My MBA at Indian School of Business commenced at a time when the world was mourning the global financial markets crisis and rejoicing the Noble Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore and Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, heroes who highlighted the gory consequences of Global Warming with ‘Inconvenient Truth’ and the IPCC Report respectively.
As I advanced in my MBA coursework and learned about minimizing fixed costs and calculating net present value of potential investments, I was intrigued by their hidden costs on the environment and impact on local communities. I wondered whether disregarding the impacts on future generations were the root cause for crises — both financial and climate change. While the world leaders scrambled to save the world from financial meltdown, but seemed to be in state of denial for climate change crisis. Was this ennui due to the fact that financial crisis was very much on our face, with its painful effects visible, and aftermath imaginable, and the crisis due climate change was vicarious and to happen sometime in future — after all mantra is to ‘live for the day’, right?
I thought, perhaps, we cannot do much to prevent another financial crisis but we certainly could do something to stop the climate change. Hence I chose to focus on Sustainability at ISB. Generally sustainability is considered as cost; influenced by Professor Stuart Hart’s book ‘Capitalism at Crossroads’, I investigated various ways we could reduce simultaneously — ISB’s environmental footprint and costs. I presented to the ISB management a proposal for a ‘Sustainable ISB’. My proposal earned me the ‘ISB Torchbearer award’, as well as an offer to join the institution as the Director – Operations and Sustainability
Inspired by Dean Rangnekar’s vision of ‘Responsible Leadership’ to make a ‘Sustainable ISB’, I reached out to community for their help and found tremendous support. Student driven ‘Operations and Sustainability Council’ (OSC) transformed their existing emotional campaign from ‘Go Green’ to ‘Gree(d)n is Good’. Their campaign, inspired by Gordon Gekko, was an overnight hit and T-shirts championing the campaign became best seller. Strengthened by partnerships with ISB various stake holder — faculty, staff, and service providers — we delivered initial savings of ~ $130,000 to the School. In the process, our Co2013 OSC team emerged runners up at prestigious Graduate Business Forum for ‘Responsible Leadership’.
We broke the myth that driving sustainability is cost; in fact leading responsibly costs less — both in money and natural resources — and that is the way forward. It’s now almost a year I have moved to a new role at ISB and it’s a matter of pride to see that the seeds we sowed are now bearing fruits and many new seeds are sown every day by ISB’s sustainability team.
Aware of the “butterfly effect” —something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world — I am positive that if each one of us were to flap our wings we certainly can return the planet, to our future generation, in a condition much better than when we borrowed from them.
It is often said that a crisis is a terrible to waste; I would not like to say much about the financial crisis but do we really want to risk wasting the current climate change crisis?
Nalin Srivastava
ISB, 2009
