Why we’re all part of sustainability’s elitism problem

Browse social media on any given day and you’ll notice a glaring disconnect. At a casual glance, the news reveals a polycrisis defined by geopolitical instability, growing inequality, environmental degradation and social polarization. 

In response, corporations generate inspiring content, breathless invitations to bring your whole self to work and C-suite-bylined advertorials peppered with sustainability jargon but lacking in substance. Meanwhile, sustainability practitioners remain embroiled in esoteric debates over climate accounting or impact measurement, all suffused with a broad, inchoate rage against ‘the system’.

You can tell that sustainability is in trouble simply by the fact that numerous articles keep insistently telling us it’s alive and well. But I’m sure you, like us, have numerous examples (or personal experience) where sustainability is being quietly rebranded, shuffled to a less influential location on the organizational chart or quashed outright.

Just five years ago, sustainability was framed as “the right thing to do,” with a watertight win-win business case. Shareholder primacy was seen as regressive and we were all confident that stakeholder capitalism was proceeding inexorably. 

Now, sustainability is fractious, politicized and besieged. The political headwinds are real and blowing harder by the day. Doubling down and resisting this criticism is a natural reaction, and where much of the sustainability community is, quite naturally, focusing. We understand; it’s exasperating to hear more critiques from the very people that ought to be on your ‘side.’

But, there’s little prospect of countering all this criticism, or framing a compelling path forward, unless we acknowledge our own part in getting to this point. (For the avoidance of doubt, the authors of this piece fully acknowledge that we are also part of this problem!)

The elite capture of sustainability 

To understand how we helped fuel  the current situation, let’s start with the idea of elite capture. This  happens when privileged individuals and organizations appropriate tangible and intangible resources for their own benefit. Think of prominent NGOs that spend more time writing grants and presenting in boardrooms than actually helping communities on the ground. The term was first used in the context of foreign aid and more recently has been applied to the social and political realm of ideas, knowledge, expertise, data, brands, and networks. 

In 2025, Musa Al-Gharbi published We Have Never Been Woke, in which he identifies a dominant class he calls ‘symbolic capitalists.’ These are professionals who work with ideas, data, and narratives — journalists, academics, tech workers and non-profit leaders. While symbolic capitalists tend to emphasize egalitarianism and social justice, they’re the primary beneficiaries of the systems of inequality they claim to oppose. Sustainability practitioners sit squarely in this category because sustainability has an elitism problem and it takes several forms.

On the most basic level, we see it when organizations spend a lot of time talking about inequality, climate change and other sustainability concerns, but stop short of taking concrete actions to address these issues. Are you spending a lot of time talking about inclusive communities, while your company doesn’t pay a living wage? 

Next, we see an obsession with obscure, alienating terminology. Sustainability professionals  love to joke about reporting overload and three-letter acronyms, but it isn’t funny. This is a way to make the ideas impenetrable and technical, so that there are professional opportunities for interpreters, in the form of advisors and consultants. Yes, issues like climate change are scientific and technical, but tackling climate change is, above all, a question of social and political organization. If we can’t bring people along with us, all the measurement frameworks in the world aren’t going to help.

Another problem: assessments, certifications and reporting frameworks are squarely designed for the benefit and use of large, Western multinationals. These companies have the capacity and budget to gather and report data, often after hiring expensive communication consultants. 

Little thought has been given to the needs and priorities of smaller businesses, let alone businesses in developing countries. While the drivers behind measuring Scope 3 emissions, to take just one example, are real and understandable, this is also a way to impose controls, costs and liability on smaller and less powerful suppliers. Also, isn’t it a little weird to think of American businesses lecturing companies in Brazil and India on issues like plastic waste?

Open doors or brick walls

It’s important to ask if the corridors of power lead to open doors or brick walls. For example, it’s common to argue that it’s the responsibility of the sustainability team to cover ‘stakeholder engagement’. Implicit in this argument is the notion that if you can delegate responsibility for those inconvenient, annoying, value-sucking stakeholders to a relatively powerless team, the rest of the company is free to focus on its primary goal — maintaining shareholder value.

Even worse, the powerless team in question is highly selective about which stakeholders it deems worthy of attention. We might focus, for example, on a cocoa farmer in West Africa or a factory worker in Bangladesh. To be sure, these human beings are at the forefront of environmental and social risk, and need concrete help. But, when it comes to less photogenic examples, such as coal workers in Pennsylvania or meatpackers in the Midwest, we tend to dismiss their fears of losing jobs and livelihoods, or even frame them as climate deniers.

In short, it’s no wonder many ordinary people consider sustainability to be an irrelevant, elitist waste of money and time. In fact, stakeholders are savvy enough to see when a business is intentionally creating a distracting aura around something. Building trust shouldn’t be treated as a metric, but rather the outcome of consistent actions over time.

Beginning to fix elitism

As a start, we might focus on whether a business pays a living wage to its workers and contractors. We might also focus on employee ownership models, and look more closely at incentive and reward structures. If these efforts lack credibility, perhaps the social impact or community engagement programming is just a virtue-signaling effort.

We might also focus more intently on what a company’s government relations and lobbying efforts look like, and to what degree the company is facilitating or encouraging the political practices its sustainability report aims to tackle. 

We might also acknowledge and give credit to the companies that are honest about failure and complexity, and approach neat, curated accounts of achievements with much more skepticism. We might even look at how much effort and budget is spent measuring and reporting issues, rather than addressing them.

Most of all, we might stop lecturing and educating, and start listening and learning. What do organizations in emerging markets have to teach large, Western multinationals? What can we do to avoid dumping responsibility and liability onto suppliers and communities at the forefront of the problems we caused?

As many of the core underlying assumptions behind sustainability continue to dissolve, it’s time for more reflection, more plain language and a direct focus on fairness, basic dignity and respect. There isn’t a simple way out of the political mire, but this would be a good start.