Live Long and Prosper, My Stillwater Friends

I have a vision of Stillwater not only as a place where I love to live, but a city we can be deeply proud of, one that's a model of what a great little city can be. For this, there’s perhaps no loftier template than the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a “plan of action for people, planet, and prosperity.”

The Agenda defines its overarching goals as follows:

People – “We are determined to end poverty and hunger… and to ensure that all human beings can fulfil their potential in dignity and equality and in a healthy environment.”

Planet – “We are determined to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change, so that it can support the needs of the present and  future generations.”

Prosperity – “We are determined to ensure that all human beings can enjoy prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic, social, and technological progress occurs in harmony with nature.”

That’s a vision I can get behind!

Let’s look unpack some of this ... because the words are simple, but they're loaded with meaning.

All human beings… means people of all ages, colors, gender identities. People whose families have been here for generations and people who just moved here last year. People across socioeconomic, neurodiversity, and physical spectrums. All.

…can enjoy prosperous and fulfilling lives. To prosper is defined as “to succeed in an enterprise or activity” or “to become strong and flourishing.” In the narrowest sense, prosperity is synonymous with financial well-being. That would include things like:

• Equal pay for all, regardless of their age, gender, weight, etc. I would no longer have to cite statistics such as (1) Minnesota women to lose an estimated $483,040 in lifetime earnings compared to men; (2) BIPOC women's average salary is 55-61 cents compared to a white man's dollar; (3) 23% of Minnesotans with a disability live in poverty, more than double the statewide poverty rate. (I could go on, but I don’t want this post to get too gloomy.)

• Narrowing, and someday eliminating, related wealth gaps: In the US today, women have 55 cents in median wealth for every white male dollar. Latina and Black women fare far worse.

  
  
  
  

• Minnesota families not spending 14% of their median household income (45% if you’re a single parent!) on childcare, when the recommended spend is less than 7%. That’s assuming they manage to find childcare at all.

• People across the socioeconomic spectrum being able to afford housing where they work - not having 15% of homeowners and 45% of renters in Washington county being cost-burdened.

Of course, you may interpret prosperity more broadly in a non-monetary sense, too.

Economic, social, and technological progress occurs in harmony with nature. In 1994, serial entrepreneur John Elkington coined the phrase “people, planet, profit.” The  Triple Bottom Line or TBL, as it’s also called, is intended to help businesses “track and manage economic, social, and environmental value added — or destroyed.”

[In 2018, Elkington proposed to replace the term with “people, planet, prosperity” (sound familiar?), because businesses were interpreting the term profit too narrowly. As he explained, “TBL’s stated goal from the outset was system change — pushing toward the transformation of capitalism… spurring the regeneration of our economies, societies, and biosphere.”]

When we think about environmental value, we talk about natural capital, or "the finite resource of ecosystem services...and all of nature’s resources that contribute to human well-being." Natural capital has been calculated to support businesses and economies with $44 trillion of economic value annually. In other words, there is enormous economic potential to be garnered not only by businesses, but by communities like ours, from tapping into natural capital responsibly (I touched on that in a recent post about birds). On the other hand, we undervalue and waste it at our own peril.

Frameworks like Elkington’s and the UN's provide guidelines for how, right here in Stillwater, we not only can but should and indeed must encourage a thriving economic community that values people, planet, and prosperity (as benefit corporations do), and how we as individuals can work together to ensure that our city’s decisions and actions consider the triple bottom line.

Yes, it can be somewhat daunting to think globally and act locally. After all, the UN is made up of 193 nations; compared to that, you might wonder whether our city of just over 19,000 can make a difference.

But mighty oaks from little acorns grow...