Our Common Future is the 1987 publication by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) credited for introducing the concept of sustainable development, with Gro Harlem Brundtland chairing the UN-sponsored Commission. In the report, the WCED – informally known as the Brundtland Commission – outlined what sustainable development should look like and how to achieve it. The Commission defines sustainable development as:
‘[…] development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’
Chapters within the report address a variety of issues that include:
The report set the foundation for the 1992 Earth Summit, which essentially gave birth to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development.
Sustainability is assessed from three primary viewpoints: economy, environment and ecology.
These three distinct viewpoints come together to serve as the foundation of the three pillars: economic viability, environmental protection and social ecology.
If we are to achieve genuine sustainability, all three pillars must balance and work in harmony. Unfortunately, we aren’t there yet. Most sustainability projects and programmes only address two pillars, and the worst hide behind jargon and use various means to disguise that their outcomes are not sustainable at all. To combat that, we need to understand what sustainability is and the role each pillar plays in any sustainable project.
With that in mind, let’s look a bit deeper into the three pillars, how they affect us and areas where we can incorporate sustainability into our projects.
A project’s economic viability is based on two primary elements: 1) financial considerations and 2) its implication on a local, regional, national and international scale. The primary way for assessing a project’s economic viability is to perform a cost benefit analysis (CBA) to show that project benefits outweigh the costs. While the focus of a CBA is primarily financial, a successful project relies on a range of factors.
For a sustainable project, the primary hurdle is getting stakeholders to buy into the idea that, while the project may cost more initially, the long-term gains will be superior. Fortunately, there are a growing number of case studies that show this to be true.
From the environmental protection aspect, every project should look to actively reduce negative impacts – optimising site potential, minimising the use of non-renewable resources and eliminating waste where possible. And we should be considering environmental protection in each element, system and process within every stage of an asset’s lifecycle – from planning, site development and design to construction, use and maintenance, removal and reuse. Practical things to consider include:
When we talk about social equity relating to sustainability, the focus is on equality and fairness across the human experience.
Unfortunately, social equity is the one pillar that usually goes under-addressed in our sustainability projects and programmes. In 2019, business writer John Elkington, who introduced the phrase ‘triple bottom line’ referencing the three pillars, noted that the ‘people’ element had become a mostly ignored part of the equation.
‘But success or failure on sustainability goals cannot be measured only in terms of profit and loss. It must also be measured in terms of the wellbeing of billions of people and the health of our planet, and the sustainability sector’s record in moving the needle on those goals has been decidedly mixed.’
~ John Elkington, Harvard Business Review, 2019
From a built environment point of view, some of the primary ways to create social equity through design include:
Individual assets can also design for social equity through inclusive design elements and programmes like Well Building that promotes a people-first approach to design that fosters health and wellbeing.
In February 2019, the UK Government revised its National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which sets out the economic, environmental and social planning policies in England. The NPPF promotes sustainable development based upon the three pillars and, when viewed as a whole, provide insight into what the Government construes as sustainable development in practice. Areas covered by the NPPF include a wide range of issues around housing and businesses, transportation and travel, economic development, city centre and neighbourhood planning, and assorted topics relating to the natural environment – light pollution, water supply, waste, renewable energy, etc.
To supplement the NPPF, the Government also provides a collection of advice and planning practice guidance. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland publish comparable frameworks.
With the 2020 release of the RIBA Plan of Work, the RIBA has responded to an escalating industry need for expanded sustainability strategy by mapping sustainability targets to UN sustainable development goals and aligning them with the RIBA Sustainable Outcomes Guide. To explore this and other ways that the new Plan of Work can benefit you, NBS has a webinar series that addresses several topics, including sustainability, fire safety, conservation and inclusive design.
NBS has also seen a steady rise in requests for information on how our technical content can help specifiers achieve sustainable outcomes. In the article Using NBS to specify sustainable outcomes on projects, NBS explores how the Plan of Work and NBS’s flexible cloud-based specification platform can be used together to tailor a project to meet sustainability expectations across the project timeline. Through NBS Chorus, you can access your specifications across locations and organisations. It is suited to both performance and prescriptive specifying and has editable clauses supported by technical guidance. Our content is continuously reviewed to improve clarity and usefulness, informed by research, user feedback and industry drivers.
NBS Source brings together NBS BIM Library, NBS Plus and the RIBA Product Selector to provide a sole source for product information that seamlessly integrates into a project’s workflow and provides an additional level of enhanced product data in a consistent, structured format.
CIS is a comprehensive online collection of industry-relevant publications from around 500 publishers. NBS users with a CIS subscription can take advantage of embedded links across specifications platforms to access research and reference documents. The content is fully searchable, intelligently classified and continuously updated.