Going Deeper - the Quadruple Bottom Line – People, Planet, Profit, Papatuanuku’
University of Auckland, Research Director Nga Pae o te Maramatanga/NZ's Indigenous Centre of Research Excellence
Abstract
The conference theme is ‘the triple bottom line’. Also known as ‘people, planet, profit’ –triple bottom line is a framework for looking at social and environmental outcomes, as well as financial outcomes – in short sustainability. More broadly for us, what does cave tourism really deliver for its stakeholders – financially, environmentally and socially? But can we go deeper? –to incorporate the fourth dimension, articulated in the title as Papatuanuku’, but representing culture. Quadruple bottom line reporting requires an organisation to be responsible and accountable to all stakeholders of an organisation, not just the shareholders. The stakeholders of an organisation are anyone who is affected by the business activities of a company including shareholders, customers, employees and suppliers. The difficulty faced by many organisations is how to accurately reflect that responsibility and account for cultural values and other outcomes (social and environmental) in a cost benefit analysis. The assumption is that all four outcomes can have a quantifiable financial assessment to determine if they have been effective or not. I propose that money is not a useful measure of sustainability, and that there might another concept that could be applied – mauri.