Economy - published on 10 November 2023
Source: Article by Dr. Renato Chahinian
This is an article already present in the Trevisobellunosystem website, published in 2019, which is now revised and updated, for the purpose of an introductory examination of the main characteristics that must distinguish a sustainable investment even in these two provinces of the Veneto region, not only by local operators, but also by foreign investors.
Community well-being, understood as a set of objective and subjective factors that improve our lives, represents the ultimate goal of every community (local, national, supranational or
global), although it is often conceived and valued differently.
Individual and collective well-being, once considered separately (and generally evaluated in conflict: we had to sacrifice our personal well-being to achieve collective well-being), increasingly tend to be unified by virtue of the realization that individual subjectivity (when properly directed) also results in collective benefits (individual work, for example, is a factor in the development of the entire community) and that collective well-being also improves any individual well-being (an improvement in health care is reflected in the health of all citizens).
However, acceptance of these principles entails a significant growth in the complexity of the system, as the factors of well-being (objective and subjective) increase and the relationships (synergistic or conflicting) between them also grow.
The theory of sustainable development, which arose in the second half of the 1980s in the UN context and was subsequently deepened and refined, starting from the emergence of negative predictions about the fate of future generations (due to unbalanced economic growth, ungovernable social tensions and an environment in increasing degradation) has identified some general conditions for balanced development (and thus well-being for our own and future generations) in three areas of factors that comprehensively cover our expectations of well-being: economic, social and environmental. This greatly simplifies the overall problem of individual and collective well-being, since all our activities (private or public, for-profit or not-for-profit, whatever the sector or type) can be referred to at least one of these three categories, and in any case each activity has direct or indirect relationships with all three.
In fact: every economic activity also has impacts in the social and the environment in which it operates; every social initiative has economic and environmental impacts; every intervention in the environment involves economic problems and social impacts. But these very relationships can be in synergy or at odds with each other, and therefore skeptics (those who notice only the contrasts) believe that sustainable development cannot be achieved and fall back on a goal of degrowth, which they define as happy only because it would make us all equal, albeit poorer and renouncing all the benefits derived from the progress of the past 200 years (i.e., since the beginning of industrialization).
In fact, if we instead discover and realize the positive relationships among economic, social and environmental factors, we can pursue sustainable development and aim for a happy development consisting of economic, social and environmental improvement by all, thus also achieving the coincidence of individual and collective well-being mentioned at the beginning. Unfortunately, the road to such a goal is not an easy one, not least because the UN principles themselves, while broadly spelled out in goals and indicators to be achieved, have not made sufficiently explicit the aspect of interconnections between different types of intervention, and thus the risks of achieving one goal while worsening another are many. However, more recent theoretical analysis has already identified several general and applied solutions to the problem of mixed effects, and the main ones can be pointed out below.
First and foremost, human capital requirements are important. If the workforce is more competent and more determined to achieve sustainable goals, it will be able to implement better initiatives in every aspect of the business in which it operates and will be concerned about evaluating the effects. In particular, initial training in every job and ongoing refresher and in-depth training throughout the workforce is essential. Only in this way can every operation become rational and innovative, creating the maximum benefit from every aspect of scientific and organizational progress accrued up to that point. But the joint effects of the three integrated groups of factors must also be taken into account.
From the economic point of view, evaluations of every investment must be made from a long-term perspective, and so all capital deployments are discarded that may give very high returns in the short term, but may be very risky in the long term because they foresee major losses due to: speculative crises in the industry, social claims, ecological disasters, additional taxation for social or environmental purposes.
With reference to the social aspect, any initiative in favor of society must also be carried out in an economically viable and environmentally friendly manner.
Finally, with regard to the environmental aspect, any action for ecological improvement must as well take into account its economic costs (through cost-benefit analysis) and the consequent social effects (environmental protections for the exclusive benefit of a privileged few are well known).
Thus, any action, regardless of its end, will have to take into account all three dimensions and can only be considered worthwhile if it improves at least one of the three aspects, but without harming the others. Although to some this seems to be a problem with practically no solution, the possibilities and opportunities are many because, even dwelling only in the economic field and evaluating the activity of any one enterprise is sufficient:
These are all expedients that every trained and aware manager takes as part of his or her activities, so there are no particular underlying preclusions. The general problem still lies in the lack of knowledge and awareness of these aspects, so there is insufficient education on the subject, and people are often influenced and duped by news and current events that do not take sustainability, the circular economy and other virtuous practices into account.
Yet on the behavior of every economic, social and environmental actor depends the individual and collective well-being of all. It is first and foremost the general well-being of the entire planet, but also the well-being of local communities around the world, in which each can play its part.
At this point, it is worth noting that the same thoughts apply to the provinces of Treviso and Belluno and that the conscious investor must take them into account for his or her own future well-being and that of the entire community to which they belong. But, as mentioned, local communities today are globally interconnected and therefore local benefits are transmitted, albeit with less intensity, to the rest of the world.
Just think, by way of example: the beneficial effects of green initiatives on climate change, improved working conditions along international supply chains, cooperative actions to alleviate poverty in developing countries, and so on.
In this way, the sustainable investor is not necessarily a resident of the place where the investment itself takes place, but can be from countries even far away, since he or she will be able to see positive effects everywhere over time, in addition to his or her return for the capital employed.
The Chamber of Commerce of Treviso and Belluno has long been committed to deepening and spreading social and environmental responsibility among companies and has created various best practices (shared and applied by groups of virtuous enterprises)as well as continuing specialist training on sustainability. Now it is important that also other agencies are oriented more towards these problems and also the more advanced productive districts (that they have succeeded, despite various crises, to assert their economic community) can take this further step towards social and environmental development, from which new impulses can be drawn for the economy itself.
It is now established by the most accepted theories that SUSTAINABLE INVESTMENT IS CONVENIENT IN THE MEDIUM-LONG TERM IN EVERY ASPECT (SOCIAL, ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC).
Translated by Giada Gubert
Intern at the Chamber of Commerce of Treviso – Belluno |Dolomites
Read the Translation of the Article in Chinese:
投资特雷维索和贝卢诺：可持续发展促进社区福祉
Translated by Cecilia Flaccavento
Intern at the Chamber of Commerce of Treviso – Belluno|Dolomites
