rigorously, such as the GDPR and Digital Markets Act, is another tool, although is “ex post” in nature and does not require the companies to significantly change their business models.
A third goal would be to achieve some sort of consensus that, because big tech is an industry so influenced by natural monopoly dynamics, a more significant public oversight role is justified, whether through transparency, audits or adopting a more “public” operating model similar to that of electricity or water utilities. What is clear is that a purely privatized model has led to an erosion of sovereignty, experienced more acutely within the Global South.
Real sustainability promotes the sovereignty of media and culture, creating organizations that are democratic, transparent, subject to rigorous audit / oversight and not funded or controlled by billionaires. It involves empowering inventors, artists, authors and creators to publish and retain the value generated by their work and not exporting a U.S.-centric cultural model whose volume drowns out non-mainstream, non-Western culture.
Real sustainability requires lifestyle change
It has become trendy to use fossil fuels as a scapegoat for the climate crisis, but our neoliberal economy is really what has driven corruption, inequality and destruction of natural resources in the post-war period. That's not just energy but many other industries, including finance, transportation, agriculture and technology. Not to mention geopolitics. Oil is driven by supply and demand dynamics, just like any other commodity. It’s very easy to put all the pressure on the supply side, but what about demand? We should focus on changing the carbon footprint of our lifestyle (turning off the lights, lowering the heat, cycling, consuming less meat, composting, recycling and repurposing, reinvesting savings into projects that support ecology and biodiversity). What about the human rights and environmental impact of solar panels? While we may be making an improvement from an emissions perspective, we are running the risk of forced labor and deforestation. Let’s not embark on a new energy model without understanding how our lifestyle changes can lower the intensity of our existing one. The same logic can be applied to pharma. What would happen if pharma companies invested their R&D funds into studying lifestyle changes?
Real sustainability seeks to counter modern imperialism
There can be no real sustainability without recognizing that OECD nations are mostly endorsing policies that will result in greater disparity in health and wealth going forward, with the risk of vaccine apartheid becoming a clear example. Real sustainability recognizes that state-owned entities must have the resources they need to be independent and transparent. Real sustainability involves unwinding predatory sovereign debt mechanisms that result in heavily indebted nations continuing to fund interest payments to U.S. investment funds at the expense of purchasing vaccines and ventilators. It involves long-term debt alleviation and cancellation.
Real sustainability promotes the “responsibilisation” of humanity
We have fallen into a trap of associating kindness and political correctness with virtue. Kindness is a step, but it’s superficial. Being generous with each other is a better goal for us to target—looking at every other person as a brother or sister, looking at every child as our collective responsibility, stopping the celebration of “self care” and instead celebrating care for others. Political correctness is even more dangerous because it tells us that we should embrace superficial rules of decorum at the expense of seeking truth and justice. A much better goal would be for us to take responsibility for the fact that our duties as citizens are not limited to paying taxes and voting, but making a contribution to our communities. Empowering civil society to provide additional support in health, security and education. Working with local associations, religious communities and faith-based organizations to fill the gaps left by the State. Avoiding superficial policies and politics and looking to understand the real outcomes created by policy decisions.
CPM
