Keynote Address
Sustainable Business Symposium
Eugene, Oregon November 5-7, 1999

Achieving the Triple Bottom Line – Really
Allan Savory

We have heard some wonderful and inspiring speakers expressing what needs to be done by business in the coming millennium. The challenge is mindboggling in its complexity. Being held accountable for not only economic results, but social and environmental results as well, is placing unprecedented demands on leaders everywhere.

So what can I add to the ideas expressed to help with that challenge? I feel, after some forty years of working from many angles on this problem, that I have some insights that you will find useful. And I also want to reference the only way I have found for us mere mortals to incorporate that vast complexity into everyday life-a way that can be used by any business to actually achieve that essential triple bottom line.

First, let's ask ourselves, "What exactly is it we are trying to sustain?"

Some would say business; some would say civilization. However, history shows that all businesses and all civilizations ultimately rest on the shoulders of agriculture, in its broadest sense. When agriculture fails, no business or civilization can persist. And agriculture has been repeatedly failing for ten thousand years. Today we have the new threats of pollution and industrial waste, but even without them, ancient cities-then city states, then nations, and now the global village-have been losing their battle with the land. And only now, on the verge of the new millennium, do we finally understand why. Thus, my answer to the question of sustainability begins with agriculture and land or environmental management-rangelands, croplands, forests, watersheds, national parks, rivers and oceans.

So what does any environmentally awake business person need to know about sustaining production from our environment? Well, here are four principles to begin with.

First:
We need to know that two-thirds of the earth's land surface, that which contains and supports most of our people, cities and businesses, is considered "brittle" land or environment.

That means its humidity is very seasonal and erratic, regardless of whether rainfall is high or low. Land at the other end of the brittleness scale gets rain throughout the year. What the discovery of this brittleness scale has allowed us to track is how land at its two extremes reacts to human activities. And the answer is: very differently. A beneficial action taken in a humid environment can have devastating effects in a brittle environment.

Second:
Not only does most business and human activity rely heavily on this brittle two-thirds of the earth's surface, this same two-thirds has been relentlessly deteriorating for centuries, a phenomenon called desertification. And this degradation has now reached alarming proportions. Deserts are now conservatively estimated to be expanding at over 40,000 acres per day.

Third:
This means that there are two distinct aspects to our current environmental problem: the new and the ancient. The new aspect is the pollution resulting from products, wastes and energy. This problem arrived with the discovery and massive exploitation of fossil fuels derived from ancient life forms and it constitutes about 10% of our overall environmental dilemma.

The other 90% of the dilemma stems from the ancient problem of desertification, as mentioned earlier, which turned the Roman Empire's granary into desert and has been worsening ever since, at an ever-accelerating rate.

Today, the US, which boasts more environmental scientists than any nation, now exports more eroding soil annually than all its other exports combined-in terms of both value and tonnage. That's more than all our grain, beef, timber, arms, intellectual property and commercial products. Technology involving massive consumption of fossil fuels can temporarily mask some of the effects of desertification, but not for long.

Fourth:
And most important, it is critical that both of these aspects of the environmental crisis, pollution and soil degradation, be consciously considered in the business leadership process. Because both aspects profoundly affect business results, and both are profoundly affected by nearly every business decision made.

A common myth is that any company that does this seriously must be willing to buy into a scenario of reduced production and consumption, and hence implied economic stagnation. But this is simply not true. As some of the case studies presented earlier show, many businesses are finding tremendous economic opportunity in eliminating and re-employing waste, and in maximizing resource utility.

With land, abundance also beckons, although in a different manner. With desertification, the other 90% of the environmental problem, the only means to stop it, and reverse it, is to increase the land's livestock and wildlife capacity dramatically. However counter-intuitive this may sound, science bears it out. These soils of these brittle environments evolved for eons through the interaction of herds and predators, and it needs them back, desperately.

The immense productivity we have crammed into high yield feedlots full of cattle, hogs and chickens needs to once again be spread across the land, and then augmented.

Another myth I want to explode is that environmental matters are not in the purview of business. Or if they are, that this responsibility is restricted to addressing the newer issues of pollution and waste. This, too, is incorrect. The only wealth that ultimately sustains all business is derived from how well Earth turns sunlight into useable energy, food and products for human consumption.

Think about it. If none of us had eaten for a week, what would be happening to our businesses, let alone this conference, our schools, and life in general? We cannot function without healthy soils to nourish the plants and animals we eat and to cleanse our water and air. These are the concerns of all.

This means that even if we are successful in eliminating all pollutants, finding benign sources of energy, and recycling all wastes, we will still be a long way from sustainability. To achieve sustainability, business needs to tackle the entire environmental problem right across the board. And luckily, that is now possible. We finally understand why no nation has ever been able to stop desertification. And this same knowledge has made it possible to develop a new decision-making framework, which we call Holistic Management, that effectively empowers any business, government or community to both address its role in pollution and desertification and to move towards true triple bottom line success.

In utilizing the Holistic Management decision-making framework, which enables us to see the bigger picture through the maze of complexity, we find many good intentions can and do end in damage. Most of the progressive businesses that are genuinely striving to do the right thing by addressing pollution and waste are unintentionally aggravating the problems associated with desertification and global climate change.

Let me illustrate.

First with hamburgers. You will remember that several years ago, Americans began to demand healthier, leaner hamburgers. Since lean beef is in short supply in the US, this led to the massive destruction and burning of forests in Central America to supply North America with lean beef. These practices are now annually adding millions of tons of carbon to our atmosphere, speeding global climate change.

There is no blame in this. Many hamburger-producing or hamburger-retailing companies have a strong commitment to the environment but unless decisions are made holistically, weighing all the major aspects of the environmental picture, such will be the result.

And now the new call is for organic beef. I am often accused of putting down this call. But that is far from my intent. I believe strongly that shifting to cattle that are not pumped full of foreign substances at the end of their lives in feedlots is a step in the right direction. It can reap excellent health benefits and reduce some pollution. My only point has been that such a shift will not bring us any closer to sustainability.

Cattle-organic or not-as they are traditionally run on brittle lands all over the world are causing massive desertification-increased drought and flood severity, and massive releases of carbon and other more damaging gases into the atmosphere. And these conditions, almost universally, lead to increased poverty, social breakdown, violence and political instability, even in this country. This clearly is not what anyone wants. But it is what we get when we address only a few aspects of our 'beef' problem in a well-meaning effort to be socially and environmentally responsible and leave out the rest.

So, could any company do the right thing socially and environmentally if it wanted to use organic beef? Yes, definitely. In fact through insisting on environmentally sound means of production on brittle land, the large hamburger companies could, through their purchasing power, do incredible good.

For livestock, correctly handled, will not only not degrade brittle land, they will restore it to abundance and health. In fact livestock properly run are the only tool available to science to reverse desertification. We have seen such results where cattle and other livestock are reversing desertification in many countries now where people are practicing Holistic Management, and it is very heartening.

Let's look at another example. Many businesses make significant contributions to environmental organizations in the belief that this is helping to preserve biodiversity and the environment. However, right now corporations give billions of dollars a year to environmental organizations that are directly, through their policies, aggravating desertification, causing massive environmental pollution, biodiversity loss and further endangering some species.

As in the beef example, if we cannot evaluate an organization's awareness of and concern for those brittle environments that constitute two-thirds of America's and the world's lands, then they cannot know if their actions are environmentally or socially sound.

Recently (October 4th) a group of such organizations placed a full-page ad in the New York Times, calling for the resting of our public lands through the removal of livestock. Their motivation was to reverse the desertification of these lands. But we now know that completely resting lands that evolved with massive herds of animals is even worse than too few animals managed improperly. The action called for is exactly what causes desertification and leads to a tremendous loss of biodiversity. It works on humid land, but not on brittle land. And with rest usually comes an increased use of fire to replace the role that animals once played.

Today we are burning over 2 billion acres of savanna grasslands each year because there are not enough animals on the land to perform the role they did for eons. And note: These fires can burn for hours, and an average one-acre fire puts more harmful gases into the atmosphere than 3,000 cars produce per second. The impact on global warming is, of course, staggering.

The unfortunate truth is that few environmental organizations would pass any rigid triple bottom line audit today. And companies funding such work without knowing what policies they are supporting would not be achieving that triple bottom line either. But worse than not attaining it, they would be contributing to even greater social and environmental problems.

So once more we see that trying to do the right thing can, if we do not understand enough about our actions, aggravate the greater problem we all face.

Does that mean that I believe all business people need to understand something about brittle environments? And that they need to learn to use a decision-making process that tests their decisions against the full spectrum of environmental issues? It does. And I need to tell you that I'm no happier about this than the next person. But just as there was a time when to run a business I wouldn't have had to know anything about health insurance, today I have no choice. It is a requirement of doing business. I believe the same is true for this.

Fortunately, to learn the essentials about brittle environments and how actions can be viewed through a holistic decision-making framework does not require a huge investment. Just a couple of days can make a major contribution to putting one's company (and family, I might add) on the path of achieving beneficial economic, environmental and social results.

I wish there were time to walk you through those fundamentals now, but there is not. So instead I appeal to all of you whose caring brings you here today to start looking across the full scope of the environmental problem we face.

I appeal to you go beyond eliminating pollution and waste. Don't stop doing anything on that score; it is critical. But more is required of us. We must understand that by far the greatest damage and danger that lies before us will come from under, not over-exploitation in most of the world.

I thank you for the opportunity to address you today on this vital matter of sustaining business and thus civilization. I hope I have at least given you some insight into the magnitude of the challenge we face and inspired you to learn more about that 90% of the problem that is our Achilles heel yet largely ignored in the business community today. There is a simple holistic decision-making framework already developed and field tested over thirty years on three continents that is producing encouraging successes in many sectors, including business. I hope you will consider using it to assist you in truly attaining that vital triple bottom line.

Allan Savory is Founding Director of The Allan Savory Center for Holistic Management
1010 Tijeras NW
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102 U.S.A.
505-842-5252
505-843-7900 (fax)

allans@holisticmanagement.org
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