bringing it home

Since joining The Natural Step Canada in August 2011, some of my writing has been published on the organization’s website. Below are excerpts from a handful of blog posts that live over on www.naturalstep.ca, posted here for easy access. Click on the “Read more” links to see the full post.

Supporting Collective Impact through Backcasting
October 17, 2012

At The Natural Step Canada, we are increasingly hearing calls for “more innovation” and “more collaboration” to facilitate progress on sustainability challenges. Many organizations – including many of our own clients and partners – have recognized that there is only so much that they can achieve on their own, and that there are plenty of obstacles to overcome in partnership with suppliers, customers, regulators, and yes, even their competitors.

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Raising the bar: Nike backcasting from a bold vision of success
September 11, 2011

In May of 2012, hallmark company Nike published its Sustainable Business Report for 2010/11, demonstrating that it is increasingly reaping the benefits of integrating sustainability into its core business through a world-class vision and strategy.

Nike has contextualized all of its sustainability efforts relative to a bold, aspirational vision:

“Our vision is to build a sustainable business and create value for Nike and our stakeholders by decoupling profitable growth from constrained resources.”

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The Reality of Ecological Debt
August 27, 2012

Wednesday, August 22nd was “Earth Overshoot Day”, the date on which humanity exceeded the bio-capacity of our planet for the entire year of 2012. In essence, we have now utilized all of the resources that our planet can provide in a calendar year in a sustainable scenario, and for the rest of 2012, we will continue to deplete the planet’s ability to provide the resources we need to sustain our society in the future.

The concept of Earth Overshoot Day was developed by Global Footprint Network and the new economics foundation as a way to express the increasing stress placed on the natural environment by human activity. In the 1970s, humanity’s consumption of natural resources began to overstep what the planet could replenish. In 1992, Earth Overshoot Day fell on October 21. In 2002, it was October 3. Not only is the trend moving in the wrong direction, but it is accelerating.

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You can be a sustainability leader – Applications now open for innovative MSLS program
December 7, 2011

There are signs all around us that our society is out of balance. Our institutions are failing us, we are riddled with debt, we are lacking social cohesion and trust, and we are consuming at an ever-increasing rate – all the while becoming less happy. These patterns are wreaking havoc on the habitat that sustains us – the Earth – and the social systems on which we rely. If we draw these patterns out to their logical conclusion, the story does not unfold happily.

To address a series of massive and interconnected challenges that includes poverty, pollution and toxicity, species extinction, and climate change, we require a) a unifying strategic planning approach that will allow us to thrive within the planet’s limits, and b) leadership that inspires systemic change across sectors, borders and disciplines. The Master’s programme in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability (MSLS) offers these two things in spades.

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Alberta Sustainability Champions Gear up for Success
November 2, 2011

On October 13 and 14, nineteen professionals gathered in Edmonton to build their capacity as sustainability practitioners by participating in The Natural Step Canada’s Sustainability for Leaders Course – Level 1: Foundations (join us at the next session coming up in Vancouver).

Participants included professionals from Enermodal Engineering, Worley Parsons, Edmonton Airports, Stantec,Bullfrog Power, AIMCO, Landmark Group of Builders, EIDOS Consultants, Servus Credit Unionand Earth Legacy, municipal leaders from the City of Red Deer and the Town of Stony Plain, and educators from Bow Valley College, Grant McEwan University, and NAIT. I had the pleasure of facilitating the course with my colleagues Sarah Brooks and Colin Baril.

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Please support Masters level education in Strategic Sustainable Development
September 18, 2011

In the small town of Karlskrona, Sweden, young leaders from around the world gather every September to begin a Masters program in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability (MSLS) at the Blekinge Institute of Technology. The course is based aroundThe Natural Step Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, and it turns passionate students into empowered change agents for a better world.

Over the past few years, alumni and friends of this unique program have contributed to StratLeade Sustainability Education, a non-profit whose mandate is to support the MSLS program.

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connecting a few dots with hurricane sandy

Our rampant fossil fuel usage – and the economic growth paradigm that demands it – is bringing us rising global surface temperatures, less Arctic Sea ice, less predictable weather, and a greater number of significant storms. Hurricane Sandy is the latest of these storms to affect mainland North America, and she brings with her a death-toll, lasting damages, and a significant price tag for both clean-up and lost productivity. (The trading floor of the NYSE will be closed again tomorrow, marking the first consecutive day closures because of extreme weather since 1888.) Score one in the case for climate action and renewable energy.

As I write this (just before midnight ET October 30), millions of people have lost power in their homes or offices. Downed power lines are a small part of the picture, as 16 American nuclear facilities lie in the path of this storm, which boasts the largest area ever recorded for Atlantic storm. Many of these may be shut down tonight. Unpredictable, violent events can have more catastrophic effects than power outages on nuclear plants, as last year’s tsunami and Fukushima disaster in Japan illustrated.

But if we continue to invest in large, centralized power facilities (nuclear and otherwise), we will be far more vulnerable to large-scale power outages. As storms become more frequent, violent, and unpredictable, our responses should reflect our need for resilience. Score one for the case for the decentralization of power generation.

It’s awfully ironic that the largest storm in terms of area that has ever been recorded should occur in the midst of a U.S. election campaign (and, unfortunately, after all three Presidential debates) in which neither candidate has bothered to mention climate change in any substantive way. “North American energy independence” simply won’t cut it if it only translates into not buying it from Saudi Arabia.

Our continued ignorance of consequences will continue to yield more serous – well, consequences.

Credit where credit is due: Thanks to David Roberts at Grist whose tweet drew my attention to the nuclear facilities in Sandy’s path.

why an economic reboot is inevitable

Most of the media coverage about Occupy Wall Street and the plethora of other occupations was that protesters were angry about corporate greed. It was true, but only part of the picture. The economy has, for far too long, existed in opposition to moral code that governs how we interact with each other, and with the laws of nature.

Money is lent into existence by an extremely small minority, and consequently comes with an interest rate attached. By and large, those that lend money become relatively richer because of the interest payments they collect, and those that borrow money become relatively poorer because of the interest payments they make. As the resulting gap between rich and poor grows, so do social ills such as crime, disease, mental illness, etc. Now add some reckless deregulation and the aforementioned corporate greed. What do you see when you draw this out to its logical conclusion? It’s probably not pretty. Occupy Wall Street is not over. It’s likely just a precursor of larger social action or fundamental systemic change.

The good news is that the economy’s rules are all human constructs. Economic success is measured by growth only because thus far we have misguidedly agreed that it should be. In fact, the entire economy is a human construct, created over time to serve society’s needs. It is becoming increasingly clear that the economy is not serving human needs, and for too long we have focussed on serving the economy.

Remember the meaning of economy? “Oikos” and “nomos”. Managing the household. The concept of an economy only exists to serve society, and not the other way around. Currently, the economy is serving very few of us to good effect. So let’s re-invent it entirely according to real, non-negotiable, scientific rules that govern the planet, and moral and ethical rules that govern how we treat each other.

Societies can be judged by how they treat those that have the least, and yet our policies turn us away from that ideal and have us chasing after the ones with the most.

We have the power to stop serving this economy. We can demand change from our politicians at all levels. We can remove our money from big banks and keep it with a credit union or co-operative whose charter states that it exists to serve the interests of the community. You are not a consumer, whose role is to deplete, diminish and destroy. You are a citizen, whose role is to be accountable to your community.

The economy is a human construct with rules that we can change. The natural environment has its own rules that cannot be changed, and have also been ignored for far too long. We must find a way to adapt the economy to suit. There is ultimately no alternative.

So, how do we adapt the economy? We must acknowledge that it is a sub-system of our human society, and not the other way around. And we must acknowledge that our human society is a sub-system of the natural world. We can adapt our existing economic tools and theories to reflect this reality, starting by redefining what economic progress means and how we will measure it.

Let’s get our idea of dependence straight. Without a healthy planet, we are nothing. Without humans, the planet would be fine.