What are the 3 pillars of sustainable development?

Building your CSR strategy while respecting the foundations of sustainable development: this topic is at the heart of all conversations, but do you really know what it means? What is sustainable development? What actions should companies take to align with the UN's 17 goals?

Sustainable development: definition

The concept of sustainable development first appeared in the Brundtland Report, during the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development. It was then that a first definition emerged:

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

This report and definition help identify the three pillars of sustainable development:

• The economic pillar
• The environmental pillar
• The social pillar

Organizations rely on these three pillars to implement their CSR strategy (Corporate Social Responsibility), but how can they be concretely defined?

The economic pillar

This pillar is based on companies' ability to develop a responsible economic system. The goal is to create fairly paid jobs while limiting the environmental impact of their production.

The environmental pillar

The environmental pillar of sustainable development encourages companies to develop their activities while preserving the environment, which means:

• Precisely assessing their consumption of natural resources, in order to reduce or optimize them.
• Reducing their emissions, whether greenhouse gas emissions or various types of waste.

It is therefore essential to precisely understand the impact of all the organization's activities to implement an effective CSR strategy. To do this, conducting a corporate carbon footprint assessment is among the assessments that need to be carried out to rigorously and seriously commit to sustainable development.

The social pillar

To align with the social pillar, a company must satisfy the needs for equity and respect for individual rights, which include health, education, housing, and preventing exclusion.

For a company, this translates into contributing to the well-being of stakeholders (employee well-being at work, transparency and honesty with customers and suppliers...), fighting exclusion (gender equality, helping with reintegration, ensuring accessibility of premises for people with reduced mobility...), and promoting solidarity (purchasing certified raw materials, partnering with local associations...).

The development of this social pillar significantly improves the quality of working life and employee well-being, and can be an excellent way to retain talent longer within the organization.

The overall vision of sustainable development

The three pillars of sustainable development are interdependent. If one of the pillars is less developed than the others, then the company's CSR strategy will not be considered sustainable. It must be able to act on all three areas simultaneously, as sustainable development is a multidisciplinary concept.

It is common to represent the three pillars of sustainable development using interconnected circles.

Sustainable development lies at the intersection of these three areas.

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Aligning with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

To encourage sustainable development, the UN has set 17 goals to save the world (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/fr/objectifs-de-developpement-durable/) organized according to the three pillars mentioned previously. Among them, we can find goals for:

• Clean and affordable energy
• Sustainable cities and communities
• Responsible consumption and production
• Climate action

Companies have a significant role to play in achieving these goals. Indeed, a strong CSR strategy can drastically reduce the issues identified by the UN. Reducing your company's carbon emissions is one of the effective actions to achieve these goals. It goes without saying that to improve your company's long-term impact, you must first measure your initial impact. Regular carbon footprint assessments are therefore a necessary starting point for building a coherent and effective CSR strategy.

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Implementing a sustainable CSR strategy: How to take action?

It's sometimes difficult to know where to start when you want to integrate sustainable development into the core of your CSR strategy. To help you, here is a non-exhaustive list of actionable steps:

• Regularly conduct a carbon footprint assessment of all your activities to track your emissions. A carbon footprint platform like Tennaxia ESG can help you with this process. Beyond carbon measurement, the solution also allows you to design emission trajectories and monitor the progress of your reduction actions. Firstly, this type of measure has a positive economic impact on your company by controlling dependence on carbon-intensive materials, whose prices are constantly rising. Secondly, reducing the environmental impact of your activities helps limit global warming, and thus the significant alteration of ecosystems and our societies (rising temperatures, migration movements, etc.).
• The valorization of your waste with local partners can help reduce your carbon emissions as well as the pollution caused by waste disposal in nature.
• Encourage your employees to use cycling and walking as modes of transport. Your company can also purchase bicycles to make available to its employees, thereby reflecting the social dimension (improving QWL) of sustainable development.