Sustainable top 100

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Published on Tuesday, 08 November 2011 23:53

Written by Bram Meulenbeld

Each year a newspaper in the Netherlands creates a sustainable top 100 list which sums up the 100 most influential Dutch people in the area of sustainability. This is based on 6 criteria: 'broad vision', 'intelligence', 'charisma', 'networking', 'drive/spirit' and 'innovativeness '.

My first reaction to this is why a top 100 is even necessary. Why create this hierarchy? What is the added value? Why always this strong urge of competition? To me, this is exactly what goes against sustainability. But than again, if I read that they regard sustainability according to the 3 p's, which in my opinion is a CSR related assumption and not one off sustainability as a whole, I get the feeling this is already why I simply don't understand it. 

Than you start looking deeper into it and you wonder why these criteria have been chosen. And why, in my opinion, the most important criterion is being left out of the equation: How sustainable are these people themselves? There are a huge number of people on this list that fly and drive to every place on the planet. That have incomes that are far from sustainable. Property that is far from sustainable. You name it. But, as is often the case in the world of green and sustainable, the goal apparently justifies the means... 

Anyway it is based on these 6 criteria, that are of course, highly subjective. Therefor a panel of 'experts' has been chosen who individually assign a rating per criterion per person. One of these so called experts is the guy who organizes the national sustainability congress which was subject to one of my previous columns. I have nothing against this man. I don't know him personally. But I have a totally different view on sustainability than he has. And yes, maybe different panel members have different views so it melts together and thus reflects the total population. Statistically it's probably well worked out. I assume that at the least. But no matter how good statistics are, if underlying assumptions are disputable, so are the statistics derived from it. 

In this case the newspaper (or someone else, it's not clearly mentioned) collects 400 names. It doesn't say based on what. Perhaps they run a query of how many times people have been mentioned matched with certain sustainability related words in their own database. They do at least use this technique to assign 50% of the charisma criterion. Or of all newspapers. In any case this is already a highly subjective number and choice. Meanwhile maintaining a definition of sustainability that is highly discussable. For instance profit in the equation of sustainability. Who says we need profit? What is profit actually good for? Our economic models assume that profit drives innovation drives profit and so on, and for instance that profit is necessary for 'business continuity' which somehow is absolutely necessary. These are just assumptions that hold no validity at all. Innovation can come from many other means than profit. Business continuity is no prerequisite for human development. It's only in a business' own interest, and they are nobody. They are means to facilitate people in a more efficient way. If at a certain point they can no longer do that, fine. Profits create losses, that is the only truth about profit. All the other aspects of it are human conditions that can just as well be different with a different mind-set. 

I have to admit, my curiosity was still present so I quickly went through the list. And already at number two I was lost: The CEO of Unilever. Because he has the guts to 'sustainabilize' the entire food &cosmetics chain. I am getting a bit acquainted with food and agriculture. I know personally what it takes to grow food for 3 persons. If you put some economy of scale into that you would probably make more yields, but that requires a substantial amount of land. If you run out of land, the only two options are increasing yields further or getting your agricultural products somewhere else. We have done both. Both without much success to use an understatement. We are responsible for so much depletion of natural resources. We have destroyed so much good land for all kinds of different reasons (erosion, salinization, over-exploitation, deforestation, (oil) mining, etc.). That has to stop. Creating sustainable palm oil, or transporting sustainable grown pineapples from Costa Rica to the Netherlands can not be sustainable. We don't have that much land and energy and we simply also don't need it. Forcing the transition through the same mind-set that everything is possible will just create more and more problems. 

We have to focus on how to create sustainable primary living conditions for every human being. At least all those who want that and have their fair and right share on this planet. 198 or so countries have agreed to that in the universal declaration of human rights in 1948! Amongst a lot of other things we apparently cannot even adhere to this. It's probably a shitty list in most people's minds. 

But hey, we have another list, someone won again, and we have just look at the positive things and be cheerful. 

I guess I will never make to any list.