Having seen how SE leaders assessed their own progress at achieving regional sustainability goals, now it is important to gauge the impacts of SE in another way. The self-assessment is very subjective and bears the risk of showing the bias of entrepreneurs to exaggerate their positive roles in the community and downplay their weaknesses. In order to attain a more objective appraisal of SE actors, I also asked stakeholders about the impacts of their colleagues across the SE network and the impacts they believed were being made by these organizations. This section makes an initial cross-assessment of sustainability entrepreneurs by analyzing the kinds of entrepreneurial actors identified by stakeholders and the nature of the impacts on the region that they were described to have by their peers.
The interviews with stakeholders revealed a wide array of actors. This array of actors emerged from asking sustainability entrepreneurs which other individuals or organizations they knew which were making positive community impacts through environmentally sustainable actions. The group of SE actors that was identified was very diverse and often very different from typical notions of sustainability entrepreneurs.
These actors included predictable groups such as entrepreneurs and green business owners, as well as groups as diverse as sports-related environmental programs and even the oil and gas industry. Interestingly, the most frequently mentioned set of actors taking a role in regional sustainability were members of the community, followed by municipal agencies, green business owners, non-profit organizations, and
role in SE, leaving this group not as salient as an actor that was mentioned by more stakeholders. These actors were located across several different organizational models, although many occupied hybrid roles not easily categorized into a single model.
How are these actors perceived by their peers as agents of advancing progress towards a sustainable region? The various stakeholder groups that entrepreneurs identified were described as having a wide range of impacts on the region, specific communities or neighbourhoods, or particular issue areas and long-term goals for sustainable development. The perceived impacts of these actors varied widely. Often, a particular business or municipal department was praised by one individual only to be harshly critiqued by another, and the confidentiality of these actors, since they did not have a chance to state their own goals, is maintained by keeping them anonymous.
Another common difference between the perspectives of entrepreneurs was the scope of community impacts which were relevant to a particular actor. Many individuals expressed a broad array of impacts that they believed a certain agency or business should make, while others only described the impacts that other actors were commonly expected to make. Other common features of these perceived impacts are described in detail below.
Community
By far the most frequently mentioned group of actors mentioned as part of SE were members of the communities that are part of the New Orleans region. Community members were described as having multiple impacts on regional sustainability and playing a role in the actions of sustainability entrepreneurs. The impact of community members was described in several ways, including the market role that individuals have in driving demand for sustainable business, public pressure on political institutions, and promoting sustainable choices and values in their communities.
Strengthening Green Markets
The role of community members in the market for green goods and services was a major component of their perceived impact. Many stakeholders believed that individuals were driving the increase in sustainable business practice through consumer demand. By demanding more environmentally friendly products and services, these residents were both helping create a viable market for these activities and attracting
sustainable businesses and green sectors. One green business owner explained their impact in this way:
“I think that you have some people who are adopting more sustainable practices, and others who don’t see the value at all. And I think that’s where the consumer is going to really drive changes, and I think there are more consumers who are becoming more aware of sustainable practices”
(Anonymous, personal communication, August 6, 2012).
Spreading Sustainability Values
Another way that the community was described as part of the SE movement was in promoting and spreading sustainability to the rest of the population. Stakeholders repeatedly referred to inspiring individuals and organizations, particularly in low-income communities but throughout the region, who had begun to lead a consensus for sustainable awareness and action in their neighbourhoods. Leaders in certain neighbourhoods specifically lauded for this role: “there are definitely some natives, specifically were in the Ninth Ward, right, that are leading a sustainability…movement over there” (Anonymous, personal communication, August 7, 2012). However, this role of spreading sustainable practices to the populace spread beyond the Lower Ninth Ward into many other neighbourhoods and towns, with multiple stakeholders alluding to local efforts to spread support for bicycle lane construction, volunteering opportunities for local residents, wetlands restoration projects, and many other innovations. The roles played by community members exposes another gap in the SE framework on the importance of consumers in supporting SE. There is very little focus on the pivotal role played by communities in their need to have pre-existing demand for the goods and services offered by sustainability entrepreneurs, which in New Orleans has proven to be a major limiting factor in the potential of SE.
Municipal Agencies
Second only to community leaders were the various departments of municipal government who were described as playing a role in SE. Stakeholders repeatedly alluded to local government actors as both contributors to and deterrents of a more sustainable region. Most often, these actors were public servants within Orleans Parish, but the lessons that the perspectives of their role in SE have region-wide implications.
Municipal Sustainability Champions
The first way that municipal agencies were described as having a role in SE was by being champions of sustainability themselves. By implementing sustainable policies and projects, agencies such as the Department of Sanitation, the Office of Environmental Affairs, and other municipal organs were perceived as sustainability entrepreneurs in their own right. Stakeholders described the impact of policies such as reinstating an efficient and effective recycling system, creating a new Master Plan, reducing municipal greenhouse gas emissions, and other improvements. Though the momentum for municipal sustainability was often described as appearing post-Katrina, one leader at the regional government level traced the shift to before the storm. “A lot of the seeds for that momentum at that point had been planted before Katrina actually…in the city, there was a small group of people who were really recycling advocates”
(Anonymous, personal communication, December 6, 2012).
Supporting Sustainability Partnerships
In addition to acting as sustainability entrepreneurs themselves, municipal actors were perceived as supporting sustainable change being spearheaded by non-governmental actors. Although not currently endowed with the resources or time to address many issues related to regional sustainability, municipal agencies offered support and coordination for other initiatives that were carrying out integrated storm water management, small business incubation, vacant lot utilization, and other actions.
This non-profit leader candidly explained how this support is given:
“There’s no money…But governmental leaders…might go in on writing a grant, you know, if there’s some non-profit that’s doing some really good program, and the governmental leader wants to support that program, they might write a grant together to get money for whatever. So, just having the city saying “Yes, this is what we want to do.”, but then it’s that non-profit that actually does the program, with the City’s coordination or whatever”
(Anonymous, personal communication, August 7, 2012).
Green Business Owners
A very different kind of role in SE was attributed to the owners of green businesses in New Orleans. Not surprisingly, the most common way that these actors participated in the movement was by following sustainable business practices. Actors
outside of the private sector described green businesses as fulfilling environmental and community missions, while their peers often believed that any business can find a way to apply sustainability and local community benefit to their practices. Sustainable business owners were described as exceptional individuals with special personalities which gave them a disposition to fulfill their social and environmental visions.
Support for Green Business
Often described as hardworking, visionary, and dynamic individuals, green business owners were associated with many positive local impacts from low-income assistance and poverty alleviation to ecological restoration, described at length in Section 6.1. It was commonly perceived that many companies have started to show that the green business movement can expand to an increasingly larger group of firms in the region. However, many stakeholders believed that green businesses faced many challenges and should be supported by local government as well as the community. “It (rise in green business development) needs support, you know, it needs to be done more quickly. It needs to have a sense of excitement around it. That we can make this happen” (Anonymous, personal communication, August 19, 2012). This attitude that green business needs to be supported confirms the need for partnerships and support of SE from Dagevos & Evers (2008). Many stakeholders expressed the support that green business owners need from governmental and non-governmental actors, from marketing to certification. This characteristic shows that many best practices from other regions could be used to fill this need.
Non-profit Organizations
The last group of actors identified as part of the SE movement was non-profit organizations. These agencies, identified across various service areas such as education, housing, job training, and other services, were most often defined as sustainability entrepreneurs for their role in engaging community members in building sustainable communities.
Engaging Communities
Non-profit leaders were identified as achieving widespread impact through
restoration and engaging the community in the process, understanding the interests and goals of communities, and other forms of community engagement. This stakeholder, who has witnessed the non-profit sustainability movement coalesce in the post-Katrina period, recounted its community engagement process:
“a lot of different initiatives [are] starting to bubble up, and people from the outside started to talk about different ideas. There were plans and…sustainability discussions coming out of the Lower Ninth Ward about how to make it more sustainable, and they were kind of leading a lot of discussions…there was a lot of discussion in the community…but part of it was based on who was back and who wasn’t. In the same way as other places that I’d lived. So the guy who’s like a truck driver wasn’t part of these discussions, but there was a lot of fusion of ideas amongst a certain segment of the population”
(Anonymous, personal communication, December 6, 2012).
Fostering Sustainable Change
Local non-profit entrepreneurs were also attributed with roles such as helping foster local small business, fostering green building practices, and many other positive influences. One form of non-profit actor, volunteers, were credited with great positive influence by this stakeholder:
“I also very much believe the volunteerism, the sustainability-related volunteerism afterwards that helped a lot of people get their houses back together, but also to build them back green. So all those things just infused into the community after Katrina”
(Anonymous, personal communication, August 7, 2012).