A Sustainable Future: 12 Key Areas of Global Concern

By Klaus Wiegandt

Considering subjects as diverse yet interrelated as the earth’s water resources, renewable energy sources, climate change, the demise of natural diversity, overpopulation, and malnutrition, this book collects and accessibly presents the most up-to-date research on subjects of major global concern from twelve leading scientists. 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Haus Publishing
• Release date: Sep 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781910376744

Book preview

2016

Our planet: how much more can Earth take?

Jill Jäger, Ines Omann, Fritz Hinterberger

Introduction

In 2007, we wrote the book Our Planet: How Much More Can Earth Take? because the situation on our planet was much more serious than many people believed. We also wanted to point out good options for action. Here, we would mainly like to present new questions, insights, challenges, and ideas that have become more important in the past ten years. In the introduction, we answer a number of questions that show what we believe is key, as we did in the 2007 book.

1. What does global change hold in store?

The term ‘global change’ describes the profound changes in the environment that have been observed in the past years and decades: climate change, desertification, species extinction, etc. The transformation of the environment, but also of society, accelerated dramatically in the second half of the twentieth century. In recent years, scientists have been able to show that some changes are already so serious that they may pose a significant risk for the development of society (see section ‘Global transformation’).

2. Is the situation really so dramatic, or do we still have time to act?

The situation is dramatic for three reasons in particular: most factors relevant to environmental changes (such as economic development, consumption in industrialised countries, the size of the global population, resource and energy consumption) are still seeing unchecked growth. The governments of the world have agreed to both climate goals and sustainability goals in recent years. It is urgently necessary to take the implementation of measures seriously in order to reach these goals (see section ‘Global transformation’).

3. What are the driving forces for environmental changes?

Human activities are the strongest forces driving global change. Consumption of natural resources is affected by agriculture, food production, industry, energy supply, urbanisation, transportation, tourism, and international trade. These activities alter the composition of the atmosphere, the characteristics of the Earth’s surface, biodiversity, the global climate, and the ocean currents (see section ‘Global transformation’).

4. By how much do we have to reduce resource consumption?

It is true that in the past 30 years, many countries have achieved relative improvements in efficient use of raw materials. Globally speaking, humankind creates approximately 40% more economic value from one ton of raw material than just 30 years ago. Yet these improvements have not been able to balance out the increase in the amount of resources consumed. The global economy is growing, and therefore we are also producing and consuming more and more. That is why efficiency gains are more than compensated for by economic growth. Human activities consume natural capital 1.5 times as quickly as nature can renew it. In 2013, approximately 85 billion tons of material, including biomass, were extracted and used globally. In addition, 50 billion tons were extracted, but not used. In other words, a total of 135 billion tons. Recent studies show that material extraction should not exceed 45 billion tons if we are to remain within the boundaries of a safe operating space for humanity. At the global level, this would mean a total reduction of material consumption by more than 60% (see section ‘Resource consumption’).

5. What kind of transformation do we need?

We are in a situation of multiple crises, accompanied by profound transformation processes that are occurring more quickly and more intensively than ever before. That is why humankind is confronted with major challenges. How can we meet these challenges? By negating them and continuing as before, or by acknowledging them and the transformation dynamics they entail? If we opt to acknowledge them, there are again two options: either we let this transformation just happen, risking a ‘change by disaster’, or we decide to shape the transformation: ‘change by design’. Can the current situation of multiple crises be seen and used as an opportunity for a holistically designed transformation? In this respect, implementing the guiding principle of ‘sustainability’ also involves a fundamental transformation of our present-day consumption, production, and decision-making patterns (see section ‘What type of transformation do we need?’).

6. What can we do?

The transformation to a more sustainable world can be achieved only by a radical change in thinking in the political and business communities as well as in society in general. It will have to be accompanied by organised and moderated processes, whereby all actors (the political, business, and scientific communities and civil society) jointly develop visions of a sustainable world, jointly decide how their vision can be reached, and jointly develop, implement, and evaluate transformation paths. Transformation requires experimentation and learning processes. Even today, we can learn a lot from successful small-scale experiments and begin to shape a happy and resource-efficient world.

Global transformation

The Earth as a system – biophysical boundaries

In 2009, Johan Rockström, Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and a large group of renowned scientists published a study clearly presenting the extent to which human activities have changed the Earth system. Rockström and his colleagues defined ‘planetary boundaries’. Overstepping these boundaries has uncertain consequences and potentially causes greater and dramatic changes for humans and the environment. Boundaries for the following parts of the Earth system were determined on the basis of scientific work:

climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, changes to the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, global freshwater consumption, land-system changes, loss of biodiversity, atmospheric aerosol loading, and chemical pollution.

With the exception of the last two areas, for which it was not possible at the time to quantify the boundaries, the researchers determined those boundaries and examined whether or not they had been exceeded. They found that three boundaries had already been overstepped: climate change, loss of biodiversity, and changes to the nitrogen cycle. The authors emphasised that gaps in knowledge still existed and also that the boundaries were partly linked to other boundaries. In other words, if one boundary is exceeded, that might impact other boundaries. But nonetheless, this study shows that human development is in danger if these biophysical boundaries in the Earth system are ignored.

A new version of this study of the planetary boundaries was published in 2015. Will Steffen and his colleagues scrutinised the same processes in the Earth system, two of which have been renamed: ‘loss of biodiversity’ is now ‘loss of biosphere integrity’ to underline the influence of human activities on the entire function of ecosystems. ‘Chemical pollution’ was changed to ‘introduction of novel entities’ to reflect the fact that new technologies can have many different impacts.

Fig. 1: Planetary boundaries. Source: Steffen et al. (2015a)

The results of this study are summarised in Figure 1. Two boundaries have still not been quantified. The study also shows where uncertainties remain. Four boundaries have already been exceeded: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, and changes to the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. These four boundaries are discussed below.

The analysis of planetary boundaries is based on numerous studies conducted in recent years. It is founded upon the fact that the Earth system has been relatively stable over the past approximately 11,700 years, the Holocene period, permitting the development of agriculture, urbanisation, and complex human societies. If human activities destabilise this balance of the Holocene, then irreversible and sudden environmental changes are possible that cannot be predicted and that pose a danger to the future development for all creatures populating the planet.

Kate Rayworth (Rayworth, 2012) complemented these biophysical boundaries, which define a safe operating space for humanity, with socioeconomic aspects. This combination reflects the challenges of sustainable development more cohesively: it is necessary to respect the biophysical boundaries and simultaneously fight poverty and achieve a good quality of life for all. Figure 2 shows this combination. The socioeconomic aspects provide an inner boundary, while the biophysical processes show the outer boundary. In between is a space in which humankind can flourish in a safe environment with social justice.

Is it possible to remain within the ring? Would eliminating poverty not necessarily entail overstepping the biophysical boundaries? Rayworth answers these questions with a clear ‘No!’ For instance, she shows that the additional calories required for the 13% of the global population suffering hunger today account for just 1% of current global food supply. Electricity supply for the 19% of the population who have no electricity today would increase global CO2 emissions by only 1%, according to Rayworth. The greatest stress for the planetary boundaries today is the consumption by the richest 10% of society and the production patterns it entails. Roughly half of CO2 emissions are produced by just 1% of the global population. 33% of the global sustainable nitrogen budget is used for meat production in Europe – and Europe accounts for just 7% of the global population.

Fig. 2: The combination of planetary and socioeconomic boundaries. Source: Rayworth (2012)

The four planetary boundaries which have already been exceeded

Climate

As described in detail in our 2007 book, climate change is considered the most important environmental problem of the future by far. Since 2007, the state of knowledge and climate policy have developed further (see the contribution by Mojib Latif in this volume).

The year 2015 was the warmest since 1880 (Fig. 3). Temperature data from NASA showed that the global average surface temperature in February 2016 was 1.35°C higher than the average temperature for that month in the period 1951–1980. Up till then, there had never been a 1.35°C increase from one year to the next. The previous record (1.15°C) was achieved in January 2016.

Fig. 3: NASA’s Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index (1880–2015). Source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/

In 2013 and 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its Fifth Assessment Report. It was reported that the warming of the Earth can be seen distinctly and that it is ‘extremely likely’ that human activities are the main cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century. Changes of the global water cycle, melting of snow and ice, rise of the average global sea level, and some changes in extreme weather and climate events have already been observed.

The IPCC Assessment Report underlines that the climate changes of recent decades have had significant consequences for the environment and human beings. Sensitive ecosystems such as coral reefs or the Arctic are already manifesting the consequences of climate change. Wheat and corn yields, important food staples, are suffering overwhelmingly negative impacts, and water resources in many regions are being harmed.

What form could future developments take? New climate and socioeconomic scenarios were constructed to answer this question. There are a large number of possible scenarios because both socioeconomic development and future climate policy measures can impact greenhouse gas emissions. Accordingly, these scenarios show that the average global surface temperature will rise by 0.9°C to 5.4°C by the end of the century compared with pre-industrial levels. These values are of course subject to some uncertainties.

In the discussion about future climate change, one very important question concerns the maximum amount of greenhouse gases that can still be emitted in line with the goal of seeking to prevent dangerous global warming. The IPCC states that cumulative CO2 emissions, that is, the total emissions since the beginning of industrialisation, largely determine the average global warming of the Earth’s surface in this century. If average global warming must be limited to less than 2°C with a probability of more than 66%, then cumulative CO2 emissions since 1870 must be limited to approximately 2,900 Gt CO2. Roughly two-thirds of this amount had already been emitted by 2001. So if warming is to be kept below 2°C, we can only emit about another 1,000 Gt of CO2.

Climate change therefore remains a major challenge. The risks and costs are increasing. It will hardly be possible to increase greenhouse gas emissions in the future without major consequences for society and the environment.

In December 2009, the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) took place in Copenhagen. The goal was for the signatories to agree to a new set of rules for climate mitigation after the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. But it proved impossible to adopt a treaty in Copenhagen. Only three years later, at the 18th UNFCCC conference in Doha in 2012, was it decided to continue Kyoto II for the period 2013 to 2020. After that, further negotiations focused on the period after 2020. At the 21st UNFCCC conference in Paris in December 2015, the goal was to adopt a treaty for the period after 2020. After intensive preparation and, at times, tough negotiations, the Paris Agreement was accepted by 195 member states.

The Agreement asserts that global warming should not exceed 2°C compared with the pre-industrial period, and efforts are to be made to limit it to not more than 1.5°C. Another goal is to reach a balance between greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities and CO2 sequestration. CO2 sequestration occurs through natural or technological processes. In advance of the conference in Paris, 186 states submitted voluntary national climate goals. But these voluntary objectives will not be enough to limit the temperature increase to less than 2°C. From 2023 on, the goals will be reviewed and potentially enhanced every five years. However, some scientists think that reviewing and enhancing the goals in the second half of the next decade will be much too late if the 2°C target is to be reached.

Many hailed the Paris Agreement as a success and as a signal that the climate problem is being taken seriously, and that it was possible to reach an international agreement. But others are not so happy. In the case of voluntary commitments, there are no sanctions if a country does not reach the goal it set for itself. The words ‘fossil fuels’ are not even mentioned in the Agreement. Some scientists doubt that it is even still possible to limit warming to not more than 1.5°C and emphasise that reaching this goal requires rapid and sweeping changes in the economic system with major societal impacts.

The integrity of the biosphere

The destruction of ecosystems reduces nature’s ability to support human societies. Ecosystems provide a number of services such as pollinating fruit trees, cleaning water, and providing culturally important landscapes.

In 2001, the European Union set itself the ambitious goal of halting biodiversity losses by 2010. Biodiversity encompasses the diversity within species (genetic variation), the wealth of species, and the diversity of ecosystems. When, after 2010, the European Environment Agency showed clearly that the target had been missed, a new vision and a new goal were prepared.

The vision:

In the European Union, biological diversity and ecosystem services provided by it will be protected, valued, and restored in an appropriate way by 2050. Biodiversity furnishes a necessary contribution to human beings’ quality of life and economic well-being. Catastrophic changes caused by the loss of biodiversity must be prevented.

The goal:

The loss of biodiversity and the destruction of ecosystem services will be halted in the European Union by 2020; biodiversity and ecosystem services will be restored to the maximum extent possible, while the EU’s contribution to preventing global losses of biodiversity will be increased.

As the European Environment Agency showed in 2015, this goal is again very ambitious and remains an enormous challenge. In 2015, 60% of the evaluations of species and 77% of the evaluations of habitats in Europe had non-satisfactory results.

As explained in more detail in the chapter by Josef H. Reich-holf in this volume, biodiversity is under threat owing to multiple factors: the spreading of invasive alien species, climate change, pollution, over-fertilisation, and changes of habitats. This is a result of numerous indirect factors such as demographic changes, economic interests, and societal patterns of consumption. According to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), these direct and indirect threats to biodiversity will continue to exert pressure on biodiversity. Figure 4 shows the results of an OECD study illustrating that biodiversity will continue to be lost in all regions through to 2050 if countermeasures are not taken.

Fig. 4: Average biodiversity, 2010–2050. Source: OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050

The boundary concerning the integrity of the biosphere has already been overstepped. How could the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of ecosystems be reversed? One proposal came from an international study in 2010 (TEEB 2010): we must measure and pay for the contribution of biodiversity and ecosystem services to human beings’ quality of life. In other words, it is about the value of nature and how we valuate it! The advantages of protecting ecosystems and their services are often much greater than the costs, but the market system rarely considers the entirety of the social and economic values provided by ecosystem services.

Changes to the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles

Human activities have drastically impacted the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. The main causes are the production and application of fertilisers. Human activities are transforming more atmospheric nitrogen into forms of reactive nitrogen than all terrestrial processes combined. This reactive nitrogen is usually emitted into the atmosphere and is not taken up by plants. If it is washed out by rain, it pollutes rivers, lakes, and coastal waters, or it accumulates in the biosphere. Large amounts of phosphorus are also not taken up by plants and accumulate in water bodies, resulting in frequent algae blooms that use up the oxygen in the water.

The planetary boundary for phosphorus was set by Rockström and colleagues so that a large-scale loss of oxygen (‘anoxic event’) in the ocean can be prevented. The flow of phosphorus into the oceans is to be less than 11 Tg P per year. Steffen and colleagues calculate that more than 14 Tg P per year are applied to agricultural land as fertiliser. The boundary for nitrogen is based on detailed scientific studies and was set at 62 Tg N per year. This boundary is exceeded by agriculture in North America, Europe, India, and East Asia.

Fig. 5: Changes in forest area. Source: Steffen et al. (2015a)

Land-system changes

The land surface has been and is being changed in many parts of the Earth. Forests, pastureland, and wet meadows are converted for agriculture or urban development. The changes have major consequences for other biophysical boundaries such as the integrity of the biosphere or the water cycle. Steffen and colleagues developed a new method to assess land-system changes. Whereas Rockström and colleagues used agricultural land, the new studies analysed the remaining forest area. It was argued that forest area is much more important in the interaction between land surface and climate. So the planetary boundary is reached when the forest area in the tropical and boreal latitudes is less than 85% of the potential area, and the boundary in the mid-latitudes is 50% of the potential area. The forests in the mid-latitudes have less impact on the global climate. Figure 5 shows where this planetary boundary has already been overstepped and where the greatest risks lie. According to Figure 5, the boundary has been exceeded in the tropical forests of Africa and Southeast Asia, while the risk of overstepping the boundary is increasing in the boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere.

The causes of global change

In the 2007 book, we described the causes in detail and emphasised the impacts of human economic activities, which have been increasing constantly since the Industrial Revolution. We used charts to show how human activities have accelerated extremely quickly, especially since 1950. These trends have now been described for a further ten years. W. Steffen and colleagues show that the ‘great acceleration’ is continuing. The trends for global regions are interesting. For instance, the global population is continuing to grow, but most of the growth is taking place in non-OECD countries. This is contrasted by the fact that the growth of the global economy (GDP) and thus of consumption is taking place mostly in OECD countries. Some indicators of the state of the Earth system were found to be growing more slowly (atmospheric methane concentration) or have stabilised (stratospheric ozone concentration).

Since the economic crisis of 2009, global economic growth has been significantly weaker than before, and there is no reason to assume that this will change in the coming decades. Although this diminishes the annual intensification of pressure on the environment, it does not reduce the pressure itself, which is continuing to grow – albeit less strongly.

Europe reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 23% between 1990 and 2014. Global emissions from fossil fuels and industry increased by 0.6% in 2014, but projections showed a reduction in 2015. The strong upward trend with growth rates of 2.4% between 2005 and 2015 seems to have been broken. The main reason for this is that China is using less coal and significantly more renewables.

The global population is continuing to grow, and the projections are updated regularly. The number of people on Earth has more than doubled since the 1960s to more than 7 billion in 2013. The United Nations projections show that population growth is slowing and that the mean value for the year 2050 is 9.6 billion. This number will continue to be highly dependent on which measures are implemented. If investments are made in education and health and in strengthening the role of women, the birth rate will decline. Population growth is taking place mostly in developing countries; in contrast, in some regions, the population is decreasing, e.g., in the Caribbean, Japan, Russia, and Latin America.

As we described in the 2007 book, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) were adopted at the Millennium Session of the United Nations in New York in 2000 and were to be reached by 2015. Goal 2 was to achieve universal primary education: ‘… children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.’ This goal is very important for reducing the birth rate in the future. In 2015, the United Nations published the MDG results. In 2000, 83% of children in developing countries were enrolled in primary school; in 2015, 91%. The number of children of school age who do not go to school was cut by almost half during that period. There were significant improvements in sub-Saharan Africa: school enrollment was up by 20% from 2000 to 2015, compared with an 8% increase between 1990 and 2000. Also highly relevant for curbing population growth: the literacy rate of young people between 15 and 24 years of age rose from 83% to 91% between 1990 and 2015, and the gap between men and women decreased.

Sustainability goals

The series of UN conferences on sustainable development continued in 2012. After the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and the subsequent conference in Johannesburg in 2002, the Rio+20 Conference took place in Rio de Janeiro in 2012.

The outcome document of the Rio+20 Conference, ‘The Future We Want’, includes many policy statements and reflects on the results of the previous conferences. It recognises that progress since the first conference in 1992 has been uneven. For this reason, it is necessary to do more to implement earlier commitments. The differences between industrialised and developing countries must also be reduced further. Three important goals in the Rio+20 outcome document are: poverty eradication; recognition and reaffirmation of the Rio principles agreed at the 1992 conference; and development of an economic system based on sustainable development and poverty eradication (‘the green economy’) in already existing environmental/sustainability strategies. Although the Rio+20 Conference made some steps in the right direction, for example strengthening the United Nations Environment Programme, many participants and observers were disappointed, thinking that the results were weak in light of the great challenges.

The Rio+20 Conference also underlined how important and useful sustainability goals are and culminated in a decision to establish a process in which governments as well as all other stakeholders would develop global sustainability goals. An Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (OWG) was founded following the conference. After meeting many times, this group presented its proposal for 17 goals and 169 targets in July 2014. They were adopted by the United Nations as the global Sustainable Development Goals in September 2015 and are included in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable