Editor’s Note
Sustainability is a word that lives comfortably in our vocabulary, but too many of us have had to learn its definition through context clues.
When I was a business reporter, I learned this mysterious, nebulous word by reading company reports. It was always measured differently, but it was there: Trees planted. Eco-labels purchased. Metric tons of plastic saved. Unlike losses, revenues, and profits, which always had a simple number attached, sustainability metrics were slippery and variable, malleably shaped into the story that served best.
In the Philippines, the buzzword slipped into our jargon before we had the policy or infrastructure to standardize what it meant. It was only in 2019 when the SEC even introduced its “comply or explain” principle for publicly listed companies—a soft landing for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. Only in 2023 were publicly listed companies mandated to submit this data. It trained companies to talk about sustainability as a project, an add-on that can be written into corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports.
In contrast, my co-founder Anna Reyes learned about sustainability from forest rangers and environmentalists, as a special advisor for Masungi Georeserve. The site, now a multi-award-winning conservation initiative, received its first big award, The Pathfinder Award from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), in the form of sustainable financing. She still talks about how it fundamentally shaped her belief that conservation, and other sustainability initiatives, must always be economically restorative.
Just recently, Patagonia released a sustainability report, calling it “Work in Progress.” It was painfully honest in a way that most of us aren’t. It said: Nothing we do is sustainable. “No company we’re aware of, including our own, truly gives back as much or more than it takes.”
Meanwhile, in a landmark lawsuit, Filipinos are suing fossil fuel giant Shell Plc for the loss of lives in supertyphoon Odette. It is the first civil claim that connects major polluters to damages happening in the Global South.
In a statement, Shell responded: “The suggestion that Shell had unique knowledge about climate change is simply not true. The issue of climate change and how to tackle it has been part of public discussion and scientific research for decades.”
The truth is, there will never be a universal understanding of what it means to be sustainable. We accept it in our language as a signal for our intention to do good. But very rarely do people see eye to eye on how to be good.
So, at least, at Sustina, assume that we agree on this: The crisis of our lifetime is happening. In typhoons that come too fast and too strong. In houses destroyed and rebuilt over and over. In money that doesn’t stretch far enough. More than ever, the Philippines is reckoning with this crisis. It was ranked the seventh most affected country in the world by extreme weather events in the Climate Risk Index 2026.
All Filipinos deserve a country that can sustain itself and its people.
Too many stories end at the release of the annual report. A company pledges carbon neutrality. A conservation project is launched. A state of national calamity is declared. An excellence award is given. The cycle moves on. There is a gap between the press release and the outcomes we see on the ground. Infinite gaps between our various definitions of what a sustainable planet looks like, and how much we are accountable to it. That is where the story—a developing story—lives. This is where we aim to be.
Nina Unlay
Editorial Director