More on the semantics of sustainability: is it time to reframe the 'triple bottom line'?
Posted September 8, 2010 in Living Sustainably
If you’re familiar at all with discussions about sustainability, you have encountered the so-called “triple bottom line” ascribed to practices that simultaneously advance the environment, the economy, and equity. These “three Es” or, if you prefer, three Ps (people, planet, profit) are part of almost every discussion on the topic. A quick Google search produced 311,000 hits for “triple bottom line,” including in sustainability and business dictionaries, and the phrase appears in four book titles in Amazon’s database.
At least half the time, presentations and articles on the triple bottom line will also invoke the “three-legged stool” metaphor, the point being that a stool won’t stand on only one or two legs, but will with three. I’ve always found that metaphor awkward at best, given that a three-legged stool isn’t all that stable, either, and “stool” . . . well, let’s not go there.
Urban communications expert Ben Brown, in his blog PlaceShakers and NewsMakers, believes that the current language of sustainability is failing us:
“I’m struggling with familiar twitches of cynicism when it comes to ‘sustainability.’
“We’ve reached a point where just about everybody is laying claim to a sustainability strategy, whether we’re talking mining companies blowing up mountaintops or guys selling eight-mile-per-gallon SUVs. Let’s give them this: They have a point, provided sustainability goals are tied to the desire to keep on doing whatever you’re doing in perpetuity.
“I don’t think I’m being too cynical by noting the irony. Folks making claims on sustainability are, well, folks – human beings, each of whom are guaranteed from birth to be unsustainable. We’re all gonna die and flunk the test. So if sustainability is to have the transcendent implications we intend, we’d better agree on a definition that implies a multigenerational warranty.”
I love “multigenerational warranty,” by the way, a phrase that captures well the essence of what this should be about. And I can’t disagree with Ben’s observation that the use of “sustainable” is oxymoronic when applied to things that are inherently unsustainable (which is what my host in Nova Scotia was getting at). The same misuse of positive language applies to so much in our world, where today a “clean air coalition” is just as likely to be opposing limits on pollution as supporting them, and where buildings can receive the highest levels of “green” certification even if they are located where automobile dependence means emissions from driving long distances may exceed any savings from efficient building design.
Ben believes that one of the problems is that the three pillars (yet another metaphor, sorry) of sustainability are not necessarily of equal stature:
“I think one reason we’re stuck is our reluctance to commit to perspectives that force hierarchal decision making. We are biased towards egalitarianism. Love that three-legged stool.
“What nudged me out of cynicism recently was what I take to be a better metaphor,
rendered in a simple graphic. It appeared in one of the foundation documents for a coding charrette we organized with the City of Revelstoke, British Columbia. Instead of the three-legged stool, the [triple bottom line] was arranged as a hierarchal nest, with the environmental component forming the surrounding context. Then, contained within the environmental nest was the one representing human society. And then, within that, the economic component. Simple, elegant, powerful.
“Representing the TBL in that way implies a commitment. To be sustainable in even the most basic sense, an economy demands the context of a healthy society. And society, in turn, cannot be considered outside the context of the natural environment, which includes and encompasses the other components.”
Read Ben's post here. I think he’s on to something, and Ben isn’t the only one who finds fault with “triple bottom line” thinking. Professors Chris MacDonald (St. Mary’s U., Halifax) and Wayne Norman (Duke) have written in Business Ethics Quarterly that the financial calculations tend to win in the so-called bottom line assessment, because they lend themselves to numerical accounting in a way that environmental and social concerns do not: “we find that without exception the 3BL rhetoric fails to live up to its promises. Adding up the financial plusses and minuses is just a lot easier, as it turns out, than totting up, say, the ethical achievements and shortcomings of a firm.”
Ben’s approach is at least a start at thinking about these goals in a new way. Other ideas?
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Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.
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Comments
Jon Reeds — Sep 8 2010 09:18 AM
Hi Kaid
Congratulations on the new job - you sound as if you're well stuck in already.
I know what you mean about "sustainability" - it can all too often mean what people want it to mean, i.e. whatever they happen to be trying to do.
Triple bottom lines are great, when you can find them of course. I fear it tends to disguise the fact there will be situations where the economy is inevitably at odds with the needs of the environment or of society, or both (or even when social and environmental objectives conflict). When that happens, the economy usually seems to win.
So let's pursue TBLs or hierarchical nests or whatever, but accept there will be times (perhaps increasingly so) when we have to make choices which don't satisfy everyone.
Good luck with the new job
Jon
Ben Brown — Sep 8 2010 10:06 AM
Thanks, Kaid, for advancing this conversation, especially with the added note from the Business Ethics Quarterly.
As the sustainability discussion heats up (so to speak), there should be plenty more to add.
Peter — Sep 8 2010 02:30 PM
I don't think this critique makes any sense.
Guess what, greenwashing exists -- does that mean we should stop trying to be green?
And isn't it a bit obvious to point out that the financial calculations aspect is more compelling to most because, you know, our entire business world runs off of financial calculations? Does that mean the Triple Bottom Line idea is necessarily deficient? No.
For starters, much of the world is trying to price carbon. If that happens, the Triple Bottom Line will gain more balance, and import in the business world, and therefore in the popular imagination.
And people are guaranteed from birth to be unsustainable? That's just nonsense. I understand some folks want to write ridiculous things just to try to appear provocative, but that doesn't mean we have to pretend to take their non-arguments seriously.
I don't know anyone who has claimed the Triple Bottom Line idea is perfect, but this 'attack' on it is like attacking Fort Knox with wet noodles.
E M Risse — Sep 8 2010 06:10 PM
Kaid: Two other graphics that belong in this discussion are:
Hazel Henderson’s Layer Cake of the Economy (just Google that) and,
The three overlapping circles that have been used in publications of the Regional Plan Association and which are translated into the three intersecting Spheres of Human Activity (economic, social and physical) in “The Shape of the Future.”
On the larger issue: The point made by Kaid about the “multigenerational warranty” is where ‘sustainability’ started out with the GHB commission definition in 1987. (Sorry, I reversed her first two initials in the last note.) Anything less is uncivilized.
That is why scale of a component of human settlement to achieve even threshold sustainability much less profound sustainability is so important – especially if one is contemplating a technology based (advanced) civilization that is sustainable.
What is more “like attacking Fort Knox with wet noodles” than dissing ‘the triple bottom line’ is trying to discuss ‘sustainability’ without a Vocabulary and Conceptual Framework that reflects the organic structure of the planet and of human civilization. More on that soon.
EMR
Ben Brown — Sep 8 2010 09:23 PM
Good discussions here. Much loftier than the arguments I'm used to.
My point in suggesting a little humility from the purely human perspective -- that is, suggesting the inherent unsustainability of individual human life -- was intended to wobble the stability of the three-legged stool of sustainability.
To re-pitch my PlaceShakers position: Economy, society, and environment are not coequal players. Environment rules, even without humans around to debate its components. Human society, which networks all those unsustainable carbon forms, nests within the larger environmental context. And the economy is a subset of human society.
Attempting to wag the tail of the big dog of the environment by using only the handle -- and the vocabulary -- of the human marketplace seems shortsighted by two degrees. And potentially catastrophic. No?
Kaid @ NRDC — Sep 8 2010 11:45 PM
Thanks, all.
Peter, I don't read anything in Ben's post to suggest that anyone "should stop trying to be green." Nor do I believe he is advocating that we abandon the pursuit of the three goals in the TBL.
Rather, he is suggesting that we think about them in a new way that recognizes that they depend on each other in a sequence - that the environment is a prerequisite for soicety and that society is a prerequisite for the economy. I find that intriguing in a very positive way. Is it the only - or necessarily the best - way of thinking about these things? Of course not, but it is a fresh approach to a concept that may benefit from updating. A bit of intellectual challenge is healthy.
Chris MacDonald — Sep 9 2010 08:43 AM
Kaid:
Thanks for this.
Part of the criticism Wayne Norman and I made of the triple bottom line is in fact even more fundamental than the point you quote above. And that is that there simply IS no such thing as an environmental or social "bottom line." It's good for companies to measure and manage social & environmental impact, but there's no unit of measure to let you add those up. Next time you hear some company proclaim their allegiance to the 3BL, ask them what their social or environmental "bottom line" was, last year. They just won't have an answer. So, in effect, the 3BL is a smokescreen, even if (sometimes) a well-intentioned one.
For what it's worth, see also this blog entry of mine for some more (bad) graphical representations of the 3BL:
http://businessethicsblog.com/2006/11/16/are-pictures-worth-a-thousand-words/
Regards,
Chris
E M Risse — Sep 9 2010 11:37 AM
Kaid’s concern about the instability of the three legged stool is critically important in the discussion of sustainablity.
What was called “Western Civilization” formally relied on a three legged stool to manage society for 471 years (1304 to 1775.) Then the American Revolution changed everything.
During the past 235 years the management of society has morphed from the Three Old Estates (nobility / church / commoners) to Four New Estates (Agency / Enterprise / Institutions / Citizens & Households).
This becomes clear when one carefully examines the rise and fall of The Fourth Estate from 1837 to the rise of the Enterprise Media – different years for different media modes. See THE ESTATES MATRIX.
A core problem with achieving profound sustainability is the instability of the new Four Legged Stool.
Most do not yet recognize the New Fourth Estate, in large part because there is still no Citizen Media. In addition there is confusion about the roles of all four of the Estates.
This goes to the core of the concern Professor McDonald raises about the ‘corporate responsibility’ diagrams.
There is nothing wrong with the three overlapping spheres diagram. The problem is applying it to corporate (Enterprise) activities.
Here we are with Robert Reich in suggesting that ‘corporate responsibility’ is an oxymoron. It is just another form of green greed. By definition.
EMR