Is corporate sustainability corporate complicity?

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In the middle of last year, and after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, it was stated that companies with corporate sustainability were more resilient to COVID-19 , that is, they were much more prepared to face difficulties as great as a health emergency. . That was just one of the great advantages that, according to various studies, corporate sustainability offers, however, today a question is hovering when the topic is analyzed in detail : Is corporate sustainability, corporate complicity? Auden Schendler , the author of Getting Green Done (2009) and board president of the nonprofit climate organization Protect Our Winters , recently shared an article in Stanford Social Innovation making this assumption. But... how could a positive strategy become complicit in something negative? We tell you. Corporate sustainability Corporate sustainability is defined as a business approach that seeks to create long-term value for the organization by taking advantage of opportunities and managing the risks inherent to economic, environmental and social development. This is considered as strategic as profits for your company.



In fact, according to Schendler, and based on his own experience, corporate sustainability has achieved great popularity due to its win-win theory: “We believed that saving the world, curing climate change, and ending pollution and waste would all be driven by commercial profits and strategic motivation. Doing good for the environment—cutting energy use with better light bulbs and boilers, reducing inefficiency through design and engineering, and adding renewable energy supplies—was not only environmentally responsible, it was good for the environment. final score" . corporate sustainability But in 25 years or more, as the sustainable business movement has grown dramatically, climate change—considered the most important barometer of the possibility of a sustainable future—has also advanced. And this went from being a concern to a certainty, with catastrophic warming beyond 2 degrees Celsius or so. Which resulted in the seven hottest years on record in the last seven years. So something must have gone wrong in the utopia of the objectives of corporate sustainability.







It is necessary to rethink corporate sustainability Faced with such a scenario, Auden Schendler reflects, even a victory as a large corporation that puts all its effort into sustainability issues, and reduces its carbon footprint by 30% (something really difficult to achieve), would not even affect the problem. of climate change. The problem is that there are too many people, governments and a large number of companies that are simply not aligned with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and do not have the slightest interest in it. Our society is so carbon-depleted that even homeless people have an unsustainably large carbon footprint. Auden Schendler, board president of the climate organization Protect Our Winters. As such, Schendler has concluded that the business case for environmental action—which remains the core corporate climate strategy—has little to do with sustainability, however admirable the intent and vision of its practitioners. corporate sustainability And worse still: the focus on sustainable practices rather than exercising power has unwittingly allowed the fossil fuel industry to capture government policies and actions, providing cover to allow, for example, ExxonMobil and others, to maximize profits and global greenhouse gas emissions undisturbed.