Redefining sustainability through the lens of a safety professional

1. Through Health, Safety and Environment to Sustainability – Redefining Sustainability
Sustainability as a theme has attracted a lot of attention in the academic and corporate world and
has changed the way we live and work, in our communities and with our communities. But
controversies still exist around what sustainability truly is. Consequently, there has been a huge
focus on measuring sustainability and the impact corporations have on the environment and our
communities. But this approach has seen heavy reliance on the use of metrics e.g. Global Reporting
Index used by most corporations to report on sustainability.
Although progress has been made in the sustainability space but as a disciple of sustainability (an
individual who believes that sustainability is the message to be preached globally in the 21st
century), I have chosen to look at sustainability differently – beyond counting numbers. My
exposure to health and safety management: as a young professional with a science and engineering
background has enriched and reinforced my view on sustainability.
The purpose of this article is to get professionals (especially leaders of corporations, higher
institutions and governments) to rethink sustainability beyond numbers and a mere construct for
business profitability, academic arguments and green-wash and to focus on the reality of the impact
on our communities.
It is one thing to work extremely hard when you obtain results; it is another thing entirely to stay
put and be passionate about what you do when your impact is far reaching - beyond your
immediate environment. This article focuses on health and safety performance in the context of
sustainability: as one of the means to a sustainable future. Health and Safety performance is
referenced here as one of the fastest growing areas in the corporate community where the benefits
of sustainable development can be translated to the larger community.
As a young professional, I have observed with keen interest how industry best practices have
been/are incorporated into projects to set standards for future projects and create better working
and living standards – beyond the walls of corporations to the larger community. Consequently, in
redefining sustainability, I have looked at the widely referenced definition of sustainability by the
Brutland Commission in the context of timescales, and what the future holds.
In 1987, Brutland Commission defined sustainability as “development that meets the needs of the
present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’’ – in
order to reflect our common future: a situation where our current and past activities determine
whether there is hope for future generations. But in recent times, scholars in industry and the
academic world have argued about the true meaning of sustainability. These arguments have often
led to diverse patterns of thinking, attempted to clearly explain how sustainability is understood in
reality.
Like every theme in sustainability, let us redefine the pathway to a sustainable future by taking a
snapshot of how health and safety related activities by corporate entities can change our
communities – by utilizing the idea of timescales: in terms of what happened in the past... What is

2. happening now..., and what will happen in the future.... In the paragraphs that follow, I will attempt
to look at the subject of sustainability in different timeframes.
If we take a quick journey down memory lane, at how corporations have metamorphosed (changed
their corporate behavior over time) and the lessons learned from past unsustainable corporate
practices, we can start creating a clearer picture of our journey to a sustainable future – an
approach that provides a basis for an urgent need to re-evaluate how we interface with our
environment and communities. It therefore makes sense to assume that in redefining sustainability,
we must understand the trends of corporate behavior in order to avoid those mistakes that brought
us into the current global environmental challenges facing our communities.
So let’s have a brief look at the journey......
Legacies of the past....
Our past was plagued by poor government and corporate practices (although a necessary evil): a
product of insufficient knowledge, lack of regulations (poor in some cases) and unsustainable
corporate practices. Hence, we can reference historical evidence of behaviors where corporations
exploited environmental resources without fully understanding or managing the impacts of their
activities.
Two excellent examples of past significant environmental and community impact in North America
are the tragedies of Hanford nuclear production in the US and the giant gold mine in Northwest
Territories, Canada - where opportunities for safety and environmental impacts were completely
taken off the table or even thrown with the wind at the point of executing those projects.
Consequently, these inadequacies and other similar issues left our communities with a legacy of
social and environmental challenges.
In simple terms, we took tools to the environment in order to obtain our livelihood and sustain our
survival without knowing or in some cases neglecting the impact of our actions (we became
enemies of our source of survival). And in most cases, we didn’t pay too much attention to the
obvious fact: that our past is tied to our future and those of the unborn generations. As a
consequence, our past now looks us at the face with legacies of our actions and inactions; that
fortunately now provides us with opportunities to change the future and rewrite our history.
The Present- a gift for the future
The present always offers us opportunities not to repeat the evils of the past for the future to own.
As a sustainable future seeking people, we must leverage on the opportunities that the present
brings in order to strategically define the future and reduce the impacts from our present and past
activities. Thankfully, newer technologies and improved understanding of industrial work
processes have resulted in a shift toward development of industry standards and safer working
conditions (at least by popular global best practices) for work. Unfortunately, these approaches
have sometimes left us with more complexities than providing the desired sustainable solutions.
But, we now recognize how corporations critically impact the health and stability of our
environment.

3. In the corporate world, we now have defined measures such as annual sustainability reports of
corporations (a summary of the social, environment and economic performance) to estimate how
corporations affect our environment and communities - an approach to sustainability measurement
that encourages companies to focus on sustainability reporting by relying on numbers to interpret
sustainability.
For example, we are familiar with some of the commonly used indicators of sustainability: total
recordable incident frequency (TRIF), greenhouse gases emissions (GHG), human rights,
investment in community and other requirements of global reporting initiatives (GRI) that are
represented with quantitative measures. Unfortunately, reported sustainability figures only
indicate sustainability reporting performances rather than actual sustainability performance of
companies - as most ranking organizations currently rate companies based on how well they are
reporting against reporting standards rather than the actual or cumulative impact of their activities
on our communities.
While it makes sense to quantify some environmental and economic impacts with numbers, it is
difficult to interpret social indicators of sustainability such as subjective individual well-being and
societal values using numbers; it is even more challenging to estimate environmental impacts
where it is difficult to put a value on the environment (our perception of environmental value differ
among individuals and societies). And importantly, sustainability is not a question of numbers; it is
a question of people. This is because sustainability indicators (as currently prescribed) are defined
to represent the health and safety of individuals, environment and our communities.
What the future holds: The Journey
Let us reflect on the words of Sir Albert Einstein: “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of
thinking that created them”. Our current environmental and societal challenges are testimonies of
the fact that: if we do not develop sustainable ways to exploit the earths’ resources and protect our
communities, we cannot guarantee a sustainable future (since our future is a mirror of our past as
evident in our current environmental challenges).
Since we now know that corporations play a critical role in the survival of our communities and
society, a giant step towards a sustainable future is to positively impact our environment and
communities through corporate activities – especially by those corporations that actively exploit
and mine our environmental resources. And in doing this, we must ensure we do not follow the
same patterns and thinking of our past unsustainable approaches.
There are now proven strategies such as prevention through design (PtD) and efficient safety
control and management systems to promote zero harm in the work environment - these new
strategies (although not hundred percent perfect but proactively manage risk and hazards)
promote performance-based safety culture and individual well-being rather than complying with
barely minimum standards.
Looking at the timescales and the benefit that the present offers us, it is safe to say that if we can
promote zero-harm within the workplace. It therefore makes sense to extend that acquired safety
culture from our workplace to our homes and communities. The new approaches to project

4. management and resource exploitations are opportunities for corporations to rethink sustainability
by solving societal challenges while solving industry challenges through proven industry best
practices and technologies. Such developments are required if we must build a sustainable
environment in a world where the future of the environment and community wellbeing and
integrity are closely knitted with corporate behavior.
Form the above, it is obvious that Health and Safety is one area that has attracted the workforce in a
manner that brings everybody on board and gives us the opportunity to talk about how we can
protect the lives of people in the workplace, the environment and communities. This is because
safety makes sense and it is one of the core safe nets of life that individuals and communities desire.
In closing, it is safe and valid to assert that defining true sustainability does not (and should not)
depend solely on the number of reporting standard requirements that companies comply with. It
goes farther than that. Sustainability is clearly a way of life and a means to a sustainable future. And
since corporations have become too powerful, they have a role to play if we want to make progress
and take the right path to a sustainable future for the unborn generations. If there is any hope for a
sustainable future, there is no better time to act than now by promoting healthier, safer and
stronger communities and a safety conscious culture through the workplace. We must look for new
ways to preserve survival capabilities for future generations by focusing on sound technologies and
management solutions – those practices will build a healthier and safer environment. By
implementing this strategy and promoting such level of thinking, communities will now be
empowered to meet future challenges from acquired sound health and safety culture that will
empower individuals and communities and protect the environment – this is what true
sustainability is about.