Let's be honest: real sustainability may not make business sense

Wouldn't it be nice if the best business decision were aligned with the best ecological decision? Some people say that often it already is, and that if corporations would only wake up and see it, the opposition between profit and planet would diminish.

The business case for sustainability draws on several core arguments. Pro-environmental practices create positive brand associations among consumers, politicians, and regulators. They also anticipate regulatory trends and position the company favourably when such policies become law. The mentality that seeks to further efficiency in materials and waste carries over into other realms. Similarly, the innovation required to overcome environmental challenges promotes innovation generally. And employees have higher morale when they believe in what their company is doing.

These considerations support the idea that the three items of the famous "triple bottom line" - people, profit, and planet - bear no inherent contradiction.

Unfortunately, nine times out of ten, the interests of profit blatantly conflict with the interests of people and planet, at least according to any reasonable calculation. What would happen to your company's bottom line if it switched over to a green electricity supplier at twice the cost? What would happen if it insisted on using only fair trade products - throughout the supply chain? We're not talking about cosmetic changes like recycled paper in the copiers or bike racks in the parking lot.

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Hamburg doesn't make for the most obvious urban battleground. Germany's second largest city is also its richest, and the historic port has been widely praised for urban transformations that have set the bar high. In recent months, however, the city has descended into one of the most embittered, fractious redevelopment turf wars in all of Europe.

Things got so bad that last Saturday, Hamburg's chief of police declared the large area of the city where developers, police and residents are clashing a "danger zone."

The zone covers three inner city neighborhoods on central Hamburg's western fringe, highlighted by police after a series of violent disturbances in recent months. Police believe that demonstrations by local leftists in the area are so out of control that they need to increase officer deployments to saturation levels to avoid becoming targets. Stepping up stops and searches, police have confiscated bats and masks and handed out travel bans to over 80 individuals they suspect of intending to carry out violent protest.

Tensions are high here partly because of the area's longstanding role as the seat of Hamburg's counterculture. Long one of the city's poorer quarters, the zone contains St. Pauli, a red light district where the Beatles lived and played in the early 1960s, and the ex industrial districts of Sternschanze and Eastern Altona. Their late 19th century tenements falling into decay, these areas were partly resettled by squatters from the 1970s onwards, who restored neglected houses and fought to prevent the blithe destruction of historic buildings by developers. Even for those unfamiliar with Germany, it's not hard to guess what has happened to the area's old tenements more recently. Following a pattern replicated across the West's wealthier cities, rents in the area have shot up, social housing projects are being replaced with mixed developments, more upscale businesses are moving in and the poor are moving out, willingly or not.

by Jennie Moore, Director, Sustainable Development and Environmental Stewardship, British Columbia Institute of Technology   

British Columbia Institute of Technology School of Construction and the Environment is Lead Sponsor of the International Ecocity Framework and Standards Initiative