March 1, 2023
We are in the winter of 2023, and it is exceptionally mild in much of North America and Europe. Despite the agreeableness to the skin, those paying attention to climate science do not find comfort in these conditions. COP27 last year proved equivocal at best, and a global oil & gas CEO investing in new discovery has been appointed the president of COP28. Meanwhile, annual global emissions seven years after Paris continue their unabated climb.
Consequently, most everyone following the international discourse on climate can agree– we need a new approach. Not a new approach to how we hold meetings, set goals, and innovate on clean energy and more sustainable approaches to business, oceans, agriculture and forestry. We are in fact doing surprisingly well with inventing more sustainable technologies and approaches, and unsurprisingly well at attending meetings and setting far reaching goals (to be achieved by other parties). What we are failing at, in an epic fashion, is building the political, social, and commercial will to use new technologies and approaches to make demonstrable progress towards our goals. So our failure is not one of technology or management, it is an absolutely epic (i.e. era shaping) failure of leadership.
This creates an opportunity to provide a needed improvement in leadership at every level of society, from our families and neighborhoods to our states and nations, across most every field of political, civil, and economic life. Because carbon emissions continue up, always. Even though we have known the heat trapping effect of carbon since 1859. Even though thousands of the world’s most relevant, respected, and peer-reviewed climate scientists have warned for decades that deep, broad, and urgent action is needed to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, which is the primary cause of our climate and ecological breakdown.1
The depth, breadth, and urgency of our climate challenge has prompted me to focus the last fifteen years of my personal and professional self-directed study on finding the most promising opportunities to effect systems level change towards greater sustainability. For me, this search has centered on how globally scaling businesses could become more sustainable in a world ever more dangerously distorted by human-caused climate and environmental breakdown. And included founding Sustainability Roundtable Inc. to introduce a new, scalable model of strategic advisory and support services in more sustainable business and founding a non-profit for CEOs and investors who share a commitment to greater social and environmental justice.
Consistent with Donella Meadows’ (lead author of “The Limits of Growth” (1972) and “Thinking in Systems” (2008)) seminal 1999 essay entitled “Leverage Points; Places to Intervene in System,” I am persuaded that one of the most impactful ways to effect change in complex systems is through committing to promoting a “paradigm change” in the fundamental framing of perception, thought, and action of those participating in complex systems. Specifically, I am persuaded that the greatest opportunity for needed change lies in addressing those committed to offering leadership, at every level and across fields, and inviting them to embrace a change in their fundamental framework of perception, thought, and action for leadership. One wherein they move beyond the current popular assumption that a leader best seeks to optimize some imprecisely imagined machine for greater efficiency, to instead embrace a framework that helps center and establish as self-evident the universal, inalienable, and inviolable dignity of all the stakeholders– including the irreplaceable natural ecology that sustains us – which support a leader’s value creation efforts.
The Dignity First Paradigm
Dignity can be well understood as an inherently social concept that can have powerfully constructive, normative, effect when it is assumed to be present. Oxford Languages defines “dignity” as “the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.”2 This seems consistent with an understanding of dignity that enables leaders to meet, honor, and reinforce every stakeholder’s dignity, and for each stakeholder to conversely react to meet, honor, and reinforce the dignity of the leader serving them. I think it is accurate and helpful to recognize this conception of dignity as an expression of our universal, inviolable, and inalienable hunger and capacity for positive social meaning. Which is an understanding of dignity that Francis Fukuyama, the Director for Stanford’s Center for the Democracy and the Rule of Law, has brilliantly recognized as aligned with the Greek concept of thymos.3
This understanding of dignity as an evolved hunger and capacity for positive social meaning provides an informative contrast to philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s theory of utilitarianism. Bentham provided the reductionist understanding of the human condition, which the earliest economists coded into their once young pseudo-physics of economics, with its assumption that essentially all human beings seek to maximize their individual “marginal utility”.
As the field of business management professionalized, MIT Professor Douglas McGregor published in 1960 “the Human Side of Enterprise” and offered his well noted, contrasting assertion of a “Theory X” (that employees are largely only concerned with their immediate self-interest) and “Theory Y” (that employees are naturally self-motivated to advance enterprise goals, but are also creative, requiring leaders who facilitate those more independent contributions). It is safe to say that, in 2023, I sit with many firmly on the Theory Y side, after generations of successful management strategies have been recorded in legions of business books celebrating the multiple bottom-line successes of purpose driven business leadership strategies across industries and regions.
I am persuaded, however, there is great merit in going further. As emerging science across disciplines (e.g. evolutionary and social psychology, and neuro- and cognitive science) as well as a growing number of top thought leaders have recognized (often using slightly different language), I think it can be transformatively impactful to recognize the hunger for dignity as a chief and perhaps the most important human motivation. Indeed, I am persuaded that centering the magnification of the dignity of all stakeholders involved in value creation as the purpose of leadership – at every level – is the breakthrough paradigm change for the 21st century. Which is needed to help reconcile business and economics with life. Human and natural.
My efforts to propose this paradigm change began two years ago with Leading with Dignity in 2021, a far ranging investigation published on SR Inc’s Sustainable Leadership Blog about how those who hope to provide enduring leadership in a rapidly changing world could best offer a new framework for perception, thought, and action. One that moved beyond “an industrial age paradigm” of extraction and control and instead through self-chosen, creative self-sacrifice, provided an offer of greater dignity to all they served as leaders.4
More recently, I explored the reasoning behind this needed and impactful paradigm change in the nature and purpose of leadership just before COP27 in a post entitled: “Dignity First: Executive, Enterprise & Economic Leadership.” As I detailed there, globally respected thought leaders Peter Senge, Roberto Unger, Donella Meadows, Steven Covey, Donna Hicks, Rebecca Henderson, Andrew Winston, Mark Carney, Kate Rayworth, Mariana Mazzacuto, and Gene Sperling are, in my reading, all aligned with each other in supporting important but different parts of this paradigm shift to “Dignity First Leadership.” With the exception of Dr. Donna Hicks and Gene Sperling, these thought leaders do not use a “dignity” based terminology and many do not reference each other, but still it is easy to recognize their shared framework of perception and action, which places the needs of others first, assuming that will benefit all.
So how does this change of fundamental framework of perception, thought and action translate into strategy for those interested in leading towards greater sustainability?
To answer that question, in the final days of COP27, I published Dignity First Climate Leadership. In that blog post, I recounted how one year prior, I went around a table of top Corporate Sustainability leaders in Glasgow for COP26 asking a single question: could their companies move beyond volunteered leadership in more sustainable business to making a human dignity-based demand that all their business partners commit to complying with relevant United Nations agreements and guidance on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions– as some already do in regard to Forced Labor. As I recounted, their answers were varied, but all boiled down to a longer version of: “no.”
Fortunately, the discourse in the U.S. and globally about our climate emergency has begun to be integrated with the older and broader discourse about our rights as human beings. In this writing I now focuses on the relationship of human rights and climate, as well as some of the specifics about how corporate sustainability leaders can frame, speak and act to encourage their companies’ global value chains – including their vitally important, market shaping regulators – to align with relevant UN agreement and guidance on responding to human-caused climate breakdown. In a manner similar to what the best global businesses have done in regard to Forced Labor and LGBTQ Rights.
The Unacceptable and Immense Human Health Impacts of Climate Breakdown
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has served as a guiding document for the United Nations and its member states since 1948, establishing the agreed rights afforded to all humans across the world. The first article of the Declaration establishes: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Its Preamble makes clear that: “Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Moreover, the Preamble extends responsibility beyond Member States and establishes that:
‘ . . every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote the respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance . . .”
In 2015, we saw an initial connection between these inalienable human rights and the climate, as the UN’s High Commission for Human Rights went about identifying the key related human rights undermined by human-caused climate breakdown. They are, as they determined: the rights to life, self-determination, development, food, water and sanitation, health, housing, education, meaningful and informed participation, and the rights of future generations.5 This is what our collective failure to come into alignment with detailed UN Agreements and Guidelines on responding to anthropogenic climate breakdown has threatened, nearly every aspect of a dignified human life.
The effects of this inaction continue to compound. In August 2021, UNICEF released a report identifying that one billion children who live in the 33 most climate vulnerable nations “face a deadly combination of exposure to multiple climate and environmental shocks with a high vulnerability due to inadequate essential services.”6 Given the types of rights involved and the staggering millions of victims afflicted, it is more than fair to consider the climate crisis as a “gross” violation of human rights under relevant UN guidance.7 Consequently, it is not surprising that young people around the world have begun suing their governments for their infringements of these rights, including the landmark cases Juliana v. United States domestically, and a global challenge through the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child filed by youth around the world, including Swedish youth activist Greta Thunberg.
And so, in October of 2021, just before COP26, the UN High Commission on Human Rights voted unanimously to recognize the right to a livable future as a human right, protected by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
As A Human Activity, Business Must Act Humanely
Recognizing the right to a livable environment as a human right is a milestone in human history. It is one that builds on decades of work and needs to be protected and promoted, leveraging a myriad of UN, national, regional, and local laws also decades in development. And a most vital player in this effort is the global business community.
In 2011, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) was launched with three key pillars: 1) the State duty to protect human rights, 2) the business responsibility to respect human rights, and 3) the need for access to remedy human rights harms. Ten years on, the UNGP has set new goals to guide its next decade of work. First on the list is to “Make Business Respect for Human Rights a Core Element of Just Transition and Sustainable Development Strategies.”8
This integration of business obligation and human rights is not new, as corporations have increasingly taken public stances aligned with established UN guidance on human rights issues such as forced labor and LGBTQ+ rights. For example, Nike specifies in their Statement on Forced Labor that they “support human rights as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” The company consequently holds their suppliers to the same standards, implementing a Forced Labor screening tool to assess risks, as well as establishing learning communities to support supplier best practices.10 Salesforce has also taken on human rights issues in their company’s value chain, as CEO Marc Benioff threatened to entirely move his corporation’s operations out of the state of Georgia in order to dissuade the passage of an anti-LGBTQ+ bill.11
The cognitive leap now needs to be made to recognize that human caused climate breakdown is an absolutely epic, shaping human rights issue. Business leaders commit every day to the social obligation to protect human rights in regard to other issues. Meanwhile, human-caused climate and environmental breakdown is arguably the most pervasive violation of human rights ever recognized and needs to be treated accordingly. Business leaders can and should seek to protect human dignity in and through their businesses by leveraging their professional prominence to communicate a dignity-based demand that public and private authorities alike – at every level – commit to coming into compliance with relevant UN agreement and guidance. This is done fairly regularly in regard to Forced Labor and LGBTQ Rights, and it needs to be done regularly in regard to our collective response to human caused climate and environmental breakdown.
There is an opportunity to do more than make a voluntary commitment to ensuring an enterprise’s operations become more sustainable. There is an opportunity– and, indeed, a need –for leaders to demand that their entire global value chain join in committing to align with relevant UN agreements and guidance on responding to human caused climate breakdown. What is immediately needed is not even that value chain partners– and especially local, regional, national, and international regulating authorities – actively align with relevant UN agreement and guidance on responding to human caused climate breakdown. It is that all these parties at least commit to coming into alignment.
There are some emerging examples of this application of Dignity First leadership in regard to climate, with corporations using their voices to encourage those less immediately bold and actionary to join the movement. At COP27, 57 global companies signed onto Corporate Knights’ Action Declaration, committing to align their climate policy engagement with the Paris climate goals. The signatories, including the likes of Ikea, Unilever, and H&M Group, have all pledged to engage with their corporate partners and associations, using their influence to effect change across the industry and public sphere.
Business For Nature, an international coalition of business and conservation partners, has also recently launched an advocacy campaign signed by over 330 businesses calling for disclosures on their dependencies on the natural environment by 2030. As David R. Boyd, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, says in support of the Make It Mandatory campaign, “The risk that exponential nature loss poses to human rights, health and community well-being around the world is significant and must not be ignored. Everyone has a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and world leaders must recognise the role that businesses play in protecting it.”12
Corporate leaders can move beyond the insulting and inaccurate notion that a reductionist, deadeningly materialistic utilitarianism is inescapable. Our economy is only a mindless runaway machine if we allow it to be. The nature of business is determined by people, who are at their best, healthiest, and strongest when serving people and causes beyond themselves. To lead with Dignity First, as emerging science and widely reported businesses success globally increasingly reveal, is no more or less than a more natural type of leadership to which we must return to protect our environment and each other from bankrupting extraction.
Corporations committed to becoming more sustainable businesses need to create cross-functional pathways in their organizations to establish pervasive support for a Dignity First conceptual and programmatic framework. This way, an organization can develop and drive a coherent approach to demand that their entire value chain – including their vitally important regulators – commit to coming into compliance with established UN agreements and guidance on climate. Because it is through making an explicit connection between violations of our humanity and our environment that enterprises can provide the global leadership needed now. If only to demand far more than what UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres (formerly 3X prime minister of Portugal and a professor of communication systems) has rightly called the “immoral” and “suicidal” path we are currently on. And the growing team at Sustainability Roundtable Inc. is here to help and already helping a growing score of world-leading companies who increasingly recognize– putting dignity first is only natural.
Footnotes
Jim Boyle is the CEO & Founder of Sustainability Roundtable, Inc. For more than a dozen years, Jim has led full-time teams of diverse experts to assist nearly 100 Fortune 500 and growth companies in their move to more sustainable high-performance. Specifically, SR Inc has helped world-leading corporations, real estate owners, and federal agencies to set goals, drive progress, and report results in their move to greater Corporate Sustainability. Mr. Boyle led in the creation of SR Inc’s Renewable Energy Procurement Services (REPS), which advises and represents Fortune 500 and fast growth companies across the U.S. and internationally in the development of renewable energy strategies and the procurement of both on and off-site advanced energy solutions. Before founding SR Inc, Mr. Boyle co-led Trammell Crow Company Corporate Advisory Services in San Francisco and returned to his native Boston and Trammell Crow Company’s market leading team in Greater Boston where he received the Commercial Brokers Association’s Platinum Award for the highest level of commercial real estate transactions. Earlier, he advised companies on real estate and environmental matters as an attorney at a large law firm based in Boston. Jim is a graduate of Middlebury College, where he co-captained the football team, and Boston College Law School. Early in his career, he served as a federal law clerk, an aide to John F. Kerry in the U. S. Senate, and on Vice President Al Gore’s campaign for President. Jim lives in Concord, MA with his wife and kids a half mile across the street from Emerson’s house and museum on the route to Walden Pond.
