Sustainability: It’s just the beginning

Sustainability, a word people are always discussing nowadays, became complicated when I touched on it throughout the project. My background is in engineering, an area that promotes sustainability more by creating practical products. Also, my previous experience was closer to environmental sustainability, Therefore, this project provides me with a chance to begin understanding sustainability from another new perspective.

Our project aims to assess the ESG risk associated with the pension funds’ investment in the healthcare sector. Unlike past academic projects, which always have an explicit scope, this is an actual consulting project. I should work with clients and identify the scope with other group members. Although it gives us more freedom in designing the project, we must consider more. Who is our target audience? Who are the stakeholders in our project? What is the main problem? Start our project by asking these questions; the project seems more apparent. One opinion delivered by one of my classmates at the SIRI workshop impressed me a lot -- “this experience makes me feel I am more likely to do the project as a consultant, instead of a student”. Indeed, I am beginning the project as a junior consultant.

Moreover, this project enables me to rethink the meaning of sustainability from a different and more comprehensive perspective. I first understood the concept of sustainability in a sophomore course. I was attracted by its vision and confirmed that sustainability is something I wanted to pursue. After an in-depth understanding of sustainability, I realized sustainability has a long way to go. We are prone to accept and conduct things with short-term and considerable returns but neglect the things with more far-reaching and meaningful impacts. The oil industry is an example; people have been aware of its high emissions and are actively moving toward renewable energy. What makes this change? Advancement of the technology. Policy. A keep-growing market. But in the end, it should be people’s consciousness. When more people realize sustainability, a social norm will gradually take shape in the public. That is what sustainability should be: making people notice the problem and pushing the stakeholders to solve it. Unfortunately, not everyone is aware of sustainability issues, which are affecting many people detrimentally. Before starting this project, I have not heard about the risks of investment in the healthcare sector. However, these risks are urgent and are affecting the vulnerable groups who need medical care and the medical institutions whose initial target is to provide reliable service to the public. The project made me realize there are more sustainability-related challenges to be solved. We are just beginning to deal with them.

We are always on the way.