Sustainability At A Crossroads: Survey
Invitation to participate in a Global Expert Survey on the Road to 2030
We live in extraordinary times, which is creating enormous pressure on the sustainability agenda. So, is sustainability-as-usual the right approach—or are we now in a dramatically different era that demands radical rethinking?
To address these questions, ERM, GlobeScan and Volans have partnered to develop a robust consultation on the state of the sustainability agenda. We would greatly appreciate your participation in a wide-ranging stakeholder consultation to inform progress against critical 2030 sustainability goals. You can complete the survey here:
Survey Link → https://survey.euro.confirmit.com/wix/p524022705244.aspx
The results will shape a public report as well as a series of dialogues on the state of the field and the most promising pathways forward. You can indicate your interest in being a part of dialogues over the coming months in the survey. Many thanks.
Dear John,
I am delighted to learn ERM, GlobeScan and Volans have partnered to explore the state of the sustainability agenda and are seeking help from others in doing so. This coming on the heels of the Trellis article you shared on LinkedIn about a week ago (which I commented on and shared last night) gives me hope the profession really is ready to “look in the mirror” and ask hard questions about itself … with some of those questions coming from people like me.
I have asked myself some hard questions in recent months regarding my own (mental health issues driven) lack of effectiveness since launching myself into the conversation through BSR and then the UN Global Compact starting in 1995, when I was an exhibitor (advocating the use of the “systems redesign” principles taught by W Edwards Deming and Buckminster Fuller and supported by the American Society for Quality and the Association for Quality & Participation) at the UN @ 50 conference in Washington DC.
And the work I’m now doing - as the founder of a museum and Route 66 community member and United Methodist Church member - is the result.
I’ve long known that there’s an awareness crisis when it comes to people knowing what Deming, Fuller, Russ Ackoff, Riane Eisler and other systems thinking pioneers figured out.
And I think there’s a similar awareness crisis when it comes to the sustainability profession (a point I made in commenting on the Trellis essay).
Are the profession’s members willing to acknowledge they are not known to the public the way doctors, engineers, etc are?
That crisis … the fact that the vast majority of people here in America don’t even know who people like you and Hunter Lovins are… let alone that there’s something called the UN Global Compact with the potential to transform global capitalism… must be dealt with. After all, the public cannot ask for what it does not know it can have.
This awareness crisis is the focus of what I am now doing through the Route 66 Spirit Of America Museum here in Oklahoma. I hope to leverage the fact that next year is both the centennial of Route 66 and America’s 250th birthday to catalyze an awareness breakthrough … so the public knows real solutions to the crisis we find ourselves in (including the crisis of democracy being on death‘s door) exist.
When I respond to this survey, I will invite the leaders of your profession to partner with me in creating that awareness breakthrough next year. I look forward to future conversation conversations with you about all this.
Thanks for all the work you continue to do. It’s one of the honors of my life that I met you through the Global Compact roughly 20 years ago.