A year ago, we published our first manifesto. It was raw, impatient, and deliberately irreverent — don’t sell shit.
A year later, we’ve seen enough dashboards and declarations to know that progress isn’t measured in slides, but in soil. On our way to Produrable, we write this as a declaration of intent: to stay grounded, connected, and unafraid to speak out — even when the echo feels too loud.
Because there’s irony in all of this.
Irony in traveling to sustainability summits.
Irony in preaching sobriety from the stage.
Irony in building data clouds while longing for roots.
But silence won’t help either.
So we speak — not to dominate the conversation, but to shift its rhythm.
Data as the New Ecology
The world’s sustainability crisis is not just ecological — it’s informational.
We operate in silos: ministries, NGOs, corporates, traders, scientists. Each collects fragments of reality, but few connect them. Data is abundant — meaning is scarce.
At Sustaain, we’re assembling a global database of organizations linked to deforestation. We connect FAO and World Bank datasets with satellite and land-use data, and with corporate data from local cooperatives, communities and households — to reveal invisible risks in supply chains of coffee, cocoa, and other soft commodities.
It’s not about big data. It’s about useful data — data that helps farmers, buyers, and regulators see the same forest.
Recent studies show that environmental and emissions data remain fragmented, inconsistent, and often inaccessible across regions and institutions (Beck et al., 2025). Connecting them is not a technical luxury — it’s a condition for coherent action.
When data behaves like an ecosystem — open, diverse, self-correcting — sustainability becomes something we can actually manage, not just report.
The Problem with AI: The New God
AI has become the new religion. It promises transcendence, efficiency, and salvation — if only we surrender enough faith (and data). But AI is not divine. It’s probabilistic. It operates on uncertainty, not absolutes — a fluid technology too often locked into rigid, vertical deployments, and all too often today misused for greater power and ever greater intensity.
We’re told there’s “AI for ESG,” “AI for compliance,” “AI for supply chains.” In reality, none of these worlds stand apart. Nature, trade, and governance don’t obey those boundaries.
That’s why we prefer machine learning as network, not oracle.
Research in distributed and energy-harvesting systems shows how intelligent networks can learn collectively across constrained environments, improving resilience while reducing environmental cost (Güler & Yener, 2021).
The forest outlives the tower. The network is wiser than the god.
So let’s stop worshipping AI. Let’s use deep learning to listen — to adapt, to doubt, to collaborate. Intelligence should flow horizontally, like mycelium — not beam down from a server rack.
Ô Guérillières – Toward a Techno-Feminism
If the first wave of technology was about control, the next must be about care.
A techno-feminist perspective isn’t decorative; it’s structural. It resists extraction and domination. It values empathy, plurality, attention — not conquest. We need slow companies that grow like rhizomes (Deleuze would approve): non-linear, adaptive, decentralized. This isn’t poetry; it’s systems thinking. The only way to make global supply chains resilient is to let intelligence circulate, not concentrate.
Progress, then, becomes a form of listening — digitizing a bill of lading, validating a farm polygon, harmonizing KPIs across geographies — all small, tangible acts that restore coherence in the noise.
Stay Grounded
Data is not power — connection is.
AI is not wisdom — attention is.
The future is not vertical — it’s rhizomatic.
We carry our paradoxes: screens and trains, voice and doubt, ambition and restraint. But acknowledging contradiction is not weakness — it’s consciousness.
To be sustainable is to stay in contact — with others, with earth, with uncertainty.
So keep questioning. Keep connecting.
And whenever possible — take the train.
It keeps you close to the ground.
And that’s where change begins. 🌱
References
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Beck, M. W. et al. (2025). Addressing data gaps in sustainability reporting: A benchmark dataset for greenhouse gas emission extraction. Scientific Data (Nature). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05664-8
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Güler, B., & Yener, A. (2021). Energy-Harvesting Distributed Machine Learning. arXiv:2102.05639. https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.05639
- “Le Monde Nous Appartient” by Draga (Ô Guérillières, 2025)
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“God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys (Pet Sounds, 1966).