Susainability as the Lens, Not a Lane

One of the most rewarding parts of academic life is the chance to attend conferences: sharing ideas, presenting research, and seeing where the field is heading. Over the years I’ve noticed a growing interest in social and environmental issues. As a sustainability researcher, that is encouraging. However, when I register for a conference, I still find myself hunting for the dedicated track on the program, an island amid panels on strategy, sales, and consumer behavior.

The annual conference hosted by the Center for Applied Research and Innovation in Supply Chain-Africa (CARISCA) redrew that map for me. I have attended the past two summers, in Ghana then Nigeria. What stands out is this: at CARISCA, sustainability is not a track. It is the organizing logic. It is embedded in every conversation. From food systems to health care distribution, from clean energy to rural manufacturing, it’s not a topic. It’s the context.

​A Different Starting Point
There’s a reason for this emphasis. The countries represented at CARISCA are building out systems of production, transportation, and consumption under radically different constraints than the West faced during its industrial rise. The U.S. and Europe industrialized before climate risk was widely understood or regulated. By contrast, these nations inherited a global climate problem and are trying to grow while navigating the fallout of that legacy.

This is the challenge of a ‘just transition’, defined by the United Nations as ensuring that no one is left or pushed behind in the global transition to environmental sustainability. It is more than a policy idea. It is a quiet tension running through this conference. Many of the countries represented at CARISCA are developing under rules and timelines set elsewhere, and they must do so without the tools earlier industrializers used to build wealth and infrastructure.

Yet imbalance is not the focus at CARISCA. Sustainability does not operate as a constraint. It functions as a design principle, a vehicle for ingenuity. That does not make the work easier, but it does make it more urgent. Perhaps that is why sessions are not about abstract climate targets or ESG signaling. They are practical. How can rural clinics receive temperature-sensitive medications on time? How can agricultural distribution networks protect farmers and land? Which energy solutions can power the grid where coal-fired electricity is thin? These conversations go beyond supply chain optimization. They are about survival.

From Mine to Factory to Market
Against that backdrop, one idea that surfaced repeatedly at CARISCA is the progression from mine to factory to market. For decades, many African nations have exported raw materials (e.g., cocoa, gold, oil, lithium) only to import back the finished goods at a premium. Value creation was externalized, extraction internalized, and the gains rarely returned to the source.
The current question is how to hold more of that value. Moving to factory here means refining, processing, and assembly near the source so that capabilities, jobs, and tax bases grow at home. The final leap to market means not only producing for others, but building a robust domestic market, with cross-border trade and local brands. It’s not just an economic aspiration. It’s a reimagining of power and participation in global systems.

Of course, progress is not linear. Countries and sectors will move at different speeds and in different orders. The mine-to-market arc offers a useful way to think about industrial sovereignty: reclaiming steps in the value chain that were outsourced or denied and designing safeguards into the process rather than retrofitting them later. The focus of a just transition is not growth for growth’s sake but the quality of that growth. Upgrading the value chain should translate into community participation, meaningful work, and environmental stewardship. Sustainable development is not about catching up. It’s about building differently from the start.

Here is the takeaway I brought home: if sustainability is the unifying theme at CARISCA, why shouldn’t it be elsewhere? Our academic conferences should be shaped by the same questions: who benefits, who bears the cost, how do we achieve it, and over what time horizons? That stance would reshape our questions and metrics by treating resilience and equity as design inputs, not side notes, and by treating externalities as performance, not as an appendix. The researchers at CARISCA already work within that reality. If we are serious about sustainability, it cannot be relegated to a conference track. It needs to be the lens, not the lane.