Asking everyone to do their part to improve sustainable lifestyle choices often prioritizes one aspect: the environment. In the 1980s, when sustainable development was coined and first used politically, environmental sustainability emerged to describe the desired balance between human culture and what is asked of our nonhuman surroundings to meet those cultural needs. Last month, I alluded to the naivety of pursuing an equilibrium amongst sustainability actors instead of a resilience focus; unfortunately, fixating on the environmental component of the sustainability framework leads to a similar ignorance, opting out of improving the other two legs of sustainability or, in extreme cases, postponing inevitable consequences. In the absence of consumer understanding of the Canadian agri-food system, environmental policy becomes the easiest connection between food and household, often to the detriment of sustainable development.
From a business perspective, latching onto environmental improvement is advantageous to their reputation as the environment has become increasingly politicized and increasingly easier (lowest effort) for a company to be emblematic of a “less unsustainable” business. Such isn’t necessarily a problem, as it often takes multiple individual (but formal) business policies to signal that the market is ready for change, with environmental efforts being the entry point for broader sustainability actions. While the overt broadness of the sustainability space and its available avenues can attract more participants and consumers, the space is also left open to misinterpretation, however nuanced it may be (Table 1).
Green | Sustainable | |
|---|---|---|
Sustainability tripod | One leg (environmental improvement) | 3 legs (environmental, economic, social) |
Focus | Individual considerations | Interactions of components/ whole system |
Strategy | "Picking low-hanging fruit"; promotes individual changes | Improve upon ease of action; design self-balancing system |
Politics | Innovative | |
Scale | Individual | Regional; holistic |
Risks | Greenwashing | Utopian; authoritarian |
Success | Incremental progress, forever | Footprint reduction |
When a single facet of sustainability is prioritized over others or in the absence of its interactions, it is referred to as taking a shareholder approach. This is when solely the voices of concern of the individuals within that space are heard. Doing so creates conflict and ignorance in planning as trade-offs are confined to the environmental space, without considering social impacts and (financial) feasibility. A perfect example of shareholder approach in the environmental movement is when businesses tout their move from plastic to paper bags to meet consumer interest in environmental consciousness, but may still be ignorant of Canada’s harvesting of two-thirds of our sustainable wood supply. In this sense, the “sustainable products” available in the marketplace, particularly those advertising their eco-friendly position, are less reflective of environmental science, especially given the lack of subsequent traceability and accountability, and more representative of stakeholder wants.
The issue with environmental priority and resource availability emphasis is that they are terrible metrics for human progress since they overlook the trade-off nature of sustainability. This is not an invitation to ignore environmental considerations in sustainable planning since it nestles nicely into calls to change how products are produced, but it misses the reduced consumption requirement largely improved with social sustainability avenues.
Not only are the standards for sustainable progress incomplete, but consumers are fatigued from continuous calls to be environmentally conscious, as evidenced by the shortfalls in Canadian environmental statistics. For example, the number of green spaces has generally (though inconsistently) declined over the past 15 years. Similarly, while biotechnology has supported Canadian agriculture in adopting zero or reduced tillage practices, nearly three-quarters of our garbage is incinerated or landfilled, contributing to the rise in greenhouse gas emissions since 2005. Therefore, if environmental sustainability is the priority (as is frequently advertised), we need to do much better than increasing environmental spending or else risk lengthening the list of benign or useless (i.e. improperly incentivized for change) environmental policies.
Agricultural sustainability is not a one-fits-all fix; there are numerous available practices designed to fit the farm and its ecoregion-specific considerations. The resource intensity of agricultural production suggests the necessity of advanced environmental consideration in policy, but how dominant that portion is in decision-making is a major determinant of whether the action is agriculturally or environmentally sustainable. In the agrifood industry, social and environmental trade-offs create a loop (Figure 1) as food spending and availability are heavily influenced by the public’s opinions/perceptions, which are informed by the companies and brands which they patron.
Given these technicalities, Canadian farmers feel unsupported by policy, which tends to prioritize the environmental weaknesses independent of farm feasibility or the farmers who better understand the productive space. Such partially describes the vitriol toward sustainability targets designed for the industry, which have been criticized for ignoring what progress is being/has been made by farmers and market limitations in response to international supply chain disruptions. Unfortunately, given trends in public (agri)sustainability comprehension, Canadian farm populations, and the status of agrifood infrastructure, policy efficacy is unlikely to improve in a timely fashion. Better inclusion of the farming community in sustainability consultation could improve the impression that the policy is inefficient and apathetic towards farmers. Doing so, however, requires a collective mindset shift not currently present in the channels that could make a change.
Environmental progress is one of the easiest avenues for improving sustainability simply because of the options. Over-prioritizing of the environment, however, comes at the expense of long-term financial feasibility, contingency planning for emergent shocks, and societal necessities. While not a guaranteed barrier to resilience, it risks us experiencing global consequences later opposed to overcoming or preventing them now. Improved sustainability requires action; before starting, it is important to holistically understand where our effort is best spent to be effective, now and at the end of the project. Sustainability progress is recognising that sometimes our effort isn’t best spent in ecological spaces.
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