The global polycrisis

This section will discuss the global polycrisis that corporate sustainability seeks to address, highlighting the transdisciplinary nature of this crisis, which brings the complexity of the transition to a sustainable future into focus.

Expounding corporate sustainability necessitates an examination of the changing context in which businesses operate, and the effects of human activities on the natural and social

environments in which we are embedded. The narrow focus on shareholder value has resulted in corporations seeking short-term gain (Bansal & DesJardine, 2014) at the expense of the systems in which they are embedded. Corporations are increasingly criticised for no longer being fit-for-purpose, having unsustainable business philosophies and roles in society (Gladwin et al., 1995; Shrivastava, 1994, 1995); despite being “designed to facilitate economic

development, the corporate form now threatens human survival” (Metcalf & Benn, 2012, p.

195). This global polycrisis will now be explored as the wider transdisciplinary context of corporate sustainability.

Until recently, the activities of humankind have had a marginal impact on the dynamics of earth systems, which historically were regional at most. An exponential increase in global population coupled with the burning of fossil fuel for energy since the industrial revolution, has given rise to a new geological age, the Anthropocene - proposed by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen (McNeill

& Engelke, 2014). The use of fossil fuel energy enabled humans to drive earth systems “well outside of (their) normal operating range” (Steffen et al., 2004, p. 81). There has been general agreement for some time that “we live in the Anthropocene, a human-dominated geological time unit” (Lewis & Maslin, 2015, p. 145). The Anthropocene was only officially recognised by the International Geological Congress in Cape Town in August 2016.

The unusually stable climatic conditions of the Holocene, beginning at the end of the last glacial period (8000 BC), allowed for the development of agriculture and civilisation. However, since around 1945 localised impacts have created a situation in which human action has become the key factor governing essential biogeochemical cycles such as the carbon and nitrogen cycles (McNeill & Engelke, 2014). Key to understanding the interaction between human societies and environmental change is the conceptualisation of the earth as a “single system within which the biosphere is an active, essential component” (Steffen et al., 2004, p.

1). The theory of the earth as a self-regulating complex system was first proposed as the Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock & Margulis, 1974), thereby emphasising the importance of adopting a holistic perspective in addressing sustainability issues.

Figure 2.1 displays the multiplicity of indicators of socio-economic development, which have been globally aggregated (Steffen, Broadgate, Deutsch, Gaffney, & Ludwig, 2015). The exponential rise in the graphs mostly accelerate post-1945.

Figure 2.1: Socio-economic trends

Source: Reprinted from Steffen et al. (2015, p. 84)

The crisis of overconsumption is highlighted by what has been termed the great acceleration (Steffen et al., 2015). Prominent scientists have been raising the alarm since the 1970s when Meadows published the “Limits to Growth” for the Club of Rome (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens, 1972). This great acceleration is unlikely, however, to last long due to natural limits being reached (McNeill & Engelke, 2014).

The great acceleration has resulted in devastating consequences for earth systems. The earth is now in the sixth mass extinction period in history (Kolbert, 2014), with the cumulative effects

of an exponential increase in world population; growing climate instability (Swilling & Annecke, 2012); degradation of 60% of the world’s ecosystem services (Millenium Ecosystem

Assessment, 2005) and almost half of top soils; and 90% of fishing stocks being over- or fully fished (von Weizsaecker & Wijkman, 2017). Most recently, scientists have cautioned that the carbon budget imbalance¹ continues to increase, as total emissions are projected to grow by 2.7% in 2018, with industrial emissions of carbon dioxide hitting a record high of 37.1 billion tonnes this year (Barbero et al., 2018). Human impact on earth systems is extensive. Figure 2.2 displays indicators of the functioning and structure of the earth system (Steffen et al., 2015).

The magnitude of socio-economic and earth system trends has resulted in what has become known as super-wicked problems. Wicked problems involve multiple interacting systems, are characterised by uncertainties which occur at social and institutional levels and have no definitive formulation (Mertens, 2015). Wicked problems are symptoms of other problems, and this interconnection means that solutions are partial and better or worse, rather than right or wrong (Rittel & Webber, 1973).

The concept of “super-wicked” was introduced to “characterise a new class of global environmental problem” (Levin, Cashore, Bernstein, & Auld, 2012, p. 124). Super-wicked problems can be distinguished from wicked problems by the following characteristics: (i) absence of central authority, (ii) time is running out, (iii) people trying to resolve the problem are also contributing to causing it, and (iv) policies addressing the problem discount the future in an irrational manner (Levin et al., 2012).

1 The carbon budget imbalance is the “difference between the estimated total emissions and the estimated changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere” (Barbero et al.,

Figure 2.2: Earth system trends

Source: Reprinted from Steffen et al. (2015, p. 87)

Seen from this perspective, the polycrisis as a super-wicked problem is both complex and transdisciplinary in nature (Wells, 2013), emphasising the importance of complex thinking in sustainable development and corporate sustainability, which was eloquently expressed by the recipients of the Blue Planet Prize:

“The ability to do has vastly outstripped the ability to understand. As a result, civilisation is faced with a perfect storm of problems, driven by overpopulation, overconsumption by the rich, the use of environmentally malign technologies and gross inequalities…The

a global society infected by the irrational belief that physical economies can grow forever” (Brundtland et al., 2012, p. 3).