We succeeded in making Sustainability matter, and success created complexity
Sustainability has never been one thing. It is a collection of interconnected opportunities and problems that we have progressively learned to name, measure and manage, for much longer than perhaps we fully acknowledge.
We were doing sustainability before we called it sustainability
Long before sustainability became a corporate reporting function, people, professionals, organisations and societies etc, were already managing issues that we would recognise today as sustainability. In our history, we can find multiple examples of people managing resources, environments and risk in ways we might recognise today as sustainability — from the Jemez Pueblo's long-term fire and woodland management in New Mexico, to the sophisticated water management and drainage systems of the Indus Valley civilisation. To modern day: Waste management. Pollution control. Energy efficiency. Environmental management. Biodiversity. Occupational health and safety. Resource management. Labour practices. Community impacts.
There were specialists working in these fields long before there was a single sustainability profession.
The science was developing too. Scientists were observing atmospheric conditions, oceans, ecosystems, temperatures and other changes over decades. Different disciplines developed their own evidence, terminology and areas of expertise.
The work did not begin when we gave it a name.
The we defined it around a global frame
In 1987, the Brundtland Commission's Our Common Future provided one of the most influential definitions of sustainable development: meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
This mattered because it connected issues that had often been managed separately.
Environmental protection was no longer simply about controlling pollution.
Economic activity could not be considered independently of environmental and social consequences.
Development, resources, people and the environment were connected. We became systems linked to systems.
The concept of sustainability gave organisations a broader way of thinking about work that was already happening.
We then spent years talking about it, and learning how interconnectivity made it even more difficult to achieve
Sustainability became increasingly visible in businesses.
Environmental management systems developed from policies. Corporate responsibility programmes appeared. Organisations began publishing sustainability reports. Climate change moved increasingly into corporate thinking. Carbon accounting developed. Supply-chain impacts became more visible.
The language expanded. We grew arms and legs, and so did the expectations, often with little or no time to upskill or increase the capability needed to manage them. Knowing that something matters and knowing how to manage it are not the same thing.
Organisations were often trying to build capability while the subject itself was still evolving.
Data wasn't centralised. Sometimes it was missing, not recorded, and sometimes the right information existed but wasn't accessible in the right system. Responsibility sat across a business with all the stakeholders busy doing their own roles, creating functional stovepipes.
Specialists knew their subjects deeply, but the connections between those subjects were often less well defined.
This wasn't a failure of specialist expertise. We need specialists. The challenge was, and remains, connecting what they know with what we have yet to understand, particularly when it comes to Climate Resilience, as we haven't had to tackle anything quite like this before.
It was a consequence of trying to manage increasingly interconnected issues, increasing demands, through organisational structures that were often designed around separate functions.
More specialised professions came from the chats
Today there are specialists in:
carbon accounting Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions
Energy management
climate risk
Adaptation planning
Risk management
sustainability reporting
ESG data
sustainable procurement/supply chain
biodiversity and nature
sustainable finance
environmental management
Loads more probably not mentioned, my apologies
Somewhere along the way came ESG
It was shorter to say, simplified and came with a 'baked in' leverage link to the Senior decision makers of the business, directly enabling this framework to push through. That was useful particularly from an investment, reporting and assessment perspective and the momentum grew! However, managing sustainability holds even greater value now, not just through understanding Environmental, Social and Governance but through Sustainability being bespoke to an organisation through Economics, Societal, and Environment (the 3 pillars of Sustainability), captured in thorough Materiality assessments, stakeholders acknowledgement and being on board to empower an organisation towards sustained economic growth in a changing world.
We crept back towards Sustainability
Major sustainability reporting frameworks increasingly talk about sustainability-related risks and opportunities, climate-related risks and opportunities, materiality, governance, strategy, risk management and metrics and targets. Let's not forget delivery or action plans to enable us to put the plan in place…
The distinction matters.
The Sustainability became formalised
We already had SBTi and GRI, driven through reputation then Climate disclosure accelerated the change.
The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) brought climate into a much more recognisable corporate structure through four areas: governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets.
Climate was no longer simply an environmental issue.
It became a question of governance, business strategy and planning, risk and performance. True climate resilience for organisations.
TCFD subsequently completed its work and responsibility for monitoring climate-related disclosures moved to the global IFRS Foundation. The architecture continued through the ISSB's IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards.
IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 now frame sustainability-related and climate-related risks and opportunities in terms of their potential effect on an organisation's prospects.
The UK Sustainability Reporting Standards follow the ISSB architecture, while CSRD has brought a broader sustainability reporting directive into European regulation. The approaches overlap in important areas, but they are not completely identical.
This is a significant shift.
Sustainability is increasingly being brought into the same organisational conversations as strategy, governance, risk, performance and financial decision-making.
The question has changed
The sustainability profession does not have a shortage of expertise.
It has a growing requirement to connect expertise.
The challenge now is less about knowing that sustainability matters and more about understanding how sustainability-related information, risks, opportunities, responsibilities and actions interact across an organisation.
That is a systems problem.
And it is why sustainability cannot sit entirely within a sustainability team.
The work increasingly touches Leaders, Facilities, Operations, Procurement, HR, Supply chain, Customers, External stakeholders, Investors, Risk teams, Finance & Legal, Data Managers, H&S, Security, in fact everyone in the business, oh yes, and the sustainability team.
The sustainability professional therefore has a changing role too.
Not necessarily to become an expert in everything.
But to understand enough of the system to know what connects, what depends on what, where information needs to move, and where action needs to happen.
The problem is that the organisation still has to make decisions across all of these areas at the same time.
A supply-chain decision can affect Scope 3 emissions.
A climate hazard can affect physical assets and insurance.
A transition plan can affect capital expenditure and procurement.
Dependencies affecting supply-chain resilience.
Data quality can affect reporting.
Reporting requirements can expose weaknesses in governance.
Risk information can change strategy.
These are not separate problems simply because different people are responsible for them.
Where this leaves sustainability
We have travelled a long way from individual environmental programmes.
We have moved through environmental management, sustainable development, corporate responsibility, climate action, carbon management, ESG and increasingly formal sustainability disclosure.
The terminology has changed.
The standards have changed.
The professional landscape has changed.
But the underlying reality has not changed:
An organisation is a system of interconnected systems.
Its environmental impacts, climate exposures, dependencies, decisions, operations, people, supply chains, governance and financial performance do not operate in separate boxes. The connections ensures business resilience.
The next stage of sustainability therefore isn't simply reporting another framework. It is understanding how the whole business connects, making sure your targets, decisions and actions are delivered in line with your strategy.
The challenge now is not simply knowing that sustainability matters. It is understanding how the different parts connect, what is the impact or opportunity, who holds responsibility, how we relate this to business planning. This is where a systems thinking approach to sustainability can be extremely useful.
Atlas & Chilli uses a systems thinking approach to sustainability to reduce complexity, strengthen governance and implement sustainability into business as usual — through visual guidance, practical tools and focused expert sessions.
If this sounds familiar and you need additional advice book a session.