SUSTAINABILITY LEADERSHIP AND THE PROTECTION OF THE COMMON GOOD

Abstract

Viewing sustainability through the lens of the common good helpfully surfaces the complexities, challenges and controversies of leadership and governance for sustainability. • Fundamentally, the common good refers to those tangible and intangible ‘goods’ that serve all members of a community. Typically, the ‘goods’ that comprise the common good require collective action to ensure their provision and protection (e.g., clean air, access to clean water, unpolluted marine and waterway environments, global climate change management, biodiversity protection and public health systems). As such, the common good can be positively or negatively impacted by leadership decisions and actions across all levels and sectors of society. • Although acting for the common good is vital, agreeing on what constitutes the common good is not straightforward because it is riven with differences of opinion about: (1) the goals and outcomes that ought to be pursued; (2) the processes and procedures that ought to be used to realise these goals; and (3) the extent to which we should build upon, or destroy the past, in order to realise the common good. The common good is thus paradoxical. • Sustainability leadership must embrace the complexity and the paradoxes of the common good, viewing these paradoxes as central components of the sustainability transition challenge. • Sustainability education and education for sustainability leadership should prepare students to see and understand the paradoxes of the common good. It should also introduce students to the processes that exist to knit together plural perspectives in our search for common ground and the common good.