Enrico J. Wensing is a sustainability expert who has not only founded Ecosphere Net but has also authored I Am Sustainability: How the Human Body can Save the Planet, a great book on all issues related to sustainable development. He is in the final year of his PhD at Saybrook. Social Bridges recently conducted an interview with him to know more about his ideas and theories.

How would you define sustainability - what’s your personal view about it?

As far as I can tell, my view of sustainability is pretty different than most. While most sustainability efforts are about doing more sustainable things, like being more environmentally friendly, my view is about how we can take that even further when we begin to integrate sustainability into who we are.

That’s right, actually integrate sustainability into who we each are as an individual. My view is that sustainability can actually be integrated and become a large part of a person’s personality

This goes further than most approaches to sustainability, and if a deeper more effective connection with sustainability is possible why not go for it?

While my approach is more confrontational than remembering to recycle plastics and paper, at the end of the day don’t we want to do our best to be as effective as possible toward achieving global sustainability?

Just this past July my book (my first) entitled I Am Sustainability: How the Human Body can Save the Planet was published. In it I describe in detail my view on what sustainability means and how I think we can get to global sustainability.

The book is intended to be the starting point for a growing cross-cultural global conversation, action and research to work together to define what sustainability means to all of us.

My part in this approach to sustainability is based largely in psychology. The psychology of survival.

I link sustainability to the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow’s description of the hierarchy of human needs. This is the pyramid diagram that many people know. For those at the bottom of the pyramid sustainability means something different than for those at the middle of the pyramid. I make the point too though that superimposed on the pyramid of needs, we also define our sustainability based on our need to sustain and express our identity. For those of us in the middle of the pyramid, such as in the affluent west, sustainability is all about belonging to competitive social groups in order to sustain and express our identities. While competition can be healthy it also leads to exploitation of the environment and other humans.

People have been frustrated about what sustainability means.

While sustainability may be difficult to define and thereby difficult to implement, I think the fact that it is actually gives it its potential utility.

Sustainability, the definition and the implementation, requires us to work together for solutions. It calls for democracy, in fact it leaves us little choice. It calls for the implementation of global human rights, in fact it leaves us little choice. We are going to be forced into it, and that’s a good thing. As Van Jones has said, sustainability cannot be a situation where only those that are rich make it happen. The effort of the 20 % will be out done by the effect of the remaining 80%. He calls this eco-apartheid. So sustainability is bigger than global warming, the environment and “going green“ it includes human rights, education, health and so on. Just like the UN’s Millennium Project Goals.

If sustainability involves all these other dimensions besides going green it will likely mean that each one of us, or at least the majority of us, will not only need to shift our way of thinking and doing but, as we are trying to bring-about with Ecosphere Net, also our very way of being.

That is why the book is called “I Am Sustainability“, we can get to a more effective sustainability if who we are becomes sustainability.

• When this idea of delving deeper into the environmental and sustainability field came in your mind?

In retrospect I think my ideas of sustainability started very young for me. The title of my book, the I Am Sustainability part reflects how I have learned to be sustainable. Not just do sustainable things, but actually be sustainability. That’s a much deeper, and much more globally effective connection because its at the level of identity.

Most of us find our belonging and maintain our identities through our social groups we identify with and identify in. There’s nothing wrong with that, its just out of balance with our belonging to self, our individual identity.

When a person no longer needs to find their identity, their belonging, exclusively in social groups then they are becoming sustainability. They are less likely to buy that SUV, not because they feel guilty or understand the environmental burden but because its just not a reflection of who they are. They no longer need to find their identity in competitive social groups that are exploitative and overconsumptive.

In my case my earliest belonging was lost as a child when I lost my family. For my sustainability I sought belonging to various social groups. I think this was the beginning.

My first presentation of some of the ideas in my book was at a Canadian Healthcare Network Meeting at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine in 2000.

• What impact do you think your blog can have on the global sustainability scenarios - do you think it‘s making a difference?

The moment the first person visited and read our blog it made a difference. Our project is called the Ecosphere Net Project. Based out of St. John in the US Virgin Islands, we are a growing group of people looking to make a difference on a global scale. Our specific vision is to generate a global network of sustainability education centers (SEC’s) and events through which we co-create a cross-cultural curriculum for sustainability. This curriculum is based in a focus group format that involves conversation, action and research. We want the people of the planet to become one big focus group! So we are looking for as many people as possible to join us at Ecosphere Net.

Our blog just started in August and already we’ve had much interest and many visitors from around the world. I’ve presented our ideas this past year at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, USA and Cambridge University, UK and people are very passionate in their response.

Our blog will be a very active meeting place for the Ecosphere Net SEC global network. The “hub“ of Ecosphere Net sustainability projects in action.

The Ecosphere Net blog is the central meeting place for our approach to sustainability, which is a collaborative global focus group that takes action within communities and across cultures around the world. Ultimately, for the individual participant, the objective is for them to live their lives not only identifying with sustainability but also identifying in sustainability. Identifying in sustainability generates a very effective participant in action toward global sustainability.

• While sustainability is an established concept in the west but developing countries are still stuck in the basics. What role can these established organizations play in promoting these concepts in the developing world

While I would agree that sustainability is an established concept in the West I think it still remains incomplete in its understanding and in its implementation.

Sustainability is more than being environmentally friendly. Although that is a big part of it. Sustainability is more than “going green“. Although that is a big part of it too. Sustainability is more than something that tree huggers and granola need to engage in. Although they are an important part of it.

At Ecosphere Net we want everyone, including the everyone’s of organizations, to realize that and take action on it.

Part of what we are doing at Ecosphere Net is developing corporate trans formative education toward a deeper, more effective, sustainability.

While quite a number of corporations have become green enough to make it to the DOW Jones Sustainability Index, a time will come when that bar will need to be raised even higher because going green is just a part of sustainability. Its not enough.

At Ecosphere net we are developing focus group education that will take corporations that have demonstrated some engagement with sustainability and CSR, and perhaps have even made the DOW S-Index, to engage in a deeper sustainability as a deeper competitive corporate advantage.

These corporations will not only engage the bottom of the pyramid for mutual business but also for mutual sustainability. All the dimensions of what sustainability is will be realized.

• How will you rate the current role of companies in supporting environment and sustainability? – Are they really doing enough?

Of course I think there have been great strides made in even just the last 10 years, but I think much more is needed from many more companies. I was recently invited to attend a regional directors meeting in Hong Kong for a multinational chemical company. There seems to be authentic courage and compassion to begin to integrate sustainability measures into their corporate processes by the CEO and yet they are just beginning. It was difficult to sit there and not say, “Hey, get going!“. For a big company I can see its not an easy organizational change. I and others at Ecosphere Net intend to help.

To answer, “Are they really doing enough“, I think they can even do more. As with any person or culture, their directors and company can also come from an identity in sustainability stance. This will mean that corporations will do more because, as I described in my book, the full human potential when realized through sustainability as an identity is a lot more effective toward sustainability than when a person is only identifying with sustainability.

• I have come across this issue of lack of participation on CSR and sustainability blogs. I mean there are readers for sure but very few are actually interested to share their thoughts hence we see very less commentators on even famous sustainability blogs. Why have we (on a broader level) failed to garner a massive readership and participation?

Part of our objective at Ecosphere Net is to get as many of the people of the world to engage in conversation, action and research toward global sustainability.

But I think I’ve come across a few reasons for the inertia you describe in your question.

After my recent presentation in Cambridge several people commented on the enormity of our project and how intimidating it seems to them. So I think one answer to your question might be that global sustainability, or concepts like global warming, may be conceptually overwhelming to some people.

Our approach at Ecosphere Net is to get people to actually start talking about it and implementing it at the community level and then for us to “just“ connect those communities into a global network.

I also think that while Al Gore’s movie about global warming has done a lot, the relative day to day awareness and thereby participation in sustainability is still pretty low. We have also seen that at Ecosphere Net. You’d think that people would just jump-in with ideas, but they don’t. That actually was the purpose of my book. To try to ignite more participation in the conversation that will lead to action and research toward sustainability.

It reminds me of that story of the frog. If you put a frog in cold water and gradually turn up the heat you can keep turning it up and it will just sit there until it dies at near boiling. If you drop a frog in only medium hot temperature it will save it self by jumping out. Maybe a sudden change of some sort is what’s needed.

An alternative to this apocalyptic idea is the one of tipping point/critical mass theory. At some point if enough people keep trying we will eventually reach a tipping point where we will succeed.

• What future do you see of sustainability and greener options. Will we be able - on a global level - to achieve sustainability goals in near future?

I really do see a planet connected in sustainability.

• Any final comments - any message you want to convey to our readers

I would simply encourage them to engage in sustainability in one form or another. To participate. To begin that participation today. And, if possible, to come from a place of conscious action with humility, courage and compassion as opposed to coming from a place of emotional reaction. Take action to help generate a planet with a future for all of humanity, that requires all of nature too, for all our grandchildren’s grandchildren and beyond.

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