What it is
A line in the sand for professional practice
Most sustainability guidance tells a professional what to care about. Sustainability in Practice tells them what to do, and what to refuse. It is written for people who work inside real organizations with real constraints and who have watched well-resourced commitments dissolve into reporting cycles and maturity roadmaps. It defines the minimum conditions for professional integrity and gives the practitioner the tools to hold that line.
The guide covers the full arc of practice: impact assessment and materiality analysis, intervention design, implementation governance, performance measurement and ethical accountability. Every chapter is built around what a practitioner must be able to do. It is grounded in GPM's P5 Standard for Sustainability in Business Practice and aligned with the GRI disclosure standards, and it draws on the Sustainability Competence Standard for the capabilities it assumes.
What makes it different
Beyond doing less harm
Threshold
From mitigation to regeneration
Minimizing damage is no longer enough. The guide formalizes the shift from mitigation to regeneration, from reporting to performance, and from aspiration to accountability, with enforceable governance and clear thresholds.
Test
The Regenerative Sufficiency Test
A test of whether an intervention does enough: measurable improvement of system capacity beyond baseline, evidenced, or reduced harm honestly named as reduced harm.
Language
Non-negotiables rather than recommendations
The guide states what must be done, documented, escalated or refused. It names greenwashing patterns by their structure rather than their intent, and it separates competence from intention.
Discipline
Sustainability as a discipline
A discipline has enforceable standards. Good intentions are not enough; competence is behavioural, and the guide treats it that way.
Tools included
Decision trees for the choices practitioners face most often; intervention templates with defined outcomes and responsible parties; a KPI library aligned to the P5 elements; stakeholder mapping tools; and a materiality assessment framework that connects to GRI 3.
For professionals ready to be accountable
What the guide asks of its readers
Name harm where it exists, and not only where it is safe to name it. Design real interventions with defined outcomes and responsible parties. Justify trade-offs in writing against documented criteria. Escalate when defined thresholds are crossed. Refuse when professional integrity demands it.
It is for sustainability practitioners, operations leads and anyone accountable for delivering work that produces verifiable results. It is not an aspirational framework, a reporting checklist or a maturity model, and it does not offer escape routes through incremental progress narratives.
Where others discuss sustainability, GPM defines how to practise it. Sustainability is a professional obligation, and this guide is the standard for meeting it.
Why GPM
Fifteen years of making sustainability operational
GPM has spent more than a decade operationalizing sustainability: the P5 Standard for projects and for business practice; the P5 Impact Analysis and the integrated assessment tools built on it; regenerative project governance through PRiSM and the Practice Guide; and evidence-based intervention design grounded in the Sustainability Competence Standard. Sustainability in Practice is where that body of work is turned into the obligations of an individual professional.
The Professional Certificate in Regenerative Leadership is the learning program built on this guide and on the regenerative design unit of the competence standard.
Getting started
Free download, print and Kindle
| Format | How to get it |
|---|---|
| Free PDF | Download from this page, no membership required. |
| Print on demand | Order a print copy on Amazon |
| Kindle and digital | Read on Kindle or the Kindle app |
Questions
Frequently asked
What is Sustainability in Practice?
GPM's professional standard for regenerative leadership: a practitioner's guide that defines competent sustainability practice in plain terms. What must be assessed, what must be documented, which interventions require justification, and when a practitioner must push back, escalate or walk away.
Who is it for?
Sustainability practitioners, operations leads and anyone accountable for delivering work that produces verifiable results inside real organizations with real constraints.
What is the Regenerative Sufficiency Test?
A test the guide introduces to decide whether an intervention does enough: whether it moves a system's capacity measurably beyond its baseline, with the evidence to show it, or whether it stops at reduced harm and should be named as such.
What is it grounded in?
The P5 Standard for Sustainability in Business Practice and the GRI disclosure standards, with the GPM Sustainability Competence Standard for what the practitioner must be able to do.
Is it published with PMI?
No. Like the P5 Standard for Business Practice it is a GPM publication, outside PMI-GPM, written for professionals in any function.
How do I get it?
The PDF is free from this page. A print edition is available on Amazon and a Kindle edition for the Kindle app.
Author
Dr. Joel Carboni is the founder and president of GPM and the architect of the standards, methods, and certifications behind Sustainable Project Management®, delivered through the PMI-GPM joint venture. He created the P5 Standard, the Sustainability Competence Standard, the Sustainable Project Management® Practice Guide, the Project Sustainability Reporting Guide and the PMI GPM Guide to Responsible Project Sponsorship. For over 30 years, his work has moved the profession in a different direction. A Forbes Business Council member and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) contributor, he was shortlisted for Thinkers50's inaugural regenerative business award in 2025 for his book Becoming Regenerative.
Published 5 September 2026. Corrections through the contact page.
GPM®, Green Project Management® and Sustainable Project Management® are registered trademarks of GPM Ltd. PRiSM™, P5™, CSPP™, CSPMs™, CSPMx™, CSP™, CSF™, GPM360°™ and PSM3™ are trademarks of GPM Global and, where applicable, PMI-GPM. PMI and PMBOK are registered marks of the Project Management Institute.
Also on this site
The P5 Standard for Sustainability in Business Practice: the standard this guide applies. The Sustainability Competence Standard: what the practitioner must be able to do. The Professional Certificate in Regenerative Leadership: the learning program built on both.