Sustainability Beyond Climate: Preserving Life as the True Measure of Impact

I am grateful for the chance to reflect on the meaning of sustainability, a term that has become familiar, yet is often misunderstood.

For many, the word immediately evokes thoughts of climate change. Emissions targets. Compliance reports. Statistical models are designed to show progress. These are important, but they do not capture the whole. The Sustainable Development Goals, as brilliantly mapped by the United Nations, were never created for climate alone. They were created for life. The dignity of all life.

Zero poverty. Zero hunger. Life below water. Life on land. These are not technical markers. They are moral commitments. Yet in much of today’s reporting, this spirit is lost. Companies and governments focus on isolated targets. They report on CO2 reductions while neglecting their responsibilities in humanitarian crises. They create technical progress without an ethical context.

This is where we fall short. A sustainable environment without people to live in it is not sustainable at all. To report on greenhouse gases while ignoring poverty, hunger, and humanitarian displacement is not only incomplete. It is unauthentic. It is disingenuous.

Sustainability must be brought back to its true purpose. It must be measured by whether it advances life. Whether it preserves dignity. Whether it responds to the crises of today or the projections of tomorrow. A single binary measure could capture this: did our actions preserve life? Did they protect dignity? Did they advance humanity? If the answer is no, then no statistic can make it otherwise.

The awakening we are experiencing is unmistakable. Citizens now have access to tools and technologies that allow them to compare sources, analyse bias, and hold institutions accountable. Trust in governments and systems has been shaken. Leadership must respond not with rhetoric, but with responsibility.

Every corporate citizen. Every policymaker. Every institution. None can claim to serve sustainability while ignoring humanitarian crises. It is not ethical. It is not defensible because there is no purpose in creating a perfect sustainable environment if there is no life left to breathe it.

We must not accept sustainability in fragments. We must lead with sustainability in its wholeness. Life, dignity, and humanity must be its measure. Anything less is falling short of the responsibility entrusted to us.

Timecode:

00:00 Introduction and Personal Insights

00:24 Understanding Sustainability Beyond Climate Change

01:30 The Essence of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

03:11 Challenges in Current Sustainability Reporting

04:56 The Importance of Humanitarian Focus in Sustainability

06:37 The Role of Technology and Media in Shaping Awareness

08:05 Call to Action: Embracing True Sustainability

Transcript:

 I wanted to talk then a little about myself, my work and what, what I feel about the, the, the issues that are currently happening today. It's importance, it's relevance, um, and the solutions behind it. Not just complaining about what's, uh, what's happening, but showing that there are ideas, solutions to, to, to address this, uh, the main issue. That I think is that people look at, when I say my life work is dedicated to sustainability, I, I think people then relate that immediately to climate change and climate activities. And I, uh, I often say, and I've come to the conclusion that sometimes it's just linking the understanding. We've had two decades of education and awareness dedicated to impact for sustainability, and people are aware.

But the true meaning of sustainability and, and how it, it can be linked to, uh, and tied in with. The individual's understandings is truly being stretched, and there is lies the gap. When I speak about my life's work in sustainability, I'm talking about an ecosystem that is focused and structured around preserving life, dignity of life, and uh, and, and, and truly, um, the advancement of all without exception. And when we look at the UN goals for Sustainable Development goals, which have been brilliantly mapped out with 17 SDG goals perfectly mapped out, linking across 139 targets and 245, uh uh, uh, uh, KPA KPIs across these targets. What we are missing is that companies now and individuals start to focus on isolated SDGs.

Forget the spirit about what the SDGs were created for the sustainable development goals. In their basis is created to focus on life, the value of life. W when we look at, uh, SDG one, uh, which is zero poverty, and we go to SDG two, which is zero hunger, uh, SDG four, life under 14, life underwater and SDG 15 life above land. It's all life. It's all life. It's all about preserving life, the dignity of awe and. What we find then is that it's much further and much deeper beyond simply climate and its impact on climate. The issue that we are having today then is people forget how central life is to this. To reporting, to measuring to impact.

Because unless we link in and tie intertwined life and the dignity of life and humanitarian crisis that we are facing today, then we are simply failing to give a true reflection of sustainability. And this becomes then the issue because. The advancement of sustainability and reporting has become almost legislative. The EU is pushing regulations on certain climate targets and goals by 2030. And the main focus and the main effort has been on climate. And when we look at reporting in financial statements and um, the corporate social responsibility where our corporate citizens are required to, um. Provide accountability and transparency on what they have done.

We look at scattered, fragmented reports that are incomparable to each other. We look at the choice of a company, a corporate citizen, or an organization or municipality to address isolated ideas within that. To focus on perhaps CO2 levels and measurement of these via quantified difficult statistical models that the user struggles to understand using a depletion of CO2 emissions with complicated jargon. Sounds like there is progress, but we do not know how to measure that. Measuring sustainability should come back to its goals. It should come back to what it stands for. CSR reporting. Uh, the UN reporting should bring it back to one strong binary variable. The value and measure it had had to impact life, all life across the globe.

And this is a score of zero or one, and that can deplete or bring down the entire complicated equations of what SDG and what progress we have made to know. Because when we report on greenhouse effects and how a company has secured this, but failed to mention the aid or work or the lack of therefore of humanitarian assistance that we have provided to companies or operations that we have in humanitarian crisis environments, then we have failed our responsibility. We are being unauthentic. And if we speak about sustainability today, every expert, every individual who truly, authentically and ethically speaks about sustainability is in the business of sustainability, wants to build partnerships for sustainability. It is impossible for them to ignore humanitarian crisis.

It is unethical. It is disingenuous. Because there is no purpose having a perfect sustainable greenhouse environment with no life there to breathe it. And then we have lost the point of what we are working for. So it's important these days that corporate citizens look at, very importantly, uh, and the un requiring measurement that's understood. That makes sense. That allows the average stakeholder to be able to question, to ask and understand what's missing and what's not reported. No corporate social responsibility report should be complete without specific emphasis in the humanitarian, uh, crisis of today. We are at a global scale experiencing an awakening.

It is beyond compare and, uh, it is important that, and it is important that people are watching this awakening, um, and experiencing it and it's speeding up an awakening where. Based on the the, the technology we have today, the ai, we are able to compare news, compare bias, and decide for ourselves and the lack of trust and stability in governments which have exposed themselves and systems which seem to be run by leaders rather than society and masses that should be dictating it. We find that it's become ever more important for individuals to make sense then of information themselves to decide for themselves. Uh, new apps such as ground news, uh, is an app that compares up to 300, 400 articles on a specific news topic that has been released, allowing you to compare bias. It analyzes bias and different views.

The ability to stay awake to, uh, make your own decisions is. Inexcusable for somebody to say, I choose not to follow the news. So I choose not to pick a, a, a, I choose not to settle on an opinion because I don't know what to trust that is no longer, um, excuse. It's simply lazy. But we have then that responsibility We have that responsibility to change it. It starts with understanding then what sustainability is and settling for nothing less. We need to be able to lead up now and lead with sustainability.