Stop speaking of the three pillars or triple bottom line of sustainability

A guest post by Ron McCormick

The following post is one of a series previewing the research that will be presented at the in Sacramento, California (4–8 November 2018).

The original dream of three separate but equal pillars of sustainability has become a fallacy; the triple bottom line is dead. The essence of sustainability in practice is to act with increased resilience in mind, and in all aspects of living, working, and playing in a social-ecological landscape. The thrust of the Sacramento meeting is to seek a realignment between economic development and ecological and societal stewardship. Our session, to be held Tuesday afternoon, will present practical and theoretical aspects of corporate and community approaches to sustainability and resilience. I encourage you to available on the meeting website. For this blog I’d like to speak more to the topic of the ending segment of our session, a debate titled “The sustainability triple bottom line is dead—should we take it off the respirator?” We won’t actually be debating the topic in depth, as it is much too late to rehabilitate the idea. Instead, we will host an Irish wake for the triple bottom line (TBL), and toast an old friend whose time has come and gone. Why we feel this way will take some explanatory background on economics, ecology, societal equity, and systems approaches. Continue reading →