Sir, Why Is Sustainability So Complicated? A Conversation with Students

Last week at VNIT, Nagpur, after my lecture on Understanding Sustainability: Systems and Silos, many students stayed back. One of them asked:

“Sir, why does sustainability always look so complicated? Isn’t it just about solving pollution and climate?”

I told him we would not begin with climate.

We would begin with traffic.

The Flyover That Failed

Suppose a city builds a flyover. Congestion reduces briefly. Then it returns.

Linear thinking says:
Build road → reduce congestion.

Systems thinking says:
Build road → reduce congestion → induce demand → increase cars → congestion returns.

A student added: weak public transport and easy vehicle financing will accelerate that congestion.

Exactly.

Sustainability feels complicated only because feedback loops are invisible until they act.

Another student suggested congestion taxes and retiring old vehicles. Someone else said, “Promote electric vehicles.”

They were now no longer thinking in straight lines. They were exploring incentives, behaviour, energy mix –  the system.

“Sir, so feedback is the problem?”

No.

Ignoring feedback is the problem.

What Is a System?

A system consists of:

• Interconnected elements
• Relationships
• Boundaries
• Patterns over time

“Who decides the boundary?” one student asked.

That is where judgment enters.

Draw boundaries too narrowly, and you miss consequences.
Draw them too widely, and analysis becomes abstract.

Systems thinking is disciplined imagination.

Electric Vehicles and Partial Truths

“Sir, at least electric vehicles reduce pollution.”

Do they?

If electricity is coal-based, emissions shift. They do not disappear.

Urban air pollution is not just about vehicles. It involves land use, industry, construction, energy mix, behaviour, and health systems.

So I asked:

Who is the system manager?

Transport builds roads.
Environment drafts standards.
Energy expands supply.

No one owns the whole system.

That is not a scientific failure.

It is a design failure.

Recycling and Other Comfort Stories

Another student said, “Recycling solves waste.”

Does it?

Waste exists because products are designed without end-of-life thinking.

Recycling treats symptoms.

Systems thinking asks the harder question:

Why was the product designed this way in the first place?

We prefer downstream fixes because they are politically and commercially easier.

Upstream redesign challenges business models.

And what about the risks of recycling when we do not have recycled product standards?

The Institutional Problem

Then came the sharpest question:

“If systems thinking is so important, why don’t institutions work like systems?”

Because systems thinking disrupts comfort.

Departments protect turf.
Budgets protect silos.
Metrics reward narrow optimization.

We design institutions to fragment complexity  and then blame complexity for defeating us.

When Everyone Is Responsible, No One Is Accountable

I was speaking in the Mumbai Climate Week, while discussing Healthy Air Zones, someone said:

“Air pollution is everyone’s responsibility.”

That sounds noble.

It is also dangerous.

Monitoring sits with environmental agencies.
Enforcement is fragmented.
Urban local bodies lack authority.
No institution owns outcomes when air quality fails.

When everyone is responsible, no one is accountable.

Healthy Air Zones cannot be pilot projects or CSR gestures. They require custodians –  with authority, budget, and ownership.

Clean air is not produced by projects.

It is produced by robust institutional design.

Even then, we must be cautious. Health outcomes take time. Epidemiological attribution is slow.

Systems thinking should never overpromise.

The Real Question

As the session ended, I asked:

If sustainability is treated as isolated issues, what happens?

“We solve symptoms,” one student replied.

Exactly.

The problem is not lack of knowledge.

It is lack of institutional courage.

Sustainability is not produced by awareness campaigns or thicker reports.

It is produced when systems are redesigned – incentives realigned, authority clarified, accountability owned.

So when students now ask me why sustainability seems complicated, I answer differently.

It is not complicated.

It is interconnected.

The real question is:

Are we willing to think in loops —
or do we prefer straight lines because they are easier to report, easier to manage, and easier to defend?

Systems rarely collapse because we lack intelligence.

They collapse because we work in silos.

The ESG Illusion

Before leaving, a student asked:

“How does this relate to ESG?” (The most spoken three letter world today!)

Here is the uncomfortable part.

The ESG ecosystem is expanding rapidly. Frameworks multiply. Rating schemas intensify. Disclosure cycles accelerate and are increasingly getting mandated

But can someone be an ESG expert without systems thinking?

ESG is not three reporting columns.

It is a loop:

Climate targets reshape supply chains.
Supply chains reshape labour conditions.
Labour conditions reshape reputation.
Reputation reshapes capital access.
Capital allocation reshapes environmental choices.

That is systems thinking.

Yet much of ESG practice remains siloed:

Measuring without redesigning.
Auditing without restructuring.
Reporting without redistributing responsibility.

Reporting becomes the objective. Redesign becomes optional.

 Professors summing up

When my Professor Friend learnt about my conversation with the students, he lighted his cigar and said “Dr. Modak. Great dialogue. Wish I was around too. But let me give a simple example.

A company sets aggressive carbon-reduction targets and shifts to bio-based inputs to improve its emissions profile. On paper, its carbon metrics improve. Ratings respond positively.

But upstream, expanded biomass sourcing contributes to land-use change and water stress in supplier regions. Social tensions emerge where land competition increases.

Carbon improves. Ecosystems degrade. Communities strain.

The metric improves. The system destabilizes.

That is not sustainability.

It is single-variable optimization.

Many ESG professionals are under intense time pressure, aligning with frameworks, improving ratings, producing disclosures.

But systems thinking requires pause.

It requires asking:

• What are the feedback loops?
• Where are the delays?
• Who controls outcomes?
• Who bears risk?
• What will break first?

If ESG becomes compliance-driven rather than system-driven, we will optimize metrics while fragilizing systems.

That is not sustainability.

It is administrative sophistication layered on structural inertia.”

He extinguished his cigar indicating that it was time for me to go.

I wish I could give this example to students at VNIT, Nagpur.

---

A Note

Understanding sustainability is not the same as becoming fluent in ESG metrics, reporting templates, or due-diligence checklists. Those tools are necessary but they are not sufficient.

What truly matters is systems thinking: the capacity to recognise interconnections, feedback loops, trade-offs, and the deeper nexus that links environmental, social, governance, and financial decisions.

Last year, I completed a book titled ESG Nexus – From Silo to Synergy (CRC Press), which examines this transitionfrom fragmented ESG practice to integrated systems design. This book will be available post May 28, 2026.

I will be conducting a virtual training-cum-counselling programme on ESG roadmapping between March 16–28, 2026. The focus is on understanding the nexus between material issues and developing structurally sound, long-term capital allocation strategies. Importantly, participant will complete a his/her capstone project on roadmapping and will receive a counselling session from me and my colleagues.

For those who wish to explore these ideas further, additional details are available through the respective links.

And if you want to have a copy of my slides I used at VNIT, then reach me (you find out!)

---