★ Must-know
Further detail
📌 The triple bottom line, associated with Elkington (1997), argues that businesses should commit to social and environmental goals as much as to financial or economic goals. - Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of Twenty-First-Century Business
Social sustainability concerns how human societies can flourish and share natural resources fairly, despite unequal incomes and unequal access to vital resources such as water, food, health care and information technology (UN, 2020). - The Sustainable Development Goals Report
Economic sustainability means preserving adequate and fair living standards for present and future generations while recognizing that current growth in population, industrial activity, resource use and pollution is unsustainable.
The environment is the foundation; society and the economy are nested within it.
★ Must-know
Further detail
SDGs 6, 13, 14 and 15 relate directly to the ecological domain: clean water and sanitation, climate action, life below water and life on land.
The social-domain goals are:
The economic-domain goals are:
📌 SDG 17 concerns processes and ways of working to achieve the other goals rather than mapping directly onto a sustainability dimension.
★ Must-know
📌 When natural resources are used or made unusable faster than natural processes can replenish them, human quality of life deteriorates in the longer term.
Further detail
Using resources faster than nature replenishes them → declining quality of life.
★ Must-know
Average global temperature has increased by at least 1.1 °C since 1880, with most warming occurring since 1975 at roughly 0.15 to 0.20 °C per decade (NASA, 2022). - Global temperatures
Burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas releases carbon dioxide, and pollution from human sources is identified as the major cause of climate change.
Further detail
Emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas identified as responsible for climate change, have increased 40% since 1800.
Two thirds of global pollution between 1854 and 2010 is estimated to have been caused by 90 businesses, including BP, Exxon and Chevron (Heede, 2014). - Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers, 1854–2010
The IPCC’s 2021 report warned that the planet was on course to reach two degrees of overall warming within 30 years, a landmark scientists believe would act as a tipping point for major environmental disruption. - Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis
Climate change melts ice caps and raises sea levels, disturbs currents, damages ecosystems and destabilizes weather patterns, increasing the frequency of natural disasters such as flooding.
Fossil-fuel emissions → warming → ecosystem and weather disruption.
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Further detail
★ Must-know
Waste causes land, air and water pollution; landfill waste can release methane or leak heavy metals into groundwater, factory wastewater can pollute waterways, and gases from households, industry and vehicles pollute the air.
In 2019, 48% of all waste in the European Union was recycled, below the target of recycling 50% of solid waste by 2020.
Further detail
🔄 Microplastic contamination proceeds as follows:
In 2022, the first global environmental summit on reducing plastic waste was held in Nairobi, Kenya, in the hope of reaching a global waste-reduction agreement.
Separating waste for recycling can reduce businesses’ waste-removal costs as well as reduce pollution from landfill and the harms of manufacturing new materials.
Plastic durability → persistent waste → harm to wildlife and food chains.
★ Must-know
Between 1970 and 2016, populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish decreased by an average of 68%, and by 94% in the tropical subregions of the Americas.
The four major drivers are (Almond et al., 2020):
Further detail
Human activity has significantly altered 75% of the earth’s ice-free land surface, polluted oceans and caused the loss of more than 85% of wetland areas (Almond et al., 2020). - Living Planet Report 2020: Bending the Curve of Biodiversity Loss
Agriculture is responsible for 88% of global deforestation.
Over-fishing is feared to lead to the collapse of many fish species by 2050.
★ Must-know
📌 Although damaging biodiversity can serve short-term business interests, its longer-term economic consequences greatly outstrip the short-term benefits.
Further detail
The European Commission estimated that insect pollination benefited the European economy by £11.82 billion per year (European Commission, 2011). - Our Life Insurance, our Natural Capital: An EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020
In preparation for the 2021 Convention on Biological Diversity, later postponed to 2022, the CEOs of 11 large businesses, including Unilever and H&M, signed an open letter urging world leaders to accelerate a framework to protect biodiversity.
Short-term gains from ecosystem damage contrast with larger long-term economic costs.
Take a 11-question practice quiz on Sustainability and Business, with every answer explained.
1. How did the WCED define sustainable development in 1987?
2. A community limits its resource use to levels that do not threaten ecosystems while conserving natural resources. Which dimension of sustainability is it pursuing?
Memorize the key concepts of Sustainability and Business with 10 flashcards.
How did the WCED define sustainable development in 1987?
Development that meets present needs without compromising future generations’ ability to meet their own needs.
Which three domains are commonly used to describe sustainability, according to Adams (2006)?
Environmental, social, and economic.
How many Sustainable Development Goals did the United Nations set out in 2015?
17 goals.
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