Today I would like to express my worries on sustainability.
When we speak about “worries” and “sustainability”, most of the time we are worried about how to make this world sustainable: we are worried about our current impact on the next generations.
But today I would like to speak about the “world of sustainability by itself”: its people, its logics, its policies, its values and its conferences.
I am indeed starting to be worried on how sustainability is being ruled today, on how some people working in sustainability are behaving today.
Why?
Today sustainability is quite an established field, is quite a trendy topic: sustainability is recognized worldwide, has its own specialists, is very mediatic, a lot of money is involved on it and hundreds of conferences are tackling it every year.
And this success, is, at first sight, a very good news for the world.
However there is a problem: precisely because of this success, sustainability is nowadays becoming a “world by itself”, a “closed society” having its own circle of people and ideas.
In Europe, for example, the “top 100” corporate sustainability leaders almost know each others on a personal level: they are part of the same circle.
And, as every circle, sustainability has its insiders and its outsiders: we indeed have today insiders of sustainability, and we have today outsiders of sustainability.
Today we have people who are invited to give their opinions on sustainability at conferences, and we have people who are not invited to give their opinions on sustainability at those conferences.
Does that means that their opinion is less valuable?
Today we have people who have the vocabulary of sustainability, and people who do not have the vocabulary of sustainability. “Impact”, “resilience”, “change”, “inclusion”: those words just mean… nothing for a lot of people in the world!
Does that mean that their opinion is less valuable?
In other words, I am afraid that sustainability is becoming today a closed and exclusive world for we, the privileged people. A closed and exclusive issue, for we the privileged people. A closed and exclusive ideology, for we the privileged people.
And, you know, I am afraid not only for social and ethical reasons, but because this process itself is very dangerous.
Why?
This process is very dangerous because -common guys!- sustainability is not a specific field, is not a specific world, a specific idea: sustainability is a common issue for every people of the world who just express it in very different ways.
There should not be outsiders in sustainability: we are all insiders of sustainability, because we are all relying on the sustainability of the world. And so the voices of everybody should be considered!
Which is not the case today. At all. Sustainability needs to be opened.
Let’s give you a concrete example.
I do not know if you have already felt the same, but sometimes, at some sustainability conferences, I really feel like I am in the Parisian aristocratic salons of the 19th century.
Why?
Because in those gatherings we mostly meet the same social -high- class of people.
Why?
Because in those gatherings we have winners of globalization congratulating other winners of globalization for their actions.
And why?
Because in those gatherings there is a lot of sincere goodwills, yes, but there is a lot of distance between the ones who help and the ones who are helped as well.
I am speaking here about a huge social, cultural, economic and value distance between the decision makers (the leaders, the experts of sustainability) and the rest. And most of the time the ones who are helped (the ones who are targeted by our sustainability strategies) are never invited at those conferences…
It is just not the same world.
In closing, it would just be nice, for us the sustainability actors, to remember that not everybody is global, that not everybody is a digital nomad, that not everybody is vegan.
There are billions of people who are more local, who more settled people, who are more rooted in their country.
And the question is: those people are also part of the world we want to save, right? Even if they do not think and behave like us, right?
In tha sense, everyone who works on the sustainability field right now should ask him/herself: do I really want to save the world, or do I just want to save my world, my ideas, my vision, my values?
It is not the same. At all.
Because if sustainability starts to mean only one thing, if sustainability starts to be represented by only one kind of persons, by only one way of thinking, of living, of eating, of dressing or of voting, it will automatically exclude the people who just don not have the same opinion on those things.
And, to be honest with you, if what we make sustainable is a uniformized world, a standardized mindset, a unique way of living and thinking, I am not sure that I want this world to be sustainable.
Thank you.
This is the speech of Frantz Dhers during the 2018 NELIS global summit in Tokyo, in front of 100+ Japanese companies.
