Thinking Strategically About Sustainability: The Natural Step Canada Offers Unique Course to Drive Corporate Change

There are an ever increasing number of sustainability courses offered in Canada and abroad. Always curious to learn more, I was especially intrigued by courses available through The Natural Step Canada - its Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development is used by hundreds of organizations around the world.

A recent one-day Natural Step workshop, Level 1: Foundations in Strategy, took place in Toronto. Sustainability Advisors Brendan Seale and Karen Miller facilitated the day's activities, designed to guide 33 participants through the application of The Natural Step Framework. I spoke with Brendan Seale to learn more about what makes this workshop unique among the ever-increasing options being offered to sustainability professionals.

Nested systems

Part of transforming the way participants think about sustainability strategy is reframing the concept of "triple bottom line." Seale describes a redesign of the Venn diagram, featuring Environment, Economy and Society as three circles meeting in the middle, portrayed instead as nested circles. "Within the Environment, we have Society and within it, is the Economy," he remarks. "That perception of separation between humanity and nature is at the root of all of our sustainability challenges, because our economic and social systems are designed with that assumption of separation."

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Meirav Even-Har is a Justmeans staff blogger. She reports on Canadian CSR issues. Meirav is an independent sustainability consultant and writer working in Toronto, Canada.