Green Investing Still Comes Down to Sustainable Development

April 21, 2010

By Jeff

Before I get into more details about the specifics of green investing, I want to start with a background of sustainable development. Regardless of how well the financial tools we derive to interact with this field end up working, they aren’t meeting their goal if the result isn’t increased sustainability in addition to financial gain. Remember, a major reason (I hope) these are in existence is to help give support to companies or properties with a focus on sustainability.

In a nutshell, sustainable development means that the things we do today (build, create, consume) meet our needs without compromising future generations’ ability to meet their own needs. One of the things I love most about this concept is its simplicity; it really just boils down to the fact that we can’t take things at a faster rate than they have the capacity to regenerate. Regardless of the research and new developments we find or technology we create, it still seems as if it will boil down to balancing this simple equation. To me this seems similar to the fitness industry – regardless of how many new advancements in exercise or food we make, it still seems to boil down to taking in less calories than you expend if you want to lose weight.

In 1987, the report Our Common Future was published by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development. This seems as if it was a major step in establishing this movement as it unified the nations in a pursuit of sustainable development. In addition, what is apparently the most often quoted definition of sustainable development came from this report. Once you break apart from this simple definition you begin to see the real difficulty in implementing something that requires worldwide involvement.

According to some sources, the three basic components of the equation are economic, social, and natural. As you can see, economic (hence green investing) is one of only three parts, but the difficulty comes in how capable one resource is of substituting for the other. For example, we are currently pouring a significant amount of resources into coming up with solutions to our problems of consumption – i.e. make buildings more efficient, make cars require less fuel, release less carbon through farming. But a major problem still lies in whether we can continue living our lives the way we are (with new more sustainable technologies in place of less sustainable ones), or if a drastic change in our habits needs to begin in tandem.

I’ll use the comparison to fitness again because it seems as if a similar thing is happening here as well. Americans are becoming obese at an alarming rate. However, instead of instigating massive changes in the way we live our lives, the diets we have, and the amount of exercise we get, most people are looking to the get fit quick schemes that don’t involve any actual work. If we can’t get fit on get fit quick schemes, there’s no way the world can become sustainable on get sustainable quick schemes!

This seems like a good place to stop, but in my next post I will talk a little more about sustainable development (and will touch on corporate sustainability), and then begin to look into more detailed information about green investing and green investments. I hope you enjoyed reading and I didn’t let my own opinions get the best of me. This is definitely an interesting subject with a lot of great information to unearth.

Photo Source: vaxomatic

Tags: green, Green Investing, green investment, green movement, sustainability, Sustainable Development