This year’s CEO Study 2010, ‘A New Era of Sustainability’, carried out by Accenture on behalf of the UN’s Global Compact initiative, came out with some fascinating insights into the state of mind of around a thousand CEOs all around the world.It’s actually hugely encouraging -especially at a time when our politicians are still all at sea on sustainability.But one finding had me hooting with laughter:81% of CEOs – compared to just 50% in 2007 – were of the opinion that sustainability was now “fully embedded into the strategy and operations of their company”.Really?!Don’t get me wrong.Lots of companies are doing lots of things to address today’s most pressing sustainability challenges, and many of them are already making a real difference.But that’s not the same thing as “fully embedded”.Of all the companies that I have come into contact with over the last twenty years, through both Forum for the Future and The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, I would say that less than 5% could make any sort of claim to sustainability being “fully embedded”.That may sound like a low level, but it’s no mean feat “fully embedding” sustainability in any organisation.Which is why my incredulity went into overdrive on hearing Mrs Spelman (DEFRA Secretary of State) claim that one of her reasons for axing the Sustainable Development Commission was the fact that sustainable development was now “mainstreamed across the whole of Government”.In case you feel left out at having missed such a momentous mainstreaming moment, let me reassure you that this is just a figment of Mrs Spelman’s virgin imagination – that’s her SD virginity of course.In reality, there is not one single part of government – or the whole of the public sector, for that matter – anywhere in the UK where sustainable development has as yet been properly mainstreamed.And by properly mainstreamed, I suggest DEFRA continues to use the old Sustainable Development Commission definition as in “sustainable development becoming the central organising principle for everything that Government does”.That judgement is powerfully reinforced in a very interesting new paper from Andrea Ross (Senior Lecturer at the University of Dundee), with the compelling title: “It’s Time to Get Serious – Why Legislation is Needed to Make Sustainable Development a Reality in the UK”.http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainabilityWhilst acknowledging that good progress have been made over the last few years (particularly in terms of the ‘architecture’ of SD and rigorous watchdog interventions), Andrea Ross argues that the current framework is still not delivering in three critical areas: “improving understanding, providing a comprehensive framework to integrate potential conflicting priorities, and proving an operational toolkit”.Her paper highlights better progress in Wales (where SD was statutorily ‘embedded’ in the Government of Wales Act 2006) and (to a lesser extent) in Scotland.But it reveals continuing inconsistencies across the whole of the UK in terms of both interpretation and the use of SD.She concludes: “The UK is now at a stage where specific legislation is required to drive the implementation of sustainable development further forward.Legislation directed at the implementation of sustainable development could potentially address many of the current shortcomings by increasing the priority, support and protection afforded to sustainable development across government(s) as a long-term policy objective.”That should go down well with Mrs Spelman and Mr Huhne!I did consider, briefly, setting that as my third Spelman-Huhne Test to give them a chance to put their professed enthusiasm for sustainable development into practice.But that would be unfair given the total indifference of the rest of their Cabinet colleagues.So let’s set the bar much, much lower from a mainstreaming point of view.The Government’s own sustainable development strategy (‘Securing the Future’) was produced in 2005 and is now ‘out of time’.So it’s now incumbent on Mrs Spelman (with Mr Huhne’s loyal support) to prepare a new strategy which will give them a chance to show what effective ‘mainstreaming’ looks like across the whole of government – without the Sustainable Development Commission to help them out.And it would, I think, be entirely reasonable to set a deadline for a new strategy to appear before May 6th 2011.