As one of the most reputable universities in Los Angeles, the University of Southern California is known for its beautiful campus, strong academic and athletics programs. It is not surprising that the university will be hosting several sporting events during the Los Angeles Olympics of 2028. After Carol Folt rose as the new president of USC, she was transparent about sustainability being one of the main foundations of her administration, hence the implementation of the Sustainability Framework, with the due date coinciding with the Olympics.
According to environmental scientist Pamela Matson, “Sustainability is the ability to meet the needs of people and their communities and organizations, not just in the near term, but over the long term.” (Tucker, 2018). Specifically, she points out, sustainability is “not just about technology, the environment or ‘being green,’ ” as many of us may have associated the word with. Analyzing Matson’s definition, sustainability includes at least three categories: social (“the needs of people and their communities and organizations,”) (Tucker, 2018), economic (the main factor considered in our current society, for example, is money), and environmental (we must preserve our finite resources to help future generations survive and thrive.)
However, in today’s daily discussion, sustainability seems to refer exclusively to environmental protection. In October and November 2022, I conducted a series of surveys to get individuals’ perspective of the word “sustainability.” When asked “what comes to mind when you think of the word sustainability,” 80% of the responses centered around the environmental aspect – the most popular responses were recycling trash, climate change, and the environment. However, when asked to state some sustainable habits they have or want to have, the percentage
of responses related strictly to the environment rose to 100% (taking short showers, recycling, avoiding plastic bags and bottles, etc). The survey results show that most people tend to associate the definition of sustainability with the environment already, even if it is implicit, as seen in the second portion of the survey, despite defining the concept similarly to Matson.
The narrow perception of sustainability is socially constructed. For one thing, social activism surrounding us, specifically in politically progressive California, seems to equal sustainability with environmental issues, which is trending. People want to feel included in trends, as if they are a part of something greater, so recycling trash and carpooling suddenly become selfless actions to save the environment. People also like to show others this selflessness, which explains the results of an UC Berkeley and UC San Diego field study regarding hotels effectiveness in sustainability. The study focused on how hotels could motivate guests to do their part and reuse their towels to save water, and when the hotel gave guests a specific commitment – an actual statement that they will do their best to reuse towels – and a certified green pin, the percentage of guests committed rose from around 30% to 80% (Goldstein, 2008). In addition to that, when questioned about sustainable applications in their lives, people tend to search for absolute selfless responses (like the ones seen in the survey), than social or economic sustainable habits, like caring for your well-being, or donating time/capital to NGOs, for example. People are actually more sustainable than they think, they just don’t understand this.
The same narrowing perception can be found in the media representation of the USC Sustainability Framework (“The Framework”). In fact “The Framework” dresses sustainability-related issues in five different categories: Education, Research, Equity and Inclusion, Operations, and Engagement. Each sector contains a thorough agenda from now to
2028 to make sure USC achieves a set sustainable goal, which is divided into subsections. There are 27 goals in total, ranging from adding 10 new courses about sustainability annually to publishing annual reports on operational sustainability, for example.
When reporting USC’s framework to the general public, most news media only focus on the environmental aspect. Daily Trojan, the school newspaper, starts with the keyword of “sustainability,” but soon follows with the word “environment,” as a synonym. The author titles the article “USC announces sustainability goals”, and in the first sentence, refers to the framework as “environmental framework for 2028” (Harrington, 2022). The author also only presents environmental goals, like zero waste and fully switching to LED lights. In another article, for the Association of American Universities, the author has a similar use of the word sustainability to address environmental topics. The title of the article is “Goal set to make USC carbon neutral by 2025”, and introduces the framework as an effort because President Folt recognizes “the need for leadership in the race to confront climate change” and continues by stating “the university will rapidly advance sustainable practices” (Medzerian, 2022).
A historical factor underlines the narrowing definition of sustainability and hence people’s limited perception. All the major global sustainability frameworks – The Paris Agreement (2016), Environmental, Social, and Governance, or the ESG (1960), and Task-force on Climate-related Disclosures (2015) – originated in the European context, in which environmental issues were much more urgent than social and economic ones. Because of the early development of most European countries, their social and economic sectors thrive in comparison to the environment, so the focus of most frameworks and initiatives was the environmental issues, especially in the early 2000s. During this time period, the GDP of
European countries and the US was very stable, and already very high ranked (Stelsel, 2012). These countries had GDPs growing at a normal rate, while some developing Asian, African, and Latin American countries were increasing exponentially, due to the Recession and the 2008 Financial Crisis. Despite a sudden increase in GDP, countries like China, India, Nigeria, and Brazil were now facing new problems; social issues started rising, especially regarding working situations for the lower class.
The problem of creating frameworks for developed places like Europe and America is that once they are applied into a larger scale (other underdeveloped or developing countries) is that it doesn’t have the same impact, because, in comparison to Europe and USA, the social and economic structure is weaker. Those three topics are obviously all extremely important for any country, and for the world as a whole, but different countries have different priorities due to unique scenarios. After understanding this historical factor, it is easier to comprehend the background of people’s perception of sustainability and how it relates more to the environment than to anything else. There are sustainable initiatives that have an emphasis on social sustainability, however, like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but they are too broad and lagging behind in terms of implementation, if compared to environmental frameworks and initiatives.
Implementing this kind of initiative in countries less socioeconomically stable is more challenging and often less effective. Using the example of the work environment mentioned earlier, when countries start to grow at an abnormal rate, they generate many more jobs, and most of them to the lower social classes, which often get lower salaries. During the early 2000s, large industries (Nike, Zara, Adidas, etc) invested in factories all over the world, expecting to get
maximum profit out of this situation – with very little care for the impact this had on each country. Employees would work long hours to get paid minimum wage in terrible work conditions. Now when bringing environmental frameworks into this situation, the first thing that is demanded to change is the environmental impact these factories have (carbon production, waste, energy consumption), which is still sustainable, but not as urgent as the work condition situation – considered social sustainability.
A circular way of thinking is reinforced when the news media replaces the concept of sustainability with that of the environment. As mentioned earlier in my survey (2022), 20% of the population is able to see the broad definition of sustainability. But if most mainstream media keep feeding the general public the equation of sustainability and environment, the equation only becomes a sort of culture and hard to think otherwise.
This cycle creates yet another problem. In a globalized world, it is important to debate different ideas and find solutions to achieve common goals. Any political party has to be debated and evaluated from different perspectives, because it is dangerous for all the policymakers to see things through the same lens. Sustainability is no different, but the thing is, when we limit the concept to simply environmental matters, we use only logic and data to support our claims, there is no personal connection to the topic. And when there is no personal connection, there are no different sides of the topic, because personal connections lead to different conclusions and ideas all derived from the same topic. A clear example of the negative impact this has is the major federal environmental policies implemented in Oregon that backfired; they “have fallen far short of their goals or even inflicted harm on the environment.” (Yonk and Simmons, 2016) mainly because the consequences of the policies implementation were not considered. The attempt to
decrease water and air pollution did not consider the negative impacts of the means to achieve such a goal, which led to an unsatisfactory result and generation of yet another problem in the same topic.
Acknowledging this is crucial as the first step towards the deconstruction of the misconception of sustainability. The media has one of the most important roles in this issue, especially now that information is so accessible. With the power to inform people, there is a responsibility of eliminating the most biases as possible and making people think about the topic being accessed. With such pressing and growing topics like sustainability, the impact the media has is unmeasurable, which makes the responsibility of expanding perspectives and really prioritizing informing people very significant.
Works Cited
Tucker, Danielle. “What Is Sustainability? A Definition by Environmental Scientist Pamela Matson.” Stanford Earth, 21 May 2018,
https://news.stanford.edu/2017/04/06/sustainability-conversation-stanford-earth-dean-pamela-ma tson/#:~:text=Sustainability%20is%20about%20the%20ability,but%20over%20the%20long%20t erm.
“2028 Framework.” USC Sustainability, 26 Sept. 2022,
https://sustainability.usc.edu/assignment-earth/2028-framework
Harrington, Grace. “USC Announces Sustainability Goals.” Daily Trojan, 22 Apr. 2022, https://dailytrojan.com/2022/04/22/usc-announces-sustainability-goals/ .
“Goal Set to Make USC Carbon Neutral by 2025.” Association of American Universities (AAU), 25 Jan. 2022,
https://www.aau.edu/research-scholarship/featured-research-topics/usc-carbon-neutral-2025 Medzerian, David. “Impact of USC’s Assignment: Earth Sustainability Projects Already Evident.” USC News, 5 Oct. 2022,
https://news.usc.edu/202529/impact-of-assignment-earth-on-usc-campuses-already-evident/ Elkington, John. “25 Years Ago I Coined the Phrase ‘Triple Bottom Line.’ Here’s Why It’s Time to Rethink It.” Harvard Business Review, 13 Sept. 2018,
https://hbr.org/2018/06/25-years-ago-i-coined-the-phrase-triple-bottom-line-heres-why-im-giving -up-on-it
Stelsel, David Cfa. “Country Contribution to Global Economic Growth 2000-2010.” Valeo Financial Advisors, 26 Sept. 2012,https://valeofinancial.com/country-contribution-to-global-economic-growth-2000-2010/ Yonk, Ryan and Simmons, Randy. “Our Failed Environmental Policies: Causes and Cures” The Independent Institute, 21 Mar. 2016, https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=10554
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