How do we define sustainability?

By Anjila Hjalsted, environmental engineer and sustainability consultant at ClimatePartner 

With sustainability efforts booming across the globe, ironically, it seems we still don’t have a global consensus on one pivotal detail: what exactly does it mean for something to be sustainable? 

Is sustainability a final destination, and if so, how will we know when we have actually reached it? This was the topic of my recent TedxTalk, Defining Sustainability: Absolutely.

To me, it was important to create dialogue around such a widely misunderstood (and misapplied) term.

A May 2022 column in The Economist highlighted the ambiguity of the term: “A word like sustainability is so fuzzy that it is used to encompass everything from a business that thinks sensibly about the long-term to the end of capitalism...This column may well count as sustainable because it keeps recycling the same ideas. The lack of precision opens the door to grandstanding and greenwashing.” 

Journalistic humour aside, it’s true that today’s most commonly used definition of sustainability is still the one from the Brundtland Report published in 1987 (yes, 1987). The UN environmental report referred to “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". 

While this definition does at least introduce a focus on the needs of the future, it’s still too vague to be the foundation for any real action.  

It is evident that we need a clear, measurable definition that won’t allow for unsubstantiated claims of climate action. So how can we build on this and make sustainability measurable and more concrete? A new term has been coined by the academic community to define what is actually, genuinely sustainable: absolute sustainability.  

Something is sustainable in absolute terms when the following is considered: 

1. How large is the Earth’s carrying capacity in a certain environmental area? 
   Quantified frameworks such as the Planetary Boundaries give us a state-of-the-art answers to this in areas such as climate change, ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and more.
    
2. Who wants a share of the spoils? 
   This could be the Earth’s population, a country’s population, a company or a single individual. 
    
3. How do we share this capacity among all these stakeholders? 
   This is the tricky bit. Suffice to say, researchers have been working on it for years and still are – but there are actionable methodologies available which are just starting to trickle in from academia to industry. 

Built on these three key questions, we can find the answer to what sustainability really means: 

Absolute sustainability is staying within the allocated share of the safe operating space within one or more environmental impact categories. 

Or, in other words: 

Absolute sustainability is sticking to your share. 

To give an example that we can all understand, imagine sharing a cake. It would be sustainable to only eat your own piece of cake. Behaving unsustainably is gobbling up your neighbour’s piece, too!  
 
Does this mean that I can calculate how much CO2 I can emit in order to be sustainable in absolute terms? 
Yes. 

Does it mean that a company can calculate how much CO2 it can emit or how much land use change it can cause and still be sustainable in absolute terms? 
Yes. 

Absolute sustainability is an incredibly powerful tool because its precision doesn’t leave room for unsubstantiated claims or greenwashing.  

So why aren’t all companies already using absolute sustainability to assess their climate impact? There are three key reasons: 

1. Absolute sustainability assessment is still the new kid on the block. 
2. Much like a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), absolute sustainability assessment requires time and expertise. 
3. Very few companies and products would fall within what can be deemed sustainable in absolute terms. It requires courage to face this fact and take action accordingly, ramping up radical sustainability efforts. 

Sustainability efforts are picking up speed and companies now understand how sustainability can also bring in new customers (and with them, profit). For example, recipe box purveyor Mindful Chef is working with ClimatePartner to assess how a range of its meals perform against absolute sustainability targets. With this knowledge, the company will be able to provide concrete information to its customers about the sustainability of their products. 

What gets measured gets managed, and measuring your carbon footprint as an individual or as a company is a great start. The next steps are then to reduce your carbon footprint to as small as possible, and to offset any unabated emissions. 

At the same time, companies need to stay open to developments. Climate terminology is evolving to keep up with a changing world, and universal definitions allow us all to operate from the same page. When we are “speaking the same language” about the issues at hand, we are better positioned to tackle them.