Last week, the Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru, conducted a three-day symposium on “Advancing Sustainability Research and Education” in collaboration with the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina. It was funded by the Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative, Asim Premji&’s Wipro was a co-sponsor through Earthian, its sustainability engagement programme, and they hosted a part of the proceedings in their premises.

Global warming effects were discovered in the 19th century but it was in 1988 that scientists formally confirmed that heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere, released by humans and industry, were causing the environment grave damage. The same year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up under the United Nations and in 1992 governments of the world came together in Rio de Janeiro to decide on what was to be done. One of the first things decided was that all countries maintain National Greenhouse Gas Inventories to help monitor progress. 

The next accord was the Kyoto Conference of 1995, where emission control targets were set, at least for developed nations, which included Australia, the European Union and some others. These were valid, in the first instance, from 2007 to 2012. The targets have been refined and detailed at different conferences and at the next major international meet, to take place later this year in Paris, more specific, comprehensive measures to contain the global rise in temperature within two degrees Celsius may be decided. This limit is seen as the level of warming that people and the environment can accommodate, with reasonable adaptation.

But what is alarming is that for all the conferences, parleys and the mass of data collected by scientists, the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere is apace. Much of the reductions reported by developed countries is misleading as they have reduced manufacture within their own borders but have shifted industry to other places, like China or India. Underdeveloped countries think the West has “recognized” their capability and is “investing”, and manufacture and consumption are peaking. The earth is seen to have clearly breached three of the 10 planetary boundaries set by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the last report of the IPCC is emphatic that the two-degree Celsius target is unrealistic, at best. It may be more optimism than reason to hold that there is still a window of opportunity till 2030 to get things under control.

Business steps in
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development is an association of over 200 international companies, which thinks private enterprise can and must supplement the role of governments in dealing with climate change. It then provides a platform for business to share knowledge and best practices, and motivation to pursue sustainable development. At first glance, it may be ironic that profit-driven commerce, which leads the charge against the environment, should act to rein itself in. But business does have a vested interest and can act as a powerful driver of reform. “Business is responsible too… you cannot do good business in a failed planet,” says WBCSD president Peter Becker.

ACTION2020 is a programme devised by the WBCSD to apply business solutions to attain environmental and societal targets. “Through collaboration toward common goals, business can address some of the critical… problems the world faces, while strengthening their own resilience to global challenges,” the programme says. Business schools, which train managers in using formal scientific techniques to isolate and overcome challenges of resources, personnel and markets, have been pressed to use their competence to launch business as a positive force.

Academic research is counted on to devise solutions that are measurable so that we know they are working; scalable so that they can be positioned to have global impact; and replicable to enable collaboration of different sectors. And most of all, solutions that are good for business, by redesign of processes, supply chains, consumer preferences, so that having the least impact on the environment still makes business sense.

IIM, Bengaluru, and the Kenan-Flagler Business School, which have run a sustainability module in their MBA programmes since 2000, partnered to get the movement going in India. The symposium at Bengaluru aimed to showcase both research that would impact sustainability concerns as well as curriculum content in management institutes to sensitise managers and society of the need for new thinking. The participants were teachers and researchers from leading management institutes, universities, centres of economic research, in India and abroad, engineering colleges, stakeholders like the Forrest Institute and other interested sections, communicators, even a theatre person.

The papers presented covered different areas of sustainability and social responsibility in the working of industries, research into sustainability at stages of the supply chain, using sustainability for brand equity, effectiveness of international accords, public policy, energy efficiency, case studies of interventions to promote indigenous, rural and low income industries, social equity and the social web. And one of the three days of the symposium was dedicated to ways and efficacy of including sustainability as a component of management education.

On a realistic note, the director of IIM, Indore, emphasised that his institute was neither drawn by the “pull” of the industry to train students in sustainability nor driven by a “push” of students seeking such training. This undeniable truth, in fact, started the problem and hence the need and urgency to open eyes in industry and society. At the same time, a completed study that was circulated to participants was specifically to the effect that in a sample of the leading ICT companies worldwide, limited though the sector is, it was in the most successful of the companies that the highest incidence of sustainability issues engaging the attention of senior managers and the board was found.

The writer can be contacted at – simplescience@gmail.com