Research and Solutions: Four Steps to Sustainability

Abstract

The dual threats of deepening international financial crisis and global climate change have brought a sense of urgency to the highest level of government in the United States. The Obama Administration has committed itself to creating economic activity without neglecting the goals of environmental sustainability. As stimulus money makes its way into the hands of public officials, a standard way to measure the triple bottom line, the economic, social, and environmental impacts of projects is needed. The Brundtland Commission defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”¹; this is a good starting point for understanding the term “green.” Many committed individuals and agencies want to “go green,” but few public officials have found a standard way to identify, quantify, and evaluate environmental and social variables. The sustainable return on investment (SROI) framework, which combines a rigorous process and analytical review of measuring green, does just that.

In early 2009, a group of graduate students from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative and HDR,² researched how sustainability models are used to evaluate investments and project outcomes. The research revealed that most existing models quantifying economic, social, and environmental returns on investment typically weight one of the three sectors more heavily than the others. Additionally, many models calculate impacts but are less concerned with assigning monetary values to them and comparing values across projects. The team found that the SROI framework developed by HDR is one of the more comprehensive methodologies used in public policy making, which was the area of focus of this research. SROI transparently and efficiently encompasses the internal and external impacts of a project and presents the costs and benefits of the triple bottom line in dollar terms.