By Ma­lik Howard

Most peo­ple as­so­ciate sus­tain­abil­i­ty with en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues like cli­mate change, pol­lu­tion or plas­tic waste. But there is more to it than one may think. I used to think the same thing too. Pri­or to par­tic­i­pat­ing in the HAR­CON Na­tion­al Youth Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and En­vi­ron­ment So­cial and Gov­er­nance (NY­SESG) Pi­lot Project, I had no idea what sus­tain­abil­i­ty tru­ly meant. I on­ly knew that it was re­lat­ed to the en­vi­ron­ment.

From the very first NY­SESG ses­sion, I was in­trigued by the breath and scope of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and what it means for us as the youth who will be the fu­ture lead­ers and de­ci­sion mak­ers for our so­ci­ety. This pro­gramme has taught me so much, not just about sus­tain­abil­i­ty, but al­so about the frame­work for sus­tain­able busi­ness ideas and re­lat­ed so­cial is­sues. More than that, it has al­so in­spired me.

One of the first things we learnt about was ESG, which stands for En­vi­ron­ment, So­cial and Gov­er­nance. It is a frame­work used to eval­u­ate how com­pa­nies af­fect the en­vi­ron­ment, treat peo­ple, and make eth­i­cal de­ci­sions. At first, the con­cept was hard to un­der­stand, but two pow­er­ful state­ments re­al­ly helped to shift my think­ing: “Every­thing starts with the en­vi­ron­ment,” and “We must stop re­act­ing with­out un­der­stand­ing why things are hap­pen­ing.” These words made me re­al­ize that many is­sues like sup­ply chain break­downs, health or even gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion can of­ten be traced back to en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age. If we de­stroy nat­ur­al sys­tems like forests, clean wa­ter or fresh air, we cre­ate prob­lems that rip­ple across so­ci­ety and busi­ness­es. In­stead of re­act­ing af­ter dam­age is done, com­pa­nies should fo­cus on pre­vent­ing harm in the first place.

We al­so ex­plored the so­cial is­sues un­der­pin­ning sus­tain­abil­i­ty. ‘So­cial is­sues’ in busi­ness refers to the so­ci­etal prob­lems that have im­pli­ca­tions for how a busi­ness works and how they are per­ceived by cus­tomers and oth­er stake­hold­ers. One ma­jor is­sue is green­wash­ing. Green­wash­ing is a mar­ket­ing prac­tice in which a com­pa­ny de­cep­tive­ly us­es en­vi­ron­men­tal claims to por­tray them­selves or their prod­ucts as more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly than they are. Some signs of green­wash­ing in­clude ex­ag­ger­at­ed claims, un­trust­wor­thy cer­ti­fi­ca­tions or how a com­pa­ny treats work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties. So­cial is­sues are deeply con­nect­ed to en­vi­ron­men­tal and gov­er­nance is­sues. They in­form the “S” in ESG and re­mind us that sus­tain­abil­i­ty af­fects, and is dri­ven by, peo­ple.

The pro­gramme has al­so in­spired me. Dur­ing the train­ing phase, we met many high-pro­file lead­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers, who our men­tor Mr. Er­math Har­ring­ton calls “heavy hit­ters” who con­duct­ed the train­ing ses­sions with us in Phase 1 of the pro­gramme.

One pre­sen­ter who re­al­ly in­spired me was Da­reem Jef­frey, the founder of Ecow­ash. De­spite hav­ing no for­mal aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions and com­ing from a tough back­ground, a sin­gle idea led him to cre­ate what we now know as Ecow­ash. He cre­at­ed a ma­chine that can wash a sin­gle car with on­ly two liters of wa­ter. His com­pact mo­bile unit can wash up to 20 cars with­out any ex­ter­nal wa­ter or elec­tric­i­ty. Da­reem was the win­ner of top in­no­va­tion at the World Con­gress in 2023 in Switzer­land and the re­cip­i­ent of a na­tion­al youth award. His sto­ry made me re­al­ize that not on­ly can some­one have a suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny, while still car­ing for the plan­et, but sus­tain­abil­i­ty it­self can be the busi­ness mod­el. I hope to fol­low a sim­i­lar path one day with my own in­ven­tion: a me­chan­i­cal, col­lapsi­ble Car­ni­val wing.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is not on­ly about sea lev­el rise or plas­tic in the oceans-it’s al­so about how busi­ness­es be­have, how peo­ple and the com­mu­ni­ty are treat­ed and how de­ci­sions are made. ESG is a tool that helps us mea­sure these things. Thanks to the NY­SESG pro­gramme, I now un­der­stand that we all have a role to play. We may not be able to do every­thing, but we can do some­thing.

About the HAR­CON Na­tion­al Youth Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ESG Project

The HAR­CON Na­tion­al Youth Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ESG Pi­lot Project was launched in Oc­to­ber 2024. It iden­ti­fied two sec­ondary schools who over the course of one aca­d­e­m­ic year, will learn, de­vel­op, and main­tain a pro­gram that pro­motes sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals in­te­grat­ed with En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance (ESG) prin­ci­ples. The pro­gram is en­vi­sioned to be main­streamed through­out the en­tire sec­ondary school sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go.