What’s next in sustainability?
Leapfrogging the climate impasse to envision a world made sustainable
Sustainability, by definition, should have an end point — when it's no longer aspirational but fully realized. Better: It should have an exclamation point!
To borrow from late systems thinker Dana Meadows:
“Hardly anyone envisions a sustainable world as one that would be wonderful to live in.”
Her challenge to imagine a truly sustainable world is already 30 years old. Yet, here we are, another year gone. We’re still spinning on the sustainability hamster wheel of carbon counting, compromised policies, empty environmental pledges, “market solutions” and other mainstream efforts that have failed to deliver transformative outcomes beyond some iterative improvements. We’re stuck.
As you know, Bank of Nature is a program of the Cape Cod Center for Sustainability. While the sustainability industry is well provisioned with experts, consultants, and standardized solutions, we ask different questions: What’s next? What aren’t we doing that might get to a future already made sustainable?
To leapfrog the structural, political, philosophical, and legal impasse we find ourselves in, Bank of Nature offers (so-far) untried planet-scale and climate-scale ideas and answers that look beyond what’s currently on the table. The world we envision is one that has already achieved sustainability — past tense.
What does that world look like? How do we live in it? What steps did we take to get there? We should be doing that now.
‘Tis the season to look ahead. So, what's next in sustainability? If Bank of Nature has anything to say about it, we believe it lies in:
1. New climate finance: Unlocking the scale of long-term stewardship
Society’s response to the climate impasse has never matched the urgency of the crisis. We don’t work big enough. That takes money — far more than we’ve marshaled through governments or corporate sustainability. In exploring how to make Bank of Nature a reality, we identified fiduciary money as an untapped climate hero. These are the pensions and endowments worth tens of trillions already embedded in the global economy. But right now, that money is working against its own design, propping up the status quo and exacerbating the climate crisis rather than building a dignified future. How, why, and for whom that money moves is the essence of our push for fiduciary-backed climate finance. We aim to direct these behemoth resources toward climate security and other future-forward benefits.
2. Fiduciary leadership: Curating dignified futures
For too long, fiduciary duty has been limited — and vastly underestimated — to focus on maximizing financial returns. This narrow view has fueled the red state-blue state divide in the US over ESG policies, but it misses the bigger picture. Fiduciary duty is not just about financial gain; it’s about loyalty, care, and impartiality to those who depend on these funds for a dignified future —whether that’s in 10, 20, or 40 years. Current fiduciary practices, we argue, fail to be fair to all plan participants, especially when investments are made in industries that harm future generations. A glaring example is the fossil fuel sector, which is enabled by pension funds that breach their duty to their youngest participants. In 2025, look for a push to integrate fiduciary duty with climate leadership that moves enough big money to secure better environment futures for all of us.
3. Legal tipping points: Setting precedents for future generations
For environmental advocates frustrated by the lack of progress in the courts, the law still has a few tricks up its sleeve. What’s next in sustainability is the establishment of a universal legal standard that recognizes climate risk as fiduciary risk. That lack of legal consensus is the shield that courts hide behind to justify dismissals. We are honing a thin edge of the wedge — the legal strategy and legislative efforts that combine fiduciary statutes with climate accountability to set the bar.
4. Labor and youth: Empowering workers to shape the future
In places like Massachusetts, the public pension system legally protects 300,000 civil service participants. These are union members, both retired and still working. Importantly, the youngest new hires have the same right to confidence in their financial future as the oldest retirees. Labor has untapped “intergenerational loyalty” power to change fiduciary choice now to point us toward, for example, climate security. The fairness argument should get real traction in 2025.
The climate impasse is not just about struggling to reduce emissions or manage carbon credits. It’s about a deeper systemic issue: the conflict between traditional economic systems that prioritize growth and short-term profits, and the urgent need to prioritize ecological limits and long-term stability. The blueprint for this shift from problem-solving to system-building already exists within the fiduciary economy.
What’s fiduciary economy? Take a wander through the other essays including our “most read”:
Happy New Year. #climatehope
We can — and will — engage new ideas to resolve the impasse by looking beyond it. For a lot of our new subscribers, we might get into material that’s unfamiliar. Comment, share and like as appropriate. Email. That helps us grow. I hope you’ll join us for this fiduciary journey.