ABSTRACT
Businesses, NGOs, educational institutions, and individuals are making choices to become more “sustainable,” just as governmental institutions have over the past two decades. In the context of governments, we found that the efficiency of resource use and the compatibility of growth and environmental protection were common themes among governments. Any actions that improved one of the three pillars, even when those actions did not incorporate or account for all of the pillars, were considered “sustainable.” These broad interpretations of sustainability allowed for uneven, underwhelming implementation of global sustainable development goals. Similarly, among non-governmental institutions the malleable nature of sustainability has allowed all manner of practices to be called “sustainable” precisely because the word has come to mean anything to anyone. Many of the actions taken to be more sustainable are decidedly unsustainable. Here, we examine some of those actions and the underlying interpretation of sustainability associated with unsustainable, often shortsighted, decisions made under the banner of sustainability.
