Sustainability isn’t just about saving the environment or doing something ‘green’ to help rebalance or replenish a natural resource. We believe that sustainability is a lifestyle effect when People, Ecology and Businesses have a zero eco-social footprint upon each other. Rather than measuring bottom lines and performances of these 3 entity stakeholders, we measure the sustainability of these 3 entities based on their eco-social footprint indexes and how sustainable those levels may be going forward.

We completely remove the economic or financial factor in our framework as we believe a sustainable lifestyle isn’t about the money. Sustainable businesses can still thrive with sustainable economic revenues while substantially reducing operating overheads over the long run. Hence, putting dollar and cents to an eco-social footprint framework seems highly unethical.

The Eco-Social Footprint

The eco-social footprint measures the direct and indirect impact a stakeholder entity has on the ecology and people (social) at any given location. To measure such impact we have our PPT matrix that measures the Purpose-Processes-Tools for any of the 3 entities. The PPT Matrix provides a quantitative analysis of the eco-social sustainability footprint index of a given entity which actively seeks out to remediate certain elements of the target entity to ensure a positive to zero index. This includes measurements against the other 2 stakeholder entities as well.

An ecology eco-social footprint you say? It may sound weird or confusing but the fact in our world remains obvious. Too much of an unsustainable ecological effort will make things worse off than it already is. Take for example urban farming. One might appreciate the ‘green’ effort by growing crops on building rooftops and empty spaces to help make the concrete jungle green again. We are not against urban farming.

However, think about what happens when such farming methods are unsustainable. Imagine the introduction of unnatural species of plants into the ecosystem and how these will spread and eradicate other original species of plants nearby. Some countries in South East Asia has completely lost its original local species of fruits due to the introduction of similar foreign fruits into the country. Also, imagine the incursion of pests coming into the residential units below. These pests could even be vectors for other unnatural diseases; which in turn could breed new forms of diseases, viruses or bacteria that could gravely harm the human population or other ecological species.

Thus, it is important for every person and businesses to play their role in changing their lifestyle or business operations for a sustainable eco-social footprint for now and into the future.

The 5E’s of Sustainability

Here at the Globales Initiative, we strive to promote our concept of sustainability to our end users and vendors. We believe that the best way to help users change is by using our 5 step sustainability program. From our consulting experience, we emphasize active participation and action rather than annual CSR activities and pledges of vision or mission statements. We help our end users close the gap and engage with each other more closely and actively. Hence for businesses, we help them relate better to their target market customers and supply chain stakeholders while also ensuring that their entire business value-chain ecosystem has a zero negative eco-social footprint on the people and the ecology where they operate. We also note that such changes have also directly and indirectly affected the lifestyle of those stakeholder entities and communities around them unanimously.

We have developed our 5E’s of Sustainability program as a concept or strategy for people or business stakeholders to adopt as their new sustainable lifestyle and or business paradigm. The 5E’s consists of a 5 prong strategy which include Educate, Encourage, Embrace, Engage, and Enable.

The only thing constant about change is change

The Globales Initiative

Educate

The first strategy is to educate the public around the world. This can be done on micro level by educating the user and the user’s stakeholders. If we consider a business entity for the moment, the business owners need to know what sustainability is and what eco-social footprints they may carry upon in any business marketplace. By educating businesses and its stakeholder people about sustainable lifestyles and businesses, their immediate customer and vendor stakeholders will reflect upon their eco-social footprints and change accordingly as well.

Educating the public on a macro level about sustainability and eco-social footprint is crucial for a sustainable effort and effect to generate a lifestyle. Firstly, to clear the air, people and businesses all around the world should understand that sustainability isn’t just about doing something ‘green’ for nature or some CSR activity or trying to replenish or control a given resource. Sustainability is a life-stage that requires active participation from all stakeholders to adapt to change rather than trying to resist change. Heraclitus may have said “the only constant in life is change”. We believe that “the only thing constant about change is change”.

Take climate change for example. Planting more trees doesn’t guarantee a reduction in greenhouse gasses around the world and surely doesn’t guarantee a change for the better in resisting climate change. Climate change is inevitable, whether it is by our hands or by natural universal forces acting upon planet earth, our planet will go through a phase of change like humans do in adolescence.

Unsustainable and unplanned planting of trees may cause soil degradation, elimination of other species and ecosystems, and may provide more fuel for forest fires to occur and create even more greenhouse gasses eventually. The recent forest fires around the world and the amount of smoke and damage inflicted is testament to this paradox. We are not against replanting of trees and seedlings unless they are going to be bulldozed over again by another contractor or developer. We aim for planned sustainable planting of trees that has a positive or zero eco-social footprint.

Properly educating the public about sustainable activities and carefully assessing the amount and type of trees to be planted and its effect on the surrounding ecology and people are rudiments to creating a sustainable lifestyle. It isn’t about planting the fastest growing plants or trees that can be re-harvested for business economic activities. It really is about sustaining a positive or zero eco-social footprint no matter which direction our planet earth is changing for.

Encourage

The next phase is to work with authoritative stakeholders like government agencies to encourage the public to change their lifestyles into sustainable ones with zero eco-social footprint. Rather than using ineffective tactics like sticks and carrots, with adequate education about sustainability, whole communities of people and businesses are more likely to instinctively change by themselves eventually. Authoritative stakeholders need not put economic or autocratic pressure to direct change but simply encourage one another and walk as equals for the common endeavor.

We constantly encourage ourselves and our clients and stakeholders to evolve on their sustainable lifestyles and economic activities. It allows us to share and learn new paradigms and situations to challenge our understanding of eco-social footprints in an ever changing world. We find that people and businesses are strongly encouraged to lead on their sustainability endeavors by themselves, especially once they see the first fruits of their labor.

A major step of encouragement is always the guided expansion of our client stakeholders by us to overseas and beyond. Expanding to different markets and sources globally helps to increase the sustainability of the entity and its resources. We believe that businesses shouldn’t just focus on business continuity only. They should take it further and improve on its sustainability instead as this helps prepare them for perpetuity, even in the change of environments and geo-political differences.

Incidentally by encouraging businesses, its employees immediately feel more secure about their future, positions, roles and responsibilities, and begin contributing more and taking up greater job enlargements. When sustainability becomes the core strategy of a business entity, it imprints the values of sustainability instantly on its followers and supporters who carry these into society and communities.

Embrace

World history may have shaped what the world is today but it doesn’t define where we’re headed for. Embracing change and differences, after all, is part of sustainability itself. Just like in natural ecosystems, there are various different types of species and organisms of different purposes and sizes. Yet a sustainable ecosystem can maintain and correct its own balance. People and businesses are just the same as any organism in an ecosystem. Differences can come from different cultures, traditions and beliefs that discriminate us.

However, in order to achieve positive or zero eco-social footprints, all people and business stakeholders need to embrace each other’s differences and evolve together towards a sustainable lifestyle. So rather than ostracizing one another for what impact they did or would do to the ecology, it would be more effective and efficient to educate, encourage and embrace one another toward better sustainable eco-social footprints as a whole stakeholder community. This includes embracing the weaker or slower entities or communities that need more time and effort to change.

Businesses should embrace the differences within its value and supply chain paradigms in order to improve on their sustainability efforts. Likewise, people should embrace our different demographics, social statuses and lifestyles to work as a community toward achieving sustainable eco-social footprint objectives. And by doing so, people and business stakeholders also have a responsibility to factor and embrace the ecological stakeholders and their eco-social footprint within the stakeholder community.

This is particularly important in communities where humans live seemingly close to predator wildlife and have no sustainable eco-social balance between them. Proper urban planning will help mitigate these issues and help both the wildlife and human population embrace and integrate with each other. Take Australia for example.

Engage

Engaging stakeholders is more than just a CSR activity or two. Engaging stakeholders is an omni-directional value chain system that helps educate, embrace and encourage change among all stakeholder groups. It is one of the most crucial moments for businesses or entities to assess and improve their eco-social footprint in any environment. And by engaging with the other community stakeholder groups, the ideals of sustainable eco-footprints can easily be influenced to other segments of stakeholders including law-makers and authoritative entities.

Engaging also allows the operatives of the business to actively work on their own eco-social footprints themselves. Some businesses allow their staff members to become their ambassadors to engage on social media and participatory media platforms to reach out to all generations of people. And by reaching outwards, these businesses were able to help create a network of support systems and mechanisms with other eco-social businesses for the vulnerable stakeholder groups in their operating environments.

Enable

Social enterprises. Eco-friendly businesses. These are all call signs that doesn’t completely reflect sustainable eco-social footprints for businesses. The most crucial ‘E’ to our sustainability movement is to enable stakeholders. History and colonialism has formed what most of our social economic regimes and mobility systems that educates the young to become skilled workers or employees. Creativity and expressionism has been rudimentally suppressed or eradicated in some country’s education system entirely, creating a void in creative classes and potential.

We like to enable generational stakeholder groups of all industry and classes to sustain the momentum and carry the torch for future generations. It was music, the highest form of creativity and expressionism, that brought European civilizations to greater heights into their new renaissance. Businesses and people should enable different generations to do whatever they desire to add onto or sustain the eco-social footprint now and into the future. Even the special needs and handicapped entities deserve a chance to be enabled.

We believe that by enabling stakeholders globally, the eco-social footprint between all 3 stakeholder entities can be positive and can be sustained further by future enabled generations that follow. Donating monies alone to charity and non-profit organizations is not enabling. Doing something greater alongside them for the long-run enables not just whom they serve to protect or preserve, but also future generations to follow and sustain this enabling effect. And together, we can all help reduce the eco-social footprint for the benefit of tomorrow’s generation and the generation after them.

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