Environmental Sustainability in Business: a Brief History

Sustainable development is, as per the official definition of the WCED, "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". This definition dates 1987, and at that point in time, a new awareness regarding environmental sustainability had been on a steep rise since the early 70s. But can development be sustainable? Are not these two words sort of opposites?

Let's take a step back. Define::sustainability — the ability to exist constantly. Nothing new or eye-opening even for early human beings, who in some shape or form applied the idea of making sure to preserve and not over-exploit basic resources for the future.

In fact, the need for awareness and cautiousness around environmental sustainability and sustainable economic development begins to manifest, even if under the radar, as Industrial Revolutions unfold. Great leaps of economic and social development for the society at large, detrimental impacts on the environment, especially on account of the excessive and uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources that begins to take place during the first (late 18th century) and second (late 19th century) Industrial Revolutions.

The higher state of awareness on environmental, economic, and social sustainability traces back to the early 1970s, when a first significant theory on the impact of intensive economic activities on the environment is published: it's the IPAT framework. This is a formula according to which the “impact” (I) of any group or nations on the environment is given by the interaction of its population size (P), per capita affluence (A —average natural resources consumption per person), and technology involved in supporting each unit of consumption (T).

It is one of the first times in which the environmental impact of economic and human activities is acknowledged: the great inventions and technological progress taken place during the previous years, as pretty much anything in life, do have a trade-off: if you exploit natural resources to the maximum extent possible without caring; if you release any production process byproduct into the environment, you will likely maximize profits and economic well-being, but you will, just as likely, consume the Earth to its limits, which may have tangible consequences at some point in the future.