Dr. Mark Roseland is globally recognised as an ESG speaker, sustainable development expert and urban planner with decades of experience across academia and public service. He holds a PhD in Community and Regional Planning, served as Chief City Planner in Metro Vancouver, and is Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University, now advising on global futures at Arizona State University.
Mark combines scholarly insight with practical leadership, directing the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and founding Pando | Sustainable Communities, a network promoting collaboration among sustainability practitioners. His award-winning work spans sustainable urban governance, climate action and community resilience, making him a key voice for organisations seeking systemic, scalable impact.
In this exclusive interview with The Champions Speakers Agency, Mark shares his views on what real sustainability looks like, how communities can drive change, and why businesses must move beyond surface level ESG to embed purpose, governance and resilience in their core operations.
Question 1. Many people still associate sustainability solely with the environment. How would you define the true scope of the sustainability challenge, and why should local businesses and communities care?
Dr. Mark Roseland: “So the sustainability problem is not just about the environment. It’s one of the unfortunate things that after so many years of talking about sustainability, most people still think that we’re just talking about the environment. But sustainability is really about our relationship to the environment and therefore to the economy and therefore to society as a whole.
“The obvious thing that everybody understands today is that the world, the environment, is changing. I mean just the weather in recent years is really clear about that.
“But what people don’t realise is that there are several planetary boundaries that have been defined by the scientific community over the last several years — nine of them in particular — and they have to do with things like the climate, biodiversity, ocean acidification and so on.
“Six of those that we know about have been exceeded in the last several decades, and the other three we don’t even know what those boundaries are. The rate at which that is happening is increasing all the time.
“Now, what that means for us — really what the sustainability challenge is — is that somehow we have to live within the earth’s planetary boundaries. And yet while we do that, we also need to do the things that we have historically done through economic development for literally hundreds of years now, which is to give people decent life and prosperity and income and wealth and so on.
“But we have done that historically by putting more energy and materials into our economic systems and stressing our planetary boundaries. So the challenge right now is: how do we do that? How do we live within what British economist Kate Raworth calls the safe and just operating space for humanity, where we are improving people’s quality of life and standard of living and doing so without exceeding and degrading planetary boundaries?
“Now that may sound like it’s a global problem, and it is, but it’s also a local one. Because you cannot have a sustainable planet without having sustainable communities. So my work is very much about that global-local connection and helping people understand that by addressing local problems in a global context, we not only make our communities better, but we make the world better. You’re essentially saving the planet one community and one business at a time.”
Question 2. From your perspective, what practical steps can communities and businesses take to drive sustainability at a local level, and why is integration across sectors so important?
Dr. Mark Roseland: “So again, there’s been a lot of focus on sustainability as a global concept and a global challenge, and certainly it is. But many of the causes of global unsustainability are local, and many of the potential solutions to global unsustainability are also local. And by local, I’m not talking about just one place, but many places. So these causes and potential solutions are going to be unique to a particular place.
“These are things that people can work on in their businesses, in their communities, in their local governments, in their civic associations, as citizens, as residents, in their neighbourhoods, in their cities, towns, and villages. There are all kinds of amazing things that communities are doing, that businesses are doing. Up until now, most of those things have been siloed.
“People are doing some wonderful work on energy efficiency, on affordable housing, on circular economy, on fossil fuel-free transportation, and on and on. But we are doing these in silos. We are not getting the efficiencies that we need by seeing them in a holistic, comprehensive way. So we are really having a bit of a Tower of Babel phenomenon.”
Question 3. What do you hope audiences take away from your public talks?
Dr. Mark Roseland: “The really important thing here is that most of us are understandably a bit overwhelmed and disheartened when we think about sustainability. We think about the future, and we look at leadership, or lack thereof, from national and international agencies and governments.
“What my work shows is that the real traction on this is from the bottom. It is communities that are literally the living laboratories for policy invention. And when communities can do amazing work, then that can be replicated by other communities. But it can also serve as the basis for state, provincial, national and even global level policies and programmes.
“And what happens when we do this work, when we make these connections and we take a holistic view, is things become more hopeful. Particularly, what we get is a sense of community alignment. When stakeholders are aligned, they drum to the same beat and dance to the same music. Community alignment transcends silos.
“It connects the dots, harnesses synergies, and generates multiple co-benefits. The Community Capital Compass and our associated tools make those connections and synergies visible, thus advancing the prospect of win-win-win solutions. So this is a hopeful and practical way of addressing concerns that we all have.”
This exclusive interview with Dr. Mark Roseland was conducted by Jack Hayes of The Motivational Speakers Agency.
