ISSP Recap

The International Society of Sustainability Professionals is opening a chapter in Indonesia, and we were lucky enough to go to their inaugural event. It included a number of TED-styled talks (in Indonesian, of course, but we made sure to have a translator for the presentations) and ended with a cross-sectoral debate on what sustainability is, how it can be achieved, and what each stakeholders' roles are. The panel included Liana Bratasida, head of the supervisory board of the ISSP, Sofyan Wanandi, head of the Indonesian Entrepreneurs Association, a representative of the Walhi NGO that focuses on environmental issues, Prof. Dr. Bambang Shergi Laksmono, Dean of the social and political faculty of the University of Indonesia and finally Dr. Emil Salim, the head of the presidential advisory board of the Republic of Indonesia who we had the pleasure of meeting and discussing our project with (more to come on this later).

The day started in true Indonesian time, two hours late, with an introduction into how sustainable development can be carried out through a new vision, the triple bottom line; people, planet, profit - something we're all too familiar with. In the build up to Rio+20, a UN conference on sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro between 20th-22nd June, the focus is moving toward making sustainability the status quo, keeping in mind stakeholders across all industries - something that was mimicked in the cross-sectoral debate at the end of the event, which was essentially a mock negotiation on how players from all sides would work together to build up sustainable development.

They presented a new Vision 2050 under the framework of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), where we would have 9 billion people living well within the limits of our planet. The next steps involve identifying the gap between today's world and how we would be living in 2050, and develop a pathway to action on how we get there. What's essential is that all stakeholders' perspectives should be taken into account, thus being able to qualify potential opportunities that exist in order to achieve this goal. One of the great things that was brought up was resource and impact decoupling; having high economic development but using resources as efficiently as possible.

Next we had a representative of the Ministry of Environment give a speech on how the younger generation (us) are getting in line with sustainable development, the human right to an adequate environment, and how we should anticipate global issues of poverty and environmental degradation so that we can preemptively strike at them in a collaborative way. This, of course, requires both the political will and courage to emphasize that social and environmental issues matter just as much as economic development, and can actually be tackled in conjunction with economic growth.

Finally, we watched the cross-sectoral debate involving the aforementioned people from all sectors. The discussion was all about how we can think about future development that is more inclusive and contributes to the lives of future generations by not damaging the environment and overusing resources available to us today. It was interesting to see how they all interacted with each other - the government and academic bodies clashing heads the most, with the business sector a very close second. However it was more about how to enforce these sustainable initiatives as there are already laws in place but there is no body to impose them on the private sector. Therefore, there should be more collaborative efforts to monitor these initiatives and stronger leadership in terms of setting an example for the private sector to follow.

All the stakeholders involved criticized the government for not properly running their sustainable development initiatives, and while the government took responsibility, they countered by saying that because there is no proper definition of sustainable development, true success cannot be measured as there are no benchmarks. And that is where we should all start now. This brought us back full-circle to the triple bottom line management strategy for businesses in sustainable development, and an agreement was made that the academicians would promote this approach through schools as well. Stakeholder negotiation success!

Tena listening intently

We had a chance to speak with Dr. Emil after the event. For those of us in the MSE class, he is essentially the Indonesian version of Godfrey. He was quite inspirational and gave some feedback on our project itself, along with an idea for scalable and marketable expansion which we are most certainly going to incorporate into our plan. Details for that are going to be kept under wraps until our final presentation, of course.

All in all, it was a fantastic day of learning, exposure, and networking in preparation for the rest of our trip. Also served as a good reminder of what we are doing, how we are doing it, and most importantly, why we are doing it.