OPPapers.com

Sustainability Of Sustainability

Su

An essay for the course
SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS STRATEGY
Professor David Bevan

presented by: Alec BUSCEMI, HEC MBA 2009

Jouy-en-Josas, January 18th, 2008

What is Sustainable Development?
Sustainable development as an idea and expression gained some sustenance in the 1980s. In particular, with time, internal political drivers in the United Nations incited a re-examination of its role to reposition itself in a changing world. Sustainability then gained important impetus after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro which set the Agenda 21 framework . This emphasized "improving" and "sustaining" quality of life, especially for the world's poor, without destroying the environment.
The popularity of measures and indices associated with sustainability can be attributed to John Elkington , who saw value drivers where many others before him saw only feedback, externalities, griping and dissatisfaction. There were few references to the expression of sustainability or Triple Bottom Line (TBL), before he coined the TBL expression and soon after his efforts, the usage of sustainability and sustainable spread like wildfire. An examination of popular literature, media and personal notes yields the following examples of less flexible and less drastic definitions of sustainability:
• Sustainability is the intelligent use of resources.
• Sustainability is stopping the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature, by conserving the world's biological diversity while ensuring that the use of renewable natural resources is sustainable while promoting the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption.
• Sustainability meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
• The firm's engagement in « sustainable development » consists in combining performance and responsibility. The financial performance is not...