ROPE - A New Set of Sustainability Principles

To ensure most of us are pulling in the same direction, we need a common set of sustainability principles to guide our actions. Dozens of sets of sustainability principles are chronicled in Andres Edwards’s book The Sustainability Revolution. The problem with most of these sets is that they’re too detailed to remember or they’re framed in a negative way. Building on principles from Janine Benyus’s biomimicry approach, William McDonough’s Hannover Principles, Karl Henrik-Robert’s The Natural Step, and Lovins’s and Hawken’s Natural Capitalism, here is a set of positive and concise sustainability principles. Just like the efforts of an organization to become sustainable, which is a journey not a destination, this list of principles is a work in progress.

Collapsing several sustainability concepts into a short acronym is one way to help people remember the principles. I submit for your consideration the ROPE acronym: Resources, Opportunity, Perspective and Environment. This ROPE is a lifeline that will pull us toward a sustainable future.

Resources should focus on using “just enough” local, small-scale, decentralized and renewable inputs whenever possible. Opportunity is the way to view a sustainable future: creating a world that meets our needs even better than what we have now. Perspective involves taking an intergenerational and global view where everyone’s basic needs are met while the privileged consider what truly makes them happy. Perspective also involves valuing the strength that diversity and interdependence bring to a community and an ecosystem. As for Environment, we have a responsibility to restore the environment our lives depend on: for our own sakes, for the benefit of future generations, and for Nature’s well-being.