COURSE INFORMATION
Sustainability Management
“When you know your limits, you can begin to unlock the endless possibilities of Sustainability.”
It is rightly said above and so is very true for our planet Earth. The world is growing at a fast pace and so are our demands and requirements. To balance this growth the resources available and the environment are shrinking. For our profits to continue to grow and the impact on the planet to get smaller we need to look forward to a sustainable growth. Voluntary and not only mandatory efforts are required for this. We need to be more and more efficient; more environmentally friendly and innovative technologies are by far the best solution at hand.
Globalization is a strong tool for growth but it also has its weaknesses. With rapid economic growth comes the depletion of environment. If we speak in very crude terms, the warming of the atmosphere (global warming) due to greenhouse gases is perhaps the most serious concerns for humankind. Consumption of non-renewable resources, including fossil fuels, is on-going at an alarming rate, pushing the environment to its limits and jeopardising the survival of our future generations.
Economic development on a sustainable basis is a big challenge to us as the standards of living and material well-being have been increasing but there are no signs of the improvements of the quality of life or to the least equal distribution of the well being.
The most prominent misconception among businesses is that there is a trade-off between environmental sustainability and economic progress. There is substantial evidence, however, that greening of economies will not only be a drag to growth but will also generate a new engine of growth. Greening of economies has some obvious advantages like creation of new jobs, making the environment more sustainable, reduction of harmful subsidies, both for environment and businesses.
The main concern for most people is the achievement of the synergy between the sustainable growth and economic progress. This is the question we shall address in our course and try to attain a viewpoint from the management to successfully integrate the concept of sustainability in a company’s’ strategy and its execution. To start with, we shall look into the problems being faced and what is being done wrong. In the due course, we shall come to the point of the developments over the years, strategy creation and execution along with the indicators to assess the over all sustainability as a whole.