Within the global landscape of a pandemic, long-unaddressed social justice issues, and expanding civil protest, all of us at ISSP wondered how best to support our sector during this uncertain timeline. No better place to inquire than among the esteemed honorees of our ISSP Hall of Fame. With Fabian Sack, my Governing Board colleague who was then serving as our president, we asked each of our fourteen Sustainability Hall of Fame honorees if they would share their thoughts on where we are, what we're facing, and how our sector might most effectively advance the work to be done. Our Sustainability Hall of Fame video series, COVID-19 And The Longer Horizon, fully released this week, offers their insights.

In COVID-19 And The Longer Horizon, Hall of Fame honoree Bob Willard, ISSP-CSP, describes our current reality as the first time in human history that we confront a "perfect storm" of sustainability crises: the ever escalating climate crisis, a public health crisis, and an economic crisis. And he adds, "It's important that all three of them be in the mix as we try to figure out how we come out of this, and what the lessons learned from this incredibly challenging situation are."

In the face of this "perfect storm," changing attitudes and behaviors in communities around the world are impacting both our work and our potential for influence as sustainability professionals. The facts of science and the insights of experts now receive increasing attention from a broader public. The values of social justice galvanize hundreds of thousands to march in solidarity for diversity, inclusion, and equity around the globe. The spheres of professional life and personal life blur as digital devices serve as one of our few portals to the COVID-19 world outside. We can see these social, political, and professional shifts beginning to dismantle the siloed thinking and siloed values that for too long have shaped the systemic issues underneath the crises we face. These systemic disconnections are the very issues that we, as sustainability professionals, work to solve.

The right voices at the right time can foster uncommon cooperation and galvanize extraordinary action. Never before have global cooperation and global action been more necessary. The overwhelming take-away from COVID-19 And The Longer Horizon is the interconnectedness across both the challenges as well as the opportunities of this unprecedented moment. The global framework reflecting this interdependency is of course the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The intrinsic power of the SDGs is their interdependency: any enduring progress in sustainability is interdependent with the progress across each and every of the seventeen global goals. And the very interdependency of the SDGs also presents the complexity — and often the dilemma — to today's problem-solving and decision-making, across sectors and across the world.

Navigating that complexity is the distinct strength of sustainability professionals. As we enter the decisive decade leading up to the 2030 SDGs, the problems our sector seeks to meet and solve are daunting. Yet, the opportunities have never been greater.

"I really feel that sustainability, survival, the planet, our health — has all become one issue in our times. In a way, what the pandemic has done is collapse all of these false separations. It's literally made the divisions disappear."



Dr. Vandana Shiva
Director, Navdanya
ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame 

As ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame honoree John Elkington, Founder and Chief Pollinator at Volan Ventures, Ltd., states in our video series, "We’re in a period where the old order is coming apart." He continues, "But that’s the most extraordinarily exciting time to be alive and working in an area like this. Because if you can get your agenda coherent enough and clear enough to key people, by God, you can move in the right direction at a very much greater speed and a very much greater scale than in normal times, when most people think they know what they’re doing."

Stay connected to this space, our ISSPBlog. Here, our contributors bring you the resources, the inspiration, and the insights to ensure that your work advances at "a very much greater speed and a very much greater scale." Both are necessary to what we need to accomplish.

About the Author:

Trisha Bauman, M.Sc.
CEO & Founder, TJBauman
Vice President, ISSP Governing Board