Meaningful sustainability jobs

A former manager – who found my activist tendencies both cute and annoying – once told me: “Frida, this decade is for focusing on technical development. The next decade is for focusing on systemic change.” I could definitely not settle with that. And the remark really got my mind spinning. Is that the common attitude? That systemic change is something that will happen ‘later’ and that ‘someone else’ surely will take care of it? (Who is that ‘someone else’ by the way?)

In my study 20 voices, one of the things I was most eager to discuss was how the interviewees perceived their role in relation to systemic change. In some cases, the interviewees brought it up themselves, in other cases I was interrogating. For the most part, it did not appear to me that the issue kept the interviewees awake at night. The interviewees (generally) seemed settled with the thought that they were a small piece of a big puzzle. But what exactly is that puzzle?

The puzzle analogy

Let’s imagine there are two puzzles. The first puzzle is called ‘systems optimization’. The finished puzzle consists of all the familiar items and processes we know today, but they are optimized with renewable energy, circular concepts, and so on. The second puzzle is called ‘systemic change’. As it is aligned with planetary boundaries and social justice it does not look familiar at all. But wait a minute, you might think. Could it not be that optimizing the current system leads to systemic change?

It could if we had plenty of time. We don’t.

The current system is heavily based on the consumption of huge amounts of materials and energy. The process of turning that consumption green and circular will not solve the volume problem. Many items and processes will have to go. Optimizing them with our sustainability skills could actually hinder systemic change.  

Friends and family often mistake my search for meaningful sustainability work as having the goal of ‘most contribution possible’. My goal is to have ‘the right contribution’. I don’t need to be the biggest or most important piece of the puzzle, but I need to be a piece of the right puzzle.

Wearing the global hat

What does that mean in practice? How does one know which puzzle one is a piece of? How can a sustainability manager in industry know? Or a researcher within the sustainability field? Or a sustainability consultant?

One answer is to take of the workplace hat and replace it with the global hat. Do the strategies, methods and projects we apply still make sense? Do the products and processes we work to improve align with global sustainability?

It is not easy. But it is important. And urgent. And if we, the sustainability professionals, with the holistic and systemic insights we possess, do not do so…

Then who will?