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The Natural Step (TNS)
The Natural Step Framework is a simple science-based tool for analysing the complex issues associated with sustainable development.
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The Natural Step - science, but not as we know it…
How many times have you seen science discussed in the media this week? Whether it’s bird flu, MMR jabs, climate change or new innovations - many of our day-to-day discussions revolve around scientific developments.
Science plays an enormous part in our lives. It provides us with information and understanding. It helps us to make decisions, both as a society and as individuals. From new medicines to techniques for developing agriculture or the ever-increasing energy efficient technologies, science seems to provide us through its innovative processes with a never-ending stream of new solutions.
So wouldn’t it be great if we could use the same scientific approach to address the many messy and complicated problems we face, such as environmental degradation and social injustice? Imagine if we had a systematic way of identifying their root causes and a means of developing solutions that were complementary and not contradictory.
Well, we do. It’s called The Natural Step Framework.
The Natural Step Framework is a simple science-based tool for analysing the complex issues associated with sustainable development.
Whether you or your organisation are facing declining resources, changing legislation, or rising costs through the supply chain, The Natural Step Framework provides a straightforward way of identifying and analysing problems. More importantly, The Natural Step Framework provides a means of developing practical solutions for businesses, government bodies, policy-makers, individuals and communities.
Organisations that use The Natural Step Framework are not only leading the way in sustainable development - they are gaining a significant edge over their competitors and improving their chances of survival in an increasingly challenging world.
Basic science
Back to basics
Some basic truths about the natural systems we depend on for life provide the foundation for our work. The Natural Step principles and approach to sustainability are grounded in the science underlying the Earth’s systems.
These scientific laws are well known and accepted by scientists, and
we all intuitively understand them, yet the implications resulting from these systems are largely overlooked by people in their day-to-day lives.
Nothing disappears
All mass and energy in the universe is conserved and energy may be converted into different forms, yet the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant.
This principle of matter conservation and the First Law of Thermodynamics are helpful in understanding the Earth as a system. For example, apart from the occasional meteorite or spaceship, the amount of matter on Earth has stayed the same for billions of years, and when matter is burned it is not destroyed, but transformed into waste predominantly in the form of visible and invisible gases.
Everything spreads
Energy and matter tend to spread spontaneously; everything has a tendency to disperse (the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or the Law of Entropy).
Although the total amount of energy remains constant, the quantity of energy available in a useful form decreases with each transformation and tends to dissipate through a system.
Entropy is a measure of the amount of disorder or randomness there is in a system, and in every isolated system - such as the universe - entropy always increases. Examples of this include food decaying, coloured dye in clear water dispersing, a car rusting and ice samples taken in the Arctic Circle containing measurable amounts of man-made PCBs.
Thus, materials generated by or introduced into human society eventually will disperse in nature, no matter what we do.
There is value in structure
We determine material quality by the concentration and structure of the matter that makes up a material. For example, food and petrol are valuable because they have a high concentration and structure.
What we consume are the qualities of matter and energy - the concentration, purity, and structure of matter, and the ability of energy to perform work. We never consume energy or matter because it is neither created nor destroyed. If you drop a teacup and it breaks on the floor, much of the value from its structure is lost, but each of the original atoms is still present.
Plants create structure and order by using energy from the sun
Net increases in material quality on Earth are generated almost entirely by the sun-driven process of photosynthesis. Chloroplasts in plant cells capture energy from sunlight and form bonds that provide energy for other forms of life, such as animals.
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, disorder increases in all isolated systems. The Earth is a closed system with respect to matter, but it is an open system with respect to energy because it receives light from the sun. It is this flow of sunlight that continues to create structure and order from the disorder.
Implementation
Applying the system conditions
The Natural Step (TNS) System Conditions define a set of basic issues that must be met in a sustainable society. How can these System Conditions be applied to a business’s everyday operations?
TNS has developed and tested an approach to help businesses to incorporate sustainability into their business strategies.
The A-B-C-D Analytical Approach includes four elements, which are repeated as the business progresses along various pathways towards sustainability. The process usually begins with a short, intensive session with key decision-makers, and proceeds according to the capacity, priorities and resources within the business, covering all four steps with a team drawn from across the organisation.
A = Awareness
The first phase involves aligning your business around a common understanding of sustainability and the ‘whole-systems’ context for their organisation.
A presentation of The Natural Step principles of sustainability, basic science and whole-systems approach provides a platform from which strategies for living in balance with nature and our global community are developed. Participants review details of the state of the earth’s systems, including the ecological, social and economic trends that are undermining our ability to create and manage healthy and prosperous businesses and communities.
B = Baseline Mapping
What does your business look like today?
This phase consists of conducting a Sustainability Gap Analysis of the major flows and impacts of your business, using the System Conditions, to see how your activities are running counter to sustainability principles. This allows the business to identify critical sustainability issues, the business implications and opportunities for moving forward.
Bounded by natural systems and communities, this analysis includes the impacts of a business’s entire supply chain and an evaluation of products and services, energy, capital and human resources from ‘cradle to grave’.
Another critical component of the assessment is the social context and
organisational culture, which provide dimensions to the analysis essential for understanding how changes can be positively introduced into the system.
C = Creating a Vision
What does your business look like in a sustainable society? Imagine what your operations will look like in a sustainable society based upon the four System Conditions.
In this phase, key decisionmakers and stakeholders work together to create a compelling long-term vision for a sustainable enterprise. It is here that businesses often begin to identify the service they are providing the world independent of any one product (for example, providing energy services versus oil).
Incorporating this awareness into the visioning process unleashes innovation and releases the company from certain existing limitations. From this vision, businesses develop a strategy and action plan for moving towards sustainability.
Strategies are developed based on looking backwards from a vision of success, a method we call “Backcasting” from principles. This prevents the group from setting a direction based on simply overcoming the problems of today. Instead, they begin moving towards a shared vision and goal of sustainability, with each action intended to provide a platform for further improvement.
Opportunities and potential actions are identified and prioritised, with priority given to measures that move the business toward sustainability fastest, while optimising flexibility as well as maximising social, ecological and economic returns.
D = Down to Action
Supporting Effective, Step-by-Step Implementation.
Businesses set their priorities for improvement, based on the vision they have created.
Phase four consists of advising and supporting the execution of specific initiatives by providing appropriate training, techniques, and tools for implementation, followed by measuring progress towards goals and suggesting modifications as needed. Backcasting is used on an ongoing basis as a method for continually assessing decisions and actions in terms of whether or not they move the business towards the desired future outcome identified in Step C.
Sustainability principles provide new design parameters that drive product and process innovation throughout the business system. This phase also incorporates organisational learning and change methods, which are both essential for effectively moving people into new ways of thinking and behaving together.
Once a person masters the principles, they can get more and more skilled at handling the details. In a sense, the principles help people to stay on course as they process the myriad bits of information and decisions involved in long-term planning. What is considered to be realistic today never determines the direction of change, only its pace.
The approach is fundamentally based on systems thinking, setting ambitious goals, and developing realistic strategies for moving forward.
Systems Thinking
One aspect of systems thinking is analysing and adhering to the overall principles of a system. These principles ensure that decision-makers have clear guides for assessing various options.
Setting Stretch Goals
The visioning process is one place where individuals are encouraged to come up with ambitious goals for their businesses, which may require radical changes in how an institution operates.
Some goals may take many years to achieve. Once sustainability stretch goals are set, TNS advocates astep-by step implementation strategy.
Step-By-Step
Businesses are not expected to achieve long-term goals immediately. On the contrary, they are encouraged to move systematically by making investments that will provide benefits in the short-term,
while also retaining a long-term perspective.
Businesses can use the Framework to map-out a series of steps that will eventually lead to sustainability.
Finally, businesses using the Framework are encouraged to start with the “low hanging fruit,” and to take the steps that are easiest and will achieve results that help move an business closer to its goals.
System conditions
TNS - The four system conditions
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:
concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust
concentrations of substances produced by society
degradation by physical means
and, in that society…
people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.
Why these four system conditions?
Sustainability is fundamentally about maintaining life on earth and the ecosystems required to support it. Thus, addressing human needs is a basic element of creating a sustainable society. Therefore, meeting human needs worldwide is one of the four TNS System Conditions.
The other three system conditions focus on interactions between humans and the planet and are based on an understanding that contemporary life is fundamentally supported by natural processes,
such as the capturing of energy from the sun by photosynthetic organisms and the purification of air and water.
These processes are essential to maintaining human life. However, as a society we are systematically altering the ecosystem structures and functions that provide life-supporting services.
Based on this understanding, The Natural Step System Conditions are supported by the knowledge that ecosystem functions and processes are altered when:
Society mines and disperses materials at a faster rate than they are redeposited back into the Earth’s crust (examples of these materials are oil, coal, and metals such as lead);
Society produces substances faster than they can be broken down by natural processes, if they can be broken down at all (examples of such substances include dioxins, DDT, and PCBs);
Society extracts resources at a faster rate than they are replenished (for example, overharvesting trees or fish), or by other forms of ecosystem manipulation (for example, paving over fertile land or causing soil erosion).
By considering these three ways in which human life-supporting structures and functions are being altered, TNS has defined three basic principles for maintaining essential ecological processes.
Additionally, TNS recognises that social and economic dynamics fundamentally drive the actions that lead to ecosystem changes.
Therefore, the fourth System Condition focuses on socio-economic
dynamics in terms of the importance of meeting human needs worldwide as an integral and essential part of sustainability.
The Funnel
TNS - The Resource Funnel
The Natural Step’s Resource Funnel is a simple metaphor that illustrates the global trends of resource availability and functional capacity.
Imagine the walls of giant funnel, viewed from the side. The upper wall is resource availability and the ability of the ecosystem to continue to provide services. The lower wall is societal demand for resources that are converted into goods and services such as clothes, shelter, food, transportation and discretionary purchases.
The mechanisms that provide essential life-supporting goods and services for society’s continued existence on the planet, such as food and fibre, clean air and water, productive topsoil and climate control, are in decline.
At the same time, society’s demand for these resources and services is increasing. The Earth’s population is currently at more than six billion people and growing. Our consumption level is also increasing. As society’s demand increases and the capacity to meet this demand declines, society moves into a narrower portion of the funnel. As the funnel narrows there is less room to manoeuvre and there are fewer options available.
The inactive company that proceeds in a ‘business-as-usual'strategy is likely to hit the wall of the funnel - representing business failure.
Opening the Walls of the FunnelWith the awareness that we all live in this funnel - individuals, businesses, governments, families, schools, etc. - we have the opportunity to change the impacts we are having and be more strategic when making choices and long-term plans.
At The Natural Step we believe that through innovation, creativity and the unlimited potential for change, we can catalyse the shift toward sustainability and begin to open up the walls of the funnel.
Businesses that anticipate these changes can position themselves so they avoid the walls and invest towards the opening of the funnel and a future as a truly sustainable company.
TNS Framework
The Natural Step (TNS) is an international sustainable development charity and Forum for the Future is well-practised in the use of the internationally endorsed and tested TNS Framework.
Using this framework, businesses, government agencies, policy-makers, individuals and communities are engaged in training and partnerships, research and development, and community involveement to lead the transition to an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable future.
The Natural Step Framework is a methodology for successful organisational planning. It is based on systems thinking, recognising that what happens in one part of a system affects every other part.
We begin by understanding the broader system within which problems occur and the principles governing success within that system. This upstream approach to sustainability means problems are addressed at the source and are turned into opportunities for innovation and success.
Many successful organisations worldwide are using The Natural Step Framework in their everyday business practices. From a business perspective, the Framework is used as a planning tool to enable businesses to profitably integrate environmental and social considerations into strategic organisational decisions and daily operations.
In the UK, successful businesses using the Framework include BP, Carillion, the Co-operative Bank, Interface Inc., Sainsbury’s and Yorkshire Water. Like businesses, communities can benefit from the Framework as it helps provide a clear, compelling, science-based definition of sustainability and a practical strategic planning framework. Communities such as Whistler in Canada have used TNS to make smart economic decisions and move them step-by-step towards a successful and sustainable future.
The Natural Step Framework complements other environmental tools and approaches such as life cycle analysis and ISO 14001 by providing a context and strategic vision that makes them more effective.
The Natural Step Framework has three main components:
The Funnel
The Natural Step uses the metaphor of a funnel to help us visualise the economic, social and environmental pressures that will inevitably impinge on society as natural resources continue to diminish and population grows.
System Conditions
The Natural Step’s principles of sustainability define the conditions that must be met in order to have a sustainable society. These four System Conditions are the core of the Natural Step Framework. Their precise wording reflects a system-level understanding of how the Earth functions.
In the sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:
concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust
concentrations of substances produced by society
degradation by physical means
and, in that society…
people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.
Implementation
How can the System Conditions be applied to an organisation’s everyday operations? TNS has developed and tested an ABCD approach to help complex organisations to incorporate sustainability into their strategic planning and decision-making processes. It includes Backcasting – framing goals with regard to a desired future outcome – and systematic step-by-step implementation, that provides benefits in the short-term, while retaining a longer-term perspective.
More about the TNS Framework
Basic Science
The basic science behind The Natural Step Framework.
For more information please go to The Natural Step website, or email them here.
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