Environmental sustainability is a critical issue that affects all of us, and it is more important than ever. Climate change, pollution, and natural resource depletion are just a few of the many challenges we face in our quest for a more sustainable future.
The good news is that there are numerous ways to promote environmental sustainability, including renewable energy, waste reduction, water conservation, support for sustainable products and services, and the development of sustainable cities, among others. Environmental sustainability plays a vital role in our lives, economy, and society. It is a social responsibility that we can take to ensure a more sustainable future for ourselves and future generations.
What is environmental sustainability?
The practice of preserving natural resources for future generations by reducing pollution, waste, and natural resource depletion is known as environmental sustainability. It includes biodiversity protection and conservation, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and the development of sustainable communities.
Individuals and businesses can also contribute to environmental sustainability by making conscious choices about their consumption and production patterns. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing is used to screen investments based on corporate policies and to encourage companies to act responsibly. Many mutual funds, brokerage firms, and robo-advisors now offer investment products that employ ESG principles.
How can we achieve environmental sustainability?
The pursuit of environmental sustainability is a complex and ongoing process that demands the cooperation and participation of individuals, businesses, and governments.
Several strategies and actions can be implemented to promote environmental sustainability, but some of the most effective are as follows:
- Reducing carbon emissions
- Conserving natural resources
- Reducing waste and pollution
- Promoting sustainable communities
- Encouraging individual actions
- Government policies
Sustainable business practice
There’s a growing expectation that organizations not only consider sustainability when making decisions but actively promote and pursue sustainable outcomes. In fact, 85% of investors consider ESG factors when making investments and consumers increasingly make decisions with sustainability in mind.
So, how do you ensure that the sustainable business practices you put in place are actually sustainable?
Without proper stakeholder engagement, there’s no guarantee that your sustainability measures will do any real good or can impact investments.
How stakeholder engagement can help your organization or project become more sustainable.
Define Sustainability For Each New Project
Sustainability means different things to different people and organizations. For example, you might use one or more of the following definitions:
- Sustainability balances environmental, economic, and societal needs
- Sustainable development aims to meet current needs, while considering future needs
- Sustainability means that you can maintain or improve the availability of resources or conditions
- Sustainability ensures that any business practices, communities, and social institutions can remain viable, long-term
- Sustainable organizations help work towards the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals
But what does sustainability look like for your specific project, community groups, and region?
Stakeholder engagement can help your organization define what sustainability looks like for your stakeholders — and use this definition to guide your practices.
Get Feedback to Discover What’s Relevant
Sustainability is a broad topic (as you can see from the above definitions!), and your organization could implement a neverending list of sustainable measures to understand which approach is most relevant for your work and your stakeholders?
Stakeholder engagement allows you to identify the issues that matter most to your stakeholders so that you can focus on these as your top priorities. You might run a survey, ask for feedback during a meeting or interview, or look at your analytics to understand the topics that generate more engagement.
Check Your Assumptions
Don’t assume that the sustainability measures you’ve used previously are going to work the same for other locations, times, and projects. By engaging with your stakeholders, you can begin to understand the factors that are unique to them — and allow their input to influence your decisions so that you can be more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable.
Include More Perspectives
Stakeholder engagement can inform your decisions and actions by first engaging with all the key stakeholder groups that are impacted by the organization, project, or work. By keeping them informed and asking for their input, you can tap into a much broader range of perspectives.
Reconcile Competing Views
Nearly every organization will need to work with multiple stakeholder types, often with differing viewpoints and expectations. This includes views on what’s sustainable, what isn’t, and what issues your organization should focus on fixing.
Stakeholder engagement can give you a process for reconciling these competing viewpoints.
Build Accountability
There’s a need for greater accountability in sustainable business practices (outside of existing regulatory and legislative requirements). In other words — how do we make sure that companies are genuinely having a positive impact and doing what they promise to do?
Stakeholder engagement helps to address this need by:
- Gathering data on engagement activities, feedback, and outcomes
- Demonstrating how your organization has engaged with stakeholders to ensure better-informed decisions
- Keeping stakeholders informed through regular reports that demonstrate how their input has impacted outcomes.
Increase Legitimacy
It’s worth considering that stakeholder engagement is actually a requirement of some frameworks and standards, like ISO 26000: Social Responsibility. By engaging with your stakeholders, you could meet external requirements that help to increase the perceived legitimacy of your organization — and your sustainability measures.
Build Lasting Relationships
Sustainability is also worth considering from a corporate or operational perspective. In other words, can an organization continue to operate over a long period of time? Stakeholder engagement can play a role in this, too. By developing strong relationships with stakeholders, organizations can minimize risk, identify emerging opportunities sooner, and adapt to changes in the operational environment.
It is essential to acknowledge that achieving environmental sustainability is a continuous process that must be incorporated into our daily lives and decisions. We all have a role to play, and it is necessary to take responsibility and make conscious choices to preserve the environment for future generations.
