Sustainability in business refers to a company's ability to create long-term value by operating within environmental limits, supporting social well-being, and remaining economically viable. It means managing impacts on people and planet in ways that preserve the resources and relationships on which the business depends. This article explores how that idea emerged from a century of scientific, ethical, and political developments that continue to shape ESG expectations today.
For companies working in agriculture and global food supply chains, understanding the historical roots of sustainability clarifies why stakeholders expect transparency, fair working conditions, and climate-resilient practices. It also provides a framework for designing credible sustainability initiatives, strengthening environmental programmes and social commitments that respond to these long-running debates.
In recent years, sustainability has become a divisive topic across industries and political arenas. This is paradoxical, given that the term originally described the capacity to endure by causing minimal harm to the environment, and is broadly framed as a balance among environmental protection, social equity, and economic viability. Yet sustainability does not stand alone as a single, static definition. It sits within a wider ecosystem of ideas—such as conservation, environmentalism, corporate responsibility, social justice, systems thinking, and economic development—that have evolved over decades and continue to shape how the term is understood and applied today.
These concepts have been formed and reformed by scientific discoveries, cultural movements, economic transformations, and political struggles. By tracing their development, even briefly, we gain insight into the values, assumptions, and power dynamics that underpin contemporary sustainability practices and ESG frameworks.
This historical and conceptual perspective reveals how diverse stakeholders—from early environmental advocates and civil society organisations to policymakers, scientists, and businesses—have contributed to the discourse, each adding layers of meaning and contested interpretations.
Understanding this intellectual and historical ecosystem allows us to situate present-day debates within a longer continuum of ethical, scientific, and political thought. It shows how sustainability has evolved from a primarily environmental notion into a complex, multidimensional imperative marked by growing expectations for accountability, transparency, and long-term resilience.
Recognising this trajectory equips organisations and societies to better navigate current challenges and opportunities. It enables more informed and strategic decision-making, and supports the development of sustainability initiatives and policies that are both rigorous and responsive to the realities of a rapidly changing world.
The early foundations of sustainability as a social and economic concern can be traced back to the profound disruptions of the Industrial Revolution [1].
By the late 19th century, rapid industrialisation brought unprecedented economic growth but also severe social and environmental costs: overcrowded cities, dangerous working conditions, pollution, and widening inequalities [2].
These tensions sparked early reflections on corporate responsibility. Industrial magnates such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller helped popularise the idea that wealth came with obligations to society.
Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth (1889) argued that the affluent should reinvest their fortunes in the public good, funding education, libraries, and health institutions [3].
While their philanthropy did not challenge the foundations of industrial capitalism, it marked an early recognition that business had moral responsibilities beyond profit.
In the 1920s and 1930s, these ideas began to take a more structured form. Scholars and business leaders started articulating early theories of business ethics, questioning the limits of shareholder primacy.
The period also saw the rise of institutional economics, with figures such as John Maynard Keynes advocating for a more active role of business and the state in ensuring economic and social stability.
Keynesian thought—particularly his arguments for counter-cyclical investment and the social embeddedness of markets—reinforced the view that economic activity could not be separated from societal wellbeing [4].
These early debates laid the ideological groundwork for later concepts such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, eventually, sustainability as a holistic framework incorporating environmental, social, and economic dimensions.
By the mid-20th century, concerns about the relationship between economic progress, social wellbeing, and the natural environment began to crystallise into a more coherent set of ideas.
Although early reflections on corporate responsibility and ethical business predated this period, the decades from the 1940s to the 1970s were particularly formative: scientific warnings multiplied, major industrial disasters shocked public opinion, and new intellectual frameworks laid the groundwork for what would later become sustainability thinking.
A central moment in this shift came from the field of agriculture. In The Living Soil (1943), Lady Eve Balfour, a pioneering farmer and early advocate of organic agriculture, challenged the post-WWI push for mechanisation, synthetic fertilisers, and intensive farming [5].
Drawing on findings from the Haughley Experiment (initiated in 1939), one of the first long-term comparisons of organic and conventional methods [6], Balfour argued that soil is a living system whose biological integrity underpins long-term productivity and ecological health [5,7].
Her critique of chemical agriculture and her advocacy for regenerative practices such as composting and crop rotation helped inspire the modern organic movement.
With the founding of the Soil Association in 1946, Balfour contributed directly to institutionalising concepts that resonate strongly with today’s sustainability principles. Synthetic fertilizers, she warns, are not shortcuts—they’re slow sabotage, eroding fertility and balance.
At the same time, scholars of management and business ethics began articulating more systematic arguments about the social responsibilities of corporations.
Chester Barnard’s The Functions of the Executive (1938) portrayed organizations as cooperative systems balancing multiple stakeholder needs [8]. Building on this, Howard Bowen’s Social Responsibilities of the Businessman (1953) introduced the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), arguing that business decisions should align with societal values and the public good [9]—a milestone often seen as the formal start of modern CSR.
This conversation was deepened by nuclear chemist and political activist Harrison Brown who situated corporate responsibility within a finite ecological system. In his 1954 book The Challenge of Man’s Future (1954), Brown warned that economic and corporate decisions occur in a finite ecological system, highlighting resource scarcity, population growth, and environmental vulnerability [10].
In the 1960s, Keith Davis sharpened the debate with provocative questions:
Davis’ work marked the rise of social activism within the corporate sphere [13].
While Bowen and Davis focused on ethical and social duties, Brown framed these duties against the backdrop of resource scarcity, population growth, and environmental vulnerability.
Together, these perspectives converge on a powerful insight: corporate responsibility extends beyond ethics and social equity to sustaining the physical foundations of life.
Environmental historian Donald Worster later reinforced this view in The Wealth of Nature (1993), arguing that true prosperity requires an “ecological imagination”—a cultural shift from commodifying nature to valuing it as a community [14].
This evolution makes environmental stewardship inseparable from long-term business ethics and governance.
These intellectual developments soon collided with stark evidence of industrial harm.
In 1956, the discovery of Minamata disease exposed the catastrophic effects of mercury pollution from the Chisso Corporation’s chemical plant. Thousands, including many children, suffered severe neurological disorders, and millions experienced health consequences [15, 16].
Minamata became one of the earliest global symbols of corporate negligence and the human cost of uncontrolled industrialisation—a crisis later addressed by the Minamata Convention in 2013, a global treaty designed to eliminate mercury pollution and prevent its harmful effects on human health and the environment.
The 1960s brought further momentum to environmental awareness. The creation of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1961 by figures such as evolutionary biologist Sir Julian Huxley, ornithologist Sir Peter Scott, Victor Stolan, and environmentalist Max Nicholson marked the institutionalisation of global conservation efforts.
WWF not only mobilised funding for wildlife protection but also shaped environmental public policy, scientific research, and international cooperation.
This decade also witnessed one of the most transformative interventions in environmental history: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) [17]. Carson exposed the devastating ecological and health impacts of DDT and other synthetic pesticides, showing how they disrupted food chains, accumulated in animal tissue, and threatened both wildlife and humans [17, 18, 19].
Despite fierce industry backlash [20], Silent Spring, first serialised in The New Yorker [21], triggered public outcry, prompted scientific review, and led to the eventual US ban on DDT in 1972. It also contributed to the establishment of environmental protection agencies and remains one of the most influential works of the 20th century [18, 22].
Carson did not invent environmentalism; she made it legible and urgent, a movement with stories and stakes [18, 22].
Her haunting image—spring arriving without birdsong—wasn’t just vivid prose; it was a diagnostic: progress had become careless.
Around the same time, American lawyer Ralph Nader took aim at the automobile industry. Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) demonstrated how design choices sacrificed safety for style and cost [23].
Nader’s activism helped usher in stronger regulations, the birth or strengthening of institutions like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, created in 1970), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA, 1971), and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (USCPSC, 1972).
It also influenced the rise of a cultural expectation that corporations must prevent harm and answer to the public.
His activism reframed expectations of corporate conduct and anticipated many of today’s ESG principles by emphasising transparency, harm prevention, and public accountability.
In today’s parlance, he gave definition to the S and G in ESG—social obligation and governance—long before the acronym existed.
Public consciousness was further shaped by environmental disasters that made the consequences of industrial growth impossible to ignore.
In 1967, the Torrey Canyon supertanker ran aground off Cornwall, spilling more than 100,000 tonnes of crude oil and blackening coastlines in Britain, France, Guernsey, and Spain and devastating marine ecosystems [24]. It prompted major international reforms in maritime law [24].
Two years later, the Santa Barbara oil spill in California provoked national outrage in the United States [25]. In response, Senator Gaylord Nelson and activist Denis Hayes organised the first Earth Day on 22 April 1970, which mobilised 20 million Americans (around 10% of the US population at the time) marking the birth of the modern environmental movement.
If Carson provided the story, Earth Day provided the chorus.
The early 1970s consolidated these trends into clearer frameworks. In 1971, the Committee for Economic Development (CED) introduced its influential “Three Concentric Circles” model of CSR [26, 27], distinguishing between:
This was followed in 1976 by the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the first international standard promoting responsible business conduct in areas such as labour rights, environmental protection, and human rights [28].
The decade’s most iconic contribution, however, came from the Club of Rome.
In 1972, environmental scientist Donella Meadows and her colleagues published Limits to Growth [29], a landmark report modelling the long-term consequences of exponential economic expansion on a finite planet. Its warnings about resource depletion, pollution, and ecological collapse challenged the dominant paradigm of endless growth and ignited global debate.
Its message, endless expansion is impossible, was amplified by the publication of The Blue Marble, the iconic 1972 photograph taken by the Apollo 17 crew, offering a striking visual reminder of the planet’s fragility.
Critics quibbled with predictions, but the core thesis proved stubbornly prescient.
Although the specific predictions of resource availability in Limits to Growth lacked accuracy, its basic thesis – that unlimited economic growth on a finite planet is impossible – was indisputably correct. (John Avery, 2012) [30]
Subsequent analyses showed real-world data tracking the report’s “business as usual” scenario, with implications of systemic strain and potential collapse [31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37].
The book didn’t close a debate; it opened a century of rethinking growth.
Also in 1972, the United Nations convened the Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm.
Despite political resistance, the meeting produced a Declaration of 26 principles, an Action Plan with 109 recommendations, and a Resolution—an early attempt to articulate how development and environmental protection must be intertwined [38].
If you listen closely, you can hear the phrase “sustainable development” taking shape—an idea searching for policies, institutions, and a shared language.
It marked the first international acknowledgement of the need for sustainable practices, setting the stage for future global discussions.
The 1960s and 1970s marked a turning point: sustainability moved from scattered activism to institutional frameworks. Governments acted decisively signalling a commitment to guard public health and ecosystems.
The U.S. created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, 1970) and passed landmark laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act (1963, 1970), while Europe, recognising that pollution is unbordered, created the Environmental and Consumer Protection Directorate and launched its first Environmental Action Programme (also known as The 1973 action programme) [39, 40, 41, 42].
Regulation did what rules do best: it made good behaviour ordinary, and bad behaviour expensive.
Internationally, the 1972 Stockholm Conference stated that development and environmental protection were inseparable (UN 1972), while intellectual currents deepened the conversation.
The Club of Rome warned that infinite economic expansion on a finite planet was a mathematical impossibility.
Together, these scientific breakthroughs, ethical debates, public mobilisations, and ecological crises profoundly reshaped global attitudes toward industrialisation, corporate responsibility, and the limits of natural systems.
By the end of the 1970s, the foundations of modern sustainability thinking were firmly in place, setting the stage for the emergence of sustainable development as a global policy agenda in the decades that followed.
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