By Karl-Henrick Robert
review by Matthew Barg
The Natural Step Story chronicles the adventures of Karl-Henrick Robert, founder of the Natural Step (TNS), and his colleagues and conspirators to establish a framework to be used to pursue sustainability through building consensus. Robert, who began his career as a medical doctor, drew on his science background to approach the issue of environmental degradation. Using systems thinking and communication and metaphorical tools, Robert succeeded in developing a framework for decision making that became successful within the Swedish business and academic communities and has since been exported around the world.
Beginning in 1988, Robert began preparing a manifesto which was to be mailed to every household in Sweden and would attempt to explain principles of the system in which humanity exists. In order to do this, Robert doggedly pursued support for his task through consensus from his fellow scientific colleagues, the Swedish business community, the government and the Swedish monarchy. The manifesto itself went through 21 drafts before it had the support of 50 scientists, all of whom were pleased with it. By progressively gaining agreement, he could take the success of each consecutive partnership on to the next. Thus, in presentation he could say that, “the King and the government and I….” In the end, the document that Sweden found in their mailboxes in 1989 had the support of a very large and influential segment of Sweden’s population. The dialogue that began with this initial mailing has been ongoing since.
The Natural Step basis its framework in the reality of science, deriving systems principles from an understanding of cell biology and the laws of thermodynamics.
•System Condition 1: “In the sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust.”
•System Condition 2: “In the sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of substances produced by society.”
•System Condition 3: “In the sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing degradation by physical means.”
•System Condition 4: “In the sustainable society, human needs are met worldwide.”
Because the framework operates from this clear definition of sustainability, it becomes easier to address possible upstream impacts of our actions today. For instance, if the inputs that are being used in production processes are not commonly found in nature, or not found in nature at all, such as mercury or CFC’s, it is necessary to attempt to substitute these for inputs that are more common and therefore more easily absorbed into the system, or for inputs that are not persistent in nature. This definition also provides a goal that we can be more accountable to because, with the exception of System Condition 4, they are not based on vague references to “needs.” Using subjective terms in definitions does tend to diffuse their influence due to the subsequent necessity to define the terms of the definition. Unfortunately System Condition 4 does use “needs” in conveying its intention. To a certain degree this is necessary, but it is also the System Condition that receives the least attention in the course of the book, perhaps because of the arbitrary nature of the definition.
In order to carry the dialogue based on these system conditions to the community at large, TNS employs some specific tools for communicating the ideas and the need to recognize them. The first metaphor that Robert employs is relating the systems conditions to a tree. The tree’s trunk and branches are the system’s (any system’s) framework of basic principles, while the leaves are the more specific details of the system. Understanding of the importance of the “leaves” depends on understanding the “trunk and branches.” The beauty of a system depends on both of the components.
The Funnel is Robert’s second metaphor. It is used to describe the decline of the ecosystem’s capacity to support business-as-usual and life itself. In illustration, if we do not curb our behaviours we will run up against the sides of a funnel as our ecosystem’s available capacity declines. Ecosystem capacity is referred to as our life-sustaining resources, not as might easily be supposed, availability of non-renewable resources. The life-sustaining resources are sustaining negative effects due to the deposit of waste products from non-renewable resources being deposited into our environment. As the funnel narrows, so does the globally declining productivity of renewable resource per capita - each unit of production from nature is requiring increased levels of resource input as pollution and population are increasing.
These metaphors are the manner in which TNS tries to communicate the need for sustainability. As expected, there is opposition to the ideas, but TNS believes in the fundamental merit of the principles its framework is based on, therefore they take a positive and open position in response to opposition. TNS is based on the philosophy that a dialogue, which is friendly and respectful, can be used to discover what, “we need not fight about.” In taking this approach, Robert describes three dialogue tools that TNS uses to use opposition as a constructive part of the dialogue.
•“The simplicity without reduction strategy.” This strategy involves breaking a party’s opposition down to a basic level so that complexities of the details do not confuse the issue. In this way it is easier to come to agreement and not degrade the nature of the issue.
•“The yes, and technique.” The ‘yes’ is non-confrontational, thereby not putting the opponent on the defensive continuously and also serves to acknowledge any points they brought up that are valid. The ‘and’ is the means by which the opposition is expanded into the dialogue to pursue better understanding of the issues. The dialogue remains positive, searching out the problems involved and how they can be mitigated.
•“The asking advice attitude.” An extension of the above technique except advice is requested rather than expanding it into the larger dialogue. This still maintains the positivism of the discussion and engages the opponent in a way that they become accountable to the process as well.
Once the dialogue has been opened and consensus has been reached on the system principles for sustainability, it is time to try to apply these principles in a discussion of how they apply to the industry or company at hand (IKEA, Swedish McDonald’s and the Swedish nuclear industry are some of the case studies discussed in the book). The Natural Step’s philosophy of being positive, non-confrontational and consensus building sets them as the facilitator of this discussion. Their role is not to pass judgement or try to pass themselves off as experts on all of the nuances of the industry concerned. Instead, TNS asks guiding questions to try to draw out the expertise that already exists in the room. Roberts makes a statement early on in the book that, “it was becoming clearer and clearer to [him] that already existing knowledge really was enough to induce substantial change, and that most people only need to be allowed into the dialogue to be prepared to act.” This is the sum of this final step in the TNS framework.
This process has been coined A, B, C, D Analysis at TNS. ‘A’ is the initial introduction of the TNS framework where the funnel metaphor and the system conditions are presented. ‘B’ is a discussion of what the state of the organization is at present. Questions are asked of the organization that frame the systems conditions it terms of how business is currently being conducted.
Step ‘C’ does some creative analysis of what the organisation would look like in a sustainable society. As with ‘B,’ questions are asked of the organization related to the systems conditions, but this time it is to hypothesize about how the company could successfully apply them and thus contribute to a sustainable society. This step employs a tool called ‘backcasting.’ The opposite of forecasting, backcasting refers to a decision making process where the starting point is sometime in the future. In this sense, it is imagined that at that future date, the organization will be sustainable. Decisions are then made that facilitate arriving at this sustainable state.
‘D’ is the step where the measures that are suggested in step ‘C’ are prioritized into a strategy for starting to move the organization towards contributing to a sustainable society. Priority is based on three considerations; direction, platform and “low-hanging fruit.” Direction is fairly self-explanatory. In light of the goal to move towards sustainability, does the strategy facilitate this? The platform refers to the technical flexibility of the strategy. Sustainability is a long-term goal and to expect large businesses and industries to switch over instantly is unacceptable. However, an organization can begin implementing technologies that allow them to progressively incorporate more and new measures for sustainability. An inflexible platform may result in another large investment in technological change further down the road. The “low-hanging fruit” refers to that ever present business concerns, return on investment (ROI). Sustainability initiatives that provide a good ROI are easier to get implementation support by business, thus, the “low-hanging fruit” is that which can be picked most easily.
As described, the merits of The Natural Step are obvious; clearly defined principles for sustainability and a process that emphasizes consensus building through an intelligent, non-confrontation dialogue. Perhaps the most severe criticism of the TNS framework is that it is voluntary and even organizations that invite TNS to meet with them are not bound to follow the strategies that the brainstorming session comes up with. However, business does seem to prefer voluntary initiatives and by pursuing sustainability in partnership with TNS, a company can benefit, not least by the strengthening of their brand value, which is an enormous asset to corporations. These organizations that buy into sustainability and The Natural Step are likely well ahead of government regulations and are a sterling example of how voluntary initiatives can work. It would be fortuitous then if governments were willing to give a gentle push to some of the slower organizations through regulations to pursue strategies as laid out by TNS.
The Natural Step process developed organically from the thoughts of one concerned cancer researcher in Sweden and has now moved into the rest of the world. Where those first steps were fuelled by passion and desire, these new ones are more formal. There is PhD research being done on TNS in universities around the world and a Master’s program that focuses specifically on TNS in Sweden. The TNS is still not financially stable, even with all of this support; in Canada, it is a registered charity. But as Karl-Henrick Robert puts it, “the idea to study what we can agree on and then to base decisions on such knowledge is so good that it mustn’t fail.”
Karl Henrick-Robert (2002). The Natural Step Story: Seeding a Quiet Revolution. Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society
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