A Thought on Sustainability

For pundits and apprentices alike, social innovation requires clarity on the issue of sustainability. In order to add social value or have a positive social change, an innovation must observe the triple bottom line of financial, social and environmental sustainability. A myriad of examples are out there of innovations that appear to add social value but in the long run they do not: subprime mortgages, easy access to employment in fast-food restaurants, and corn-based ethanol. The way to test their sustainability is to project an innovation to a global dimension and conduct a cost-benefit analysis of its consequences: recession, obesity, and high price of a staple food like corn which feeds tens of millions south of Rio Grande. The fact that hundreds of millions of people in developed countries have a very comfortable lifestyle and human development indicators show significant progress over the course of a century, does not imply that this development has been achieved in a sustainable manner. In fact, it hasn't: if every human being on the planet had consumption habits as Americans (or rich people around the world, for the matter), we would need 5.4 planets Earth to support our lifestyle (National Geographic State of the Earth 2010, p. 2). [For more on the human footprint on the planet, see here] Therefore, much of the social and technical innovation that has thrusted wealthy nations to improve their standards of living has come at a cost to everyone living in the planet. So far, the problem is not as grave as it will be when China and India -a third of the world's population- reach such levels of consumption. At the pace they have been growing this is expected to happen in the coming decades. This problem adds a constraint to social entrepreneurship, as it does not suffice to add social value, but it must be maintained in the long run as well. Do the test yourself: take any innovation, project its scalability at a global level, and if its financial, social or environmental costs exceed its benefits, then it may need a bit more thinking.