The Stories We Tell to Tell Other Stories: Remember People in Sustainability Reporting
Sustainable Brands
John Broadway
Published Jul 31, 2023 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST
Mindfulness & Relaxation
But numbers aren’t a perfect solution for sustainability representation, either. Practitioners already know that tweaks in reporting can make bad numbers look good (omitting Scope 3 emissions being a particularly popular strategy); but the larger problem is that numerical representation is not a neutral way of conveying information any more than language is. With greenhouse gas emissions, for example, reporting CO2e is the metric du jour; yet it is simply impossible to contextualize or relate to those figures. We already know that large numbers are hard to grasp, as seen in reports on COVID deaths or government spending. It’s the same situation with emissions: Even if we know that GHG reduction is vitally important, it’s difficult to feel any connection to the process when all we see is one huge number turning into a slightly smaller number. The abstraction is worsened when those numbers are describing weights of invisible gas. Does any common reader actually know what quantity of CO2e is good, bad or indifferent, relative to company size by industry?
What stories we tell to tell other stories
“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”
Neither language nor numbers alone can convey the whole sustainability story, and both are necessary to tell these stories accurately and well. But the way a question is asked always has bearing on the resulting answer — or, per Haraway, it matters what stories we tell to tell this story. The numbers are important; but they will only mean something in relation to the people whose lived experiences they inform. Sustainability is for everyone and should be understood by everyone; shared understanding is the first step for shared action.