Transparency

Why is transparency a principle of sustainable development? Surely I can be sustainable in my actions and keep myself to myself?

Maybe so, but how do we know what is sustainable? Surely sustainability is also a matter of interdependence? And isn’t secrecy an extra burden that detracts from our (mainly social) sustainability?

The Carbon Disclosure Project (http://www.cdproject.net/) was established for many reasons, but the most straightforward one was to find out how much carbon we’re releasing into the atmosphere and how. With hundreds of companies taking part, in every sector of industry, the data gathering gets more accurate and simultaneously more straightforward every year. Once we know where we’re going wrong, and how badly, we can put it right.

The project has some interesting secondary effects, however. Having disclosed their carbon footprint, companies are immediately under pressure to reduce their emissions, despite there being no-such pledge in participating. What’s more, the exercise highlights the reporting culture and amount of transparency these companies are comfortable with: very few companies will disclose their carbon targets to the outside world. At very least, that makes it very difficult to predict overall reductions in carbon emissions.

Like BS 8900, the CDP’s quiet insistence that transparency in past, present and future activities puts pressure on the establishment to fundamentally change the way it works.

So we know how much each community, organization and average individual has to change to make our species sustainable. What’s more, most of us don’t live in isolation, so the calculations of carbon footprint, resource use, permissible pollution levels, etc. often have to be made in collaboration, making estimates of the interplay of different substances and activities. So we need to communicate about our needs as well as ‘fessing up to our messes.

In asking for transparency, we also hear objections on grounds of practicality—particularly how transparency removes commercial advantage. Disclosing your carbon targets might affect your share price or make you liable in some way, but being open about everything you do would let your competitors know your next unique selling point, and very quickly it wouldn’t be unique any more.

Although lots of time, money and effort is wasted in hiding new products, services and ad campaigns from the opposition, for very little long-term gain, I’m not going to go so far (today) as to claim that all companies and organizations should have “glass walls”. But I do believe that the best way to retain customers, clients, employees and friends is to let them feel part of what you’re doing. “Valued”, in other words.

Stewardship

At first glance, stewardship seems like the most obvious principle of sustainable behaviour. But look closer and it brings a much richer meaning.

As many have said in many ways, including Gerard Winstanley, the earth is not ours to own. We are simply its inhabitants and caretakers. This is the principle of stewardship.

What this means for any organisation or individual that intends to improve itself against the principles of sustainable development is that, not only must the future of their “property” and share of the commons be ensured, but that property must be restored to the community in some meaningful way.

If sustainable development becomes embedded throughout society, the process can only accelerate. Companies will create permanent shareholdings for their neighbours, employees and other dependants. Governments will enact stewardship legislation, which will codify the responsibility of property owners to conserve the ecological, as well as functional, value of what they own, and perhaps will go further to remove the status of property ownership altogether.

This is meaningful responsibility. And it should be reciprocated by society.

For example, stewardship of a council property should be available at little cost. In itself, the responsibility that comes with the property, to maintain it for future inhabitants, will bring enough costs, but the story shouldn’t end there. Although decorating and maintaining a house is cheaper if you do it yourself, it would be in the interests of the council to run a communal tool bank and to source bulk supplies. Similarly, providing free training in practical skills would benefit everyone.

Through a gentle push towards a benign principle, society becomes a simpler, more responsible, more far-sighted and self-supporting. Before you know it, the progress gets rooted in too deep to be dragged out easily.

Taking them on at their own game

The most daunting facet of capitalism is its ability to adapt. Essentially, the system we have created is self-sustaining because, having established a means of isolating and accumulating power, the motivation (conscious or unconscious) is also established to consolidate and defend any advantage. In other words, the world’s elites are now wealthy and will use their power (influence/authority/etc.) to shore up the system to maintain that advantage.

This does not preclude a certain amount of progress in the treatment of the under-privileged and the environment, but the fundamental flaws will remain: the division of wealth, the impossibility of full employment, and the inherent unsustainability of economic growth.

Nothing new in that observation. But I recently realised that progress is being made in bringing fundamental change to what Orwell called our “smelly little orthodoxies”. It might not be enough, in itself, to topple the dominance of neo-cons and post-modernists (or any of the rag bag of what amounts to stasis), but seeds of radical thought are being left in unexpected places.

The established order is maintained because those with power can afford to populate the committees, councils and parliaments that set the detailed rules for how we run society. The interests of the wealthy are reflected in the skew of our criminal justice system towards harsh punishment for “poor people’s crimes” like drug dealing and robbery and little or no penalty for large-scale financial mis-management or fraud. The difference doesn’t end at the sentence imposed: if you are considered dangerous or likely to escape, then you go to a prison where, sure, you are less likely to escape, but you are also more likely to be a victim of violence, including rape.

As times change and questions are asked of the ethics of our system, those acting on behalf of the powerful ensure that new legislation, policies and procedures to not make a material change to the balance of power. So, for every political movement there is an approximately equal and opposite counter-movement. They might not be labelled as such—very few of these jabs and blocks, feints and counter-feints are ever categorized—but they happen nonetheless.

What I realised recently is that the counter-culture is also becoming more effective at evolving. The system has evolved to consolidate power but its harshest critics are learning how to infiltrate it effectively. Western democracy, in the first order, gravitates to the centre-right, which impedes any progress, but that doesn’t stop radicals from getting in.

I’m not talking about the so-called Marxists who have made a fool of themselves in cosying up to ultra-conservatives and big business. Neither am I too concerned with former radicals that have mellowed with age and found a comfortable place in the post-modern centre-left (such as Danny Cohn-Bendit and Joan Ruddock), although I’m glad to have them inside their respective parliaments.

In fact, many of those making a difference were never fire-brand protestors or politicians. What has evolved is the way progressive ideas get implemented: crudely speaking, it is not protest that pushes change by reluctant conservatives, it is infiltration of motivated people and ideas that make the changes directly.

There are several examples of the old way of making progress, including the Reform Act of 1832, reluctantly supported by the Duke of Wellington, and the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, reluctantly supported by Lyndon Johnson (I’m short of evidence on the latter, I admit). But protest has to be overwhelming to make a difference on its own; it has to be perceived as the manifestation of a majority viewpoint to influence government, and even then, the legislative process will water any new requirements down.

Protest is not dead, but capitol cities see protests almost every week, which makes media coverage and the attention of parliamentarians unlikely. Hundreds of thousands protested the Iraq War in London, New York and several other cities, and it made no difference whatsoever.

But here is a prime example of counter-subversion: having had “sustainability” co-opted and de-fanged to become “sustainable development”, which includes economic growth as one of its pillars, radical ideas have begun to permeate the implementation of sustainable development.

So, the British Standard guide to implementing sustainable development, BS 8900, insists that maturity against “principles of sustainable development” is measured and continual progress made. Those principles are to include: stewardship, transparency, integrity and inclusivity.

This is more powerful than it seems at first glance. Any organisation that claims to comply with a UK sustainable development standard must not only behave more sustainably (by environmental, social and economic measures) year-on-year, but it must demonstrate better performance against principles that will embed sustainable thinking and change its way of operating for the better.

I intend to say why each of these principles matters next.