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Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity– contribution to the Post-2015 agenda and the development of Sustainable Development Goals
Ved Stranden 18DK-1061 Copenhagern Kwww.norden.org
The development of a Post-2015 agenda and Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, provide a global window of opportunity to address both social needs and environmental challenges together. This discussion paper by the Stockholm Resilience Centre looks into the links between human wellbeing and the biosphere, and describes why and how these links should influence the formulation of the new SDGs. It explores what we can learn from the MDGs, and how existing international agreements can be reflected in the Post-2015 MDG process. The paper also seeks to contribute to the elaboration of targets, including process-oriented targets and scalable indicators suitable for a rapidly changing world.
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
TemaN
ord 2014:527
TemaNord 2014:527ISBN 978-92-893-2770-1ISBN 978-92-893-2771-8 (EPUB)ISSN 0908-6692
TN2014527 omslag.indd 1 09-04-2014 12:05:59
Global Sustainability
& Human Prosperity
– Contribution to the Post-2015 agenda and the development of Sustainable Development Goals
Thomas Elmqvist, Sarah Cornell, Marcus C Öhman, Tim Daw,
Fredrik Moberg, Albert Norström, Åsa Persson, Garry Peterson,
Johan Rockström, Maria Schultz, Ellika Hermansson Török
– with contributions from Victor Galaz and Claudia Ituarte-Lima
TemaNord 2014:527
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity – contribution to the Post-2015 agenda and the development of Sustainable Development Goals Thomas Elmqvist, Sarah Cornell, Marcus C Öhman, Tim Daw, Fredrik Moberg, Albert Norström,
Åsa Persson, Garry Peterson, Johan Rockström, Maria Schultz, Ellika Hermansson Török
– with contributions from Victor Galaz and Claudia Ituarte-Lima
ISBN 978-92-893-2770-1 ISBN 978-92-893-2771-8 (EPUB)
http://dx.doi.org/10.6027/TN2014-527
TemaNord 2014:527
ISSN 0908-6692
© Nordic Council of Ministers 2014
Layout: Hanne Lebech
Cover photo: J.Lokrantz/Azote
This publication has been published with financial support by the Nordic Council of Ministers.
However, the contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views, policies or recom-mendations of the Nordic Council of Ministers.
www.norden.org/en/publications
Nordic co-operation
Nordic co-operation is one of the world’s most extensive forms of regional collaboration, involv-
ing Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland.
Nordic co-operation has firm traditions in politics, the economy, and culture. It plays an im-
portant role in European and international collaboration, and aims at creating a strong Nordic
community in a strong Europe.
Nordic co-operation seeks to safeguard Nordic and regional interests and principles in the
global community. Common Nordic values help the region solidify its position as one of the
world’s most innovative and competitive.
Nordic Council of Ministers
Ved Stranden 18 DK-1061 Copenhagen K
Phone (+45) 3396 0200
www.norden.org
Content
Foreword ................................................................................................................................................... 7 About the authors ........................................................................................................................... 8
1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 9 1.1 The Problem ..................................................................................................................... 10 1.2 Solution .............................................................................................................................. 10
2. Living in the Anthropocene: human well-being and the biosphere .......................... 13 2.1 The Anthropocene – age of humans......................................................................... 13 2.2 Ecosystem services: human dependence on the biosphere ............................ 15 2.3 Ecosystem Services and Human Wellbeing: What is the evidence? ............. 23 2.4 The planetary boundaries: humanity’s safe operating space ......................... 24 2.5 A safe and just space for humanity within boundaries ..................................... 34
3. International policy and the move towards global sustainability .............................. 37 3.1 The Millennium Development Goals........................................................................ 38 3.2 SDGs and developments in UN................................................................................... 43 3.3 International Environmental Agreements ............................................................ 48 3.4 Synergising legal systems for the emerging new development
agenda................................................................................................................................. 52
4. Formulating Sustainable Development Goals in the Anthropocene.......................... 55 4.1 An integrated framework for SDGs .......................................................................... 55
5. Conclusions and recommendations ...................................................................................... 65
6. References ...................................................................................................................................... 67
7. Svensk sammanfattning ............................................................................................................ 73
8. Appendix ......................................................................................................................................... 75 8.1 Appendix 1 ........................................................................................................................ 76 8.2 Appendix 2 ........................................................................................................................ 79 8.3 Appendix 3 ........................................................................................................................ 83 8.4 Appendix 4 ........................................................................................................................ 84 8.5 Appendix 5 ........................................................................................................................ 85 8.6 Appendix 6 ........................................................................................................................ 87
Foreword
This discussion paper looks into the links between human wellbeing and
the biosphere, and describes why and how these links should influence
the formulation of the future global Sustainable Development Goals. It
explores what we can learn from the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), and how existing international agreements can be reflected in
the Post-2015 MDG process. The paper also seeks to contribute to the
elaboration of targets, including process-oriented targets and scalable
indicators suitable for a rapidly changing world.
It is a follow-up to an earlier discussion paper, “Human prosperity
requires global sustainability – a contribution to the Post-2015 agenda
and the development of Sustainable Development Goals,” that was com-
missioned by the Swedish Government Office for the Nordic Environ-
ment Ministers’ meeting in Jukkasjärvi on 7th February, 2013. The
Stockholm Resilience Centre was then asked by the Nordic Environment
Ministers to further elaborate on this issue and exemplify some aspects
and conclusions set out in that first document.
This discussion paper, finalized in October 2013, therefore highlights
its perspectives, approaches and frameworks through concrete exam-
ples and case studies. It will be relevant for a number of processes in
which the Nordic countries are currently engaged, such as:
High-level Panel on Post-2015 Development.
Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals.
Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
It has also contribute as a background document to two international
meetings. First, an international workshop for scientists, government
experts and stakeholders on “Planetary boundaries and environmental
tipping points: What do they mean for sustainable development and
the global agenda?” was held on the 4–5th of November 2013 in
Geneva, Switzerland, organised by the Ministry of the Environment of
Finland in cooperation with the Ministries of the Environment in
Norway, Sweden and Denmark, United Nations Environment Pro-
8 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
gramme (UNEP) and the Stockholm Resilience Centre with the support
of the Nordic Council of Ministers.
Later, on the 2–4th of December 2013, there was a Multistakeholder
Dialogue on Integrating Social-Ecological Resilience into the New Devel-
opment Agenda in Medellín, Colombia. The Dialogue was organised
jointly by the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Research on
Biological Resources, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable
Development of Colombia, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, with
the full support of the Governments of Colombia and Sweden, and in
consultation with the CBD Secretariat.
This discussion paper is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers
and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)
through The Resilience and Development Programme (SwedBio) at
Stockholm Resilience Centre.
About the authors
Thomas Elmqvist, Sarah Cornell, Marcus C Öhman, Tim Daw,
Fredrik Moberg, Albert Norström, Garry Peterson, Johan Rockström,
Maria Schultz, Ellika Hermansson Török, Victor Galaz and
Claudia Ituarte-Lima, are all affiliated with the Stockholm Resilience
Centre at Stockholm University. Åsa Persson works at the Stockholm
Environment Institute.
1. Introduction
Over the last two hundred years, the human enterprise has undergone a
period of rapid expansion as if the world we live in had unlimited capaci-
ty for growth in the material economy. The bulk of current concepts and
models of the global economy were developed during this same period,
when the human population still had a small impact on the natural envi-
ronment. In this “empty world” context, the limiting factor to improving
human well-being was labour and the built and manufactured capital
such as houses, roads and factories. Natural capital – our ecological life
support system – as well as our social capital – our myriad relationships
with each other – were not viewed as constraints to development. In
effect, classical models of the economy viewed social and natural capital
as limitless (Costanza et al. 2012). It made sense in this context, not to
worry too much about environmental and social “externalities,” effects
that occurred outside the market, since they could be assumed to be
relatively small and ultimately solvable.
In contrast, we now live in an increasingly interconnected and highly
populated world, where the environmental impacts of human develop-
ment extend globally. The current era is now widely described as the
“Anthropocene” (Crutzen 2002, Steffen et al. 2011), recognizing that
human activities are now the major driver of environmental change,
including the climate system, the water cycle, and the distribution of
living species and dynamics of ecosystems. The human impact extends
across all scales from the local to the global. Over the past 50 years, hu-
manity has moved from being a “small world on a large planet” to be-
coming a “large world on a small planet,” transforming the planet’s at-
mosphere, oceans, ice sheets, waterways, forests, and biodiversity in
ways that could undermine development through exceeding boundaries
that determine the planet’s ability to support human development
(TEEB 2010, GEO5 2012, Rockström et al. 2009).
Now we have to think differently about the relationship between
humans and the rest of nature. It is evident that in order to improve hu-
man well-being and social equity, while at the same time reduce envi-
ronmental risks and ecological scarcities (UNEP 2011), we need a new
vision for sustainability and the economy that is better adapted to the
new conditions. A deeper understanding of what really does contribute
10 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
to sustainable human wellbeing is required, an understanding that goes
beyond viewing poverty as merely the condition of having a low mone-
tary income, recognizing the substantial contributions of natural and
social capital, which in many countries already are important limiting
factors for improving human wellbeing (Griggs et al. 2013).
1.1 The Problem
The Post-2015 agenda and the development of Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) provide a global window of opportunity to address the
above identified social needs and environmental pressures together. The
experiences of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) demonstrate
that concerted attention to global problems does yield positive results
(UN 2013) raising awareness and political accountability worldwide.
While the MDGs have been successful in focusing attention on a range of
issues linked to extreme poverty, such as hunger, gender inequality, and
disease, the MDGs have not succeeded in linking global sustainability to
poverty alleviation and human wellbeing since the environmental di-
mensions have been largely disconnected from the social and economic.
In developing the SDGs, it is therefore important to move beyond the
MDGs and in a much deeper way link the social and economic dimen-
sions of development with environmental dimensions, incorporating the
full spectrum of humanity’s collective assets including social and natural
capital at local, regional, national, and global scales.
1.2 Solution
Ecological and social systems are increasingly viewed as interlinked and
inseparable (Folke et al. 2011). We therefore argue that the twin priori-
ties for the formulation of SDGs must be the protection of the biosphere
– society’s “life-support systems,” and the reduction of poverty as an
essential part of a fair and just global society.
The SDGs must go beyond the usual disciplinary division of sustaina-
bility into separate social, economic and environmental goals (the “three
pillars”), because society, the economy and our environment are intrin-
sically interdependent. Hence, we recommend that goals should be built
around integrated themes such as thriving livelihoods, food security,
water security and clean energy.
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 11
The goals should also avoid becoming a piecemeal collection of single
issue objectives, but instead ensure that the sum of the parts really does
contribute to global sustainability (Griggs et al. 2013, Norström et al.
2013). This requires a deeper analysis of the multiple interconnections,
trade-offs and synergies between SDGs. For example, SDGs should be
designed to focus on the role of natural capital and ecosystem services
within (not alongside) economic development and poverty reduction.
This in turn requires a greatly enhanced and much more widespread
awareness and learning in society of the multiple benefits that humanity
obtains from ecosystem resources and processes.
Finally, we suggest that measuring progress on the targets for the
SDGs must require an agreed set of scalable indicators that should be
inclusive, building data and knowledge from local to national, regional
and international levels. Given the rapidity of many global changes (such
as ocean acidification, ice-sheet melting, and altered regional climates
linked to intense urbanisation), the targets should be based on the latest
research on the dynamics of the Earth system and benefit from learning
processes and early warning and monitoring activities emerging in mul-
tiple knowledge systems.
2. Living in the Anthropocene: human well-being and the biosphere
To understand the sustainability challenges in the Anthropocene, we
need to understand both the extent of human impact on the global envi-
ronment, and the role of the biosphere in supporting human wellbeing.
The ecosystem services and planetary boundaries concepts provide im-
portant framings for this understanding and action. The former focuses
on the benefits humans gain from the biosphere, while the latter concept
emphasizes the impacts of human activity on the biosphere and propos-
es precautionary limits for these. In this section, we describe these con-
cepts and explain how they can be used to develop global sustainable
development goals.
2.1 The Anthropocene – age of humans
For millions of years our planet’s atmosphere, oceans, land-masses and
biological life have formed a complex system of processes which have
interacted and co-evolved. Earth has experienced many periods of ab-
rupt change throughout its history, driven by astronomical and geologi-
cal forces, such as changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun or Earth’s
tectonic changes. Over the past several thousand years, human activities
have increasingly affected this global system.
In this context, the Holocene epoch (the present geological era start-
ing 10,000 years ago) has been a climatically and ecologically stable
period, in sharp contrast to the rather large and rapid fluctuations in the
preceding period (Figure 1 shows how global temperature has changed
over the last 100,000 years). Despite some natural environmental fluc-
tuations, complex feedback mechanisms involving processes in the at-
mosphere, the biosphere and the oceans have kept climatic variations
within a narrow range. For instance, global temperatures have varied by
just plus or minus 1 °C in the last 10,000 years. The relatively stable
environment of the Holocene enabled humanity’s development of agri-
14 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
culture and complex societies. Humans increasingly invested in settle-
ments and food production, and managed their environment rather than
merely exploiting it.
Within the last century, humanity has become a dominant force for
planetary change (Steffen et al. 2011). Humanity’s recent influence on
the Earth has reached such a magnitude that there is growing scientific
consensus that we have entered a new geological epoch, the “Anthropo-
cene” (Crutzen 2002, Steffen et al. 2007), derived from the Greek word
“Anthropos” meaning “Man”. Today, humans are changing the composi-
tion of the Earth’s atmosphere (IPCC 2013), have modified or trans-
formed most of the Earth surface (Ellis and Ramankutty 2008), substan-
tially altered the flows of water (Vörösmarty et al. 2010), changed ele-
mental cycles and flows of mineral resources (Steffen et al. 2004), and
radically changed the distribution of plants and animals (MA 2005). By
many measures, the changes humanity has caused in the last 50 years
are now at or beyond the variations seen through the entire Holocene.
In the Anthropocene, sustainability depends critically on acting locally while
recognising and understanding global interactions, and acting globally to se-
cure living conditions and livelihoods at local scales.
In the Anthropocene, the new challenge for humanity is to become plan-
etary stewards of our own future. This stewardship must go beyond the
management of the local environment. Scientific knowledge about past
changes and current pressures allows the identification of planetary
boundaries, which the global sustainability targets should recognise and
respect. Flourishing within planetary boundaries requires a global per-
spective, and substantial innovations and technical advancement (West-
ley et al. 2011). Unless the transition from today’s unsustainable path-
way to one of global stewardship is carefully navigated at all scales, we
may risk pushing the global system back into the pattern of violent fluc-
tuations in temperature characterizing most of the last 100,000 years
(Fig. 1) with likely catastrophic consequences for human wellbeing and
civilizations as we know them.
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 15
Fig. 1. Earth’s temperature trend through the last glacial cycle and selected events in human history (image from Rockström et al. 2009)
The Holocene is the most recent ~10,000 years. ΔT (right axis) is the difference in temperature from
present day, calculated using δ18
O measured in ice-core (left axis) as the indicator of temperature.
2.2 Ecosystem services: human dependence on the biosphere
All human activities that generate wealth and support progress and de-
velopment are ultimately founded on local management of the natural
resources and ecosystems of Earth’s biosphere. The “Anthropocene real-
ity” will therefore have multiple and substantial consequences for hu-
man wellbeing, and the continuing capacity of ecosystems to deliver the
ecosystem services on which our wellbeing depends. Natural ecosystem
processes support and enriches human lives and contributes to econo-
mies in a wide range of ways. This dependence is increasingly conceptu-
alised as “ecosystem services” (MA 2005, TEEB 2010).
The ecosystem services concept draws attention to the essential bene-
fits that natural ecosystems provide to people. As many ecosystem ser-
vices are not sold on markets they tend to be undervalued by conventional
economics, and can be overlooked in decision-making. Thus apparently
economically rational degradation of ecosystems can result in significant
losses in human welfare (e.g. Folke et al. 2011). The ecosystem services
concept makes the economic case for conserving nature, and aims to im-
prove the efficient use of ecosystems to support human wellbeing.
Ecosystem services reflect a human-centred view of ecology. The Mil-
lennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005) used a generalised defini-
tion: “the benefits people obtain from ecosystems.” It distinguished
a) provisioning services, such as food production; b) regulating services,
16 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
that maintain a benevolent environment and protect against environ-
mental disturbance, such as flood defence; c) cultural services that are
reflected in religious, recreational or cultural values and practices; and
d) supporting services, comprising the underlying ecological structures
and processes on which all other services rely (Figure 2, Appendix 1).
These four categories have been widely adopted in both research and
policy. Alternative framings have also been suggested that allow more
specific distinction between ecological processes, intermediate services,
final potential services, goods (which may incorporate human inputs
such as labour or capital) and actual benefits to people in terms of im-
provements in wellbeing. These distinctions are proposed to avoid dou-
ble-counting in the economic valuation of ecosystem services (Fisher et
al. 2009), and for conceptual clarity when assessing the contribution of
ecosystem services to human wellbeing (example Figure 3).
Fig. 2. Categories and examples of ecosystem services (TEEB 2010)
Illustration: J. Lokrantz/Azote.
2.2.1 Biodiversity and ecosystem services
Biological diversity has multiple roles in ecosystem functions and the
generation of services. Three major roles have been identified. A high
level of diversity often leads to: 1) an increase in productivity due to
complementary traits among species for resource use, and productivity
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 17
itself underpins many ecosystem services, 2) an increase in response
diversity (a range of traits related to how species within the same func-
tional group respond to environmental drivers), resulting in improved
maintenance of ecosystem functioning as the environment changes,
and 3) some protection against “ecological surprises ,” the idiosyncratic
effects due to keystone species properties and unique traits-
combinations which may result in a disproportional effect of losing one
particular species compared to the effect of losing individual species at
random (see Kumar, 2010).
Fig. 3. The multiple benefits to urban inhabitants of a single tree
Illustration: J. Lokrantz/Azote.
The TEEB project made the conclusion that
“There is clear evidence for a central role of biodiversity in the delivery of
some – but not all – services, viewed individually. However, ecosystems need
to be managed to deliver multiple services to sustain human well-being and
also managed at the level of landscapes and seascapes in ways that avoid the
passing of dangerous tipping-points. We can state with high certainty that
maintaining functioning ecosystems capable of delivering multiple services
requires a general approach to sustaining biodiversity, in the long-term also
when a single service is the focus.” (Kumar 2010).
The degree to which an individual benefits from biodiversity and ecosys-
tem services depends on a range of mechanisms of access including so-
18 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
cial relationships, institutions, capabilities, rights and various capitals
(Ribot and Peluso 2003). Thus, the best opportunities to improve the
wellbeing of poor people may be achieved through more secure and
equitable access to ecosystem services, rather than through increasing
flows of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services and poverty alleviation
will be treated more in detail in section 2.5.
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 19
Three examples of the role of biodiversity and ecosystem services
for human well-being and sustainable development
Box 1 – Ecosystem services and poverty alleviation in coastal East Africa are
affected by global changes
Source: Daw et al. 2011.
Coastal ecosystems in Kenya support the livelihoods and wellbeing of a range of
different types of people through a range of ecosystem services. For example,
coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass beds provide fish for food and protect coast-
lines for habitation and development. In turn these “provisioning” and “regulat-
ing” ecosystem services support human wellbeing through earnings for small-
scale fishers and tourism employees, the cultural identity of local peoples and
the aesthetic enjoyment of visitors.
These ecosystem services contribute differently to the wellbeing of different
stakeholders as people differ in their ability to access benefits and their priorities
and needs. These are influenced by their culture, wealth, gender and other charac-
teristics as well as formal rights of access. For example, poorer fishers who cannot
own a boat or expensive fishing net, work as hired labour, and earn a small propor-
tion of the profits from the fishery. Meanwhile the fish trade is organised by gender
with men buying more valuable types of fish for higher value markets, including
tourist hotels, while women buy smaller cheaper fish and process it to sell to local
people. Employment in the tourism industry is dominated by immigrants to the
region who have good business and language skills.
Changes in the management of these ecosystem services leads to trade-offs
between different services. For example the establishment of a marine park
sacrifices some fisheries benefits to improve the value of tourism. However,
because people vary in their ability to access benefits such interventions also
have a distributional effect creating winners and losers. For example if the num-
ber of people fishing was reduced, individual catches and the size of fish would
increase, offering higher earnings for remaining fishers. However to achieve this
change requires displacing some fishers from the fishery, and reducing the sup-
ply of small cheap fish that support female traders’ livelihoods.
These coastal systems also illustrate how ecosystem services which contrib-
ute locally to people’s wellbeing are connected to global planetary boundaries
and global connections. Global climate change is showing impacts in the region:
coral reefs in Kenya have begun to suffer from “coral bleaching” due to increas-
ing seawater temperatures which can kill the living corals that form the basis of
the ecosystem. The local system is also connected to the global economy as fish
products from local fisheries are increasingly fed into global trade.
20 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
Box 2 – Stewardship of the biosphere in the urban era
Source: Elmqvist et al. 2013.
We are entering a new urban era where cities increasingly become a central
nexus of the relationship between people and nature. On a global scale, cities are
crucial centres of demand for ecosystem services and sources of environmental
impacts. Approximately 6% of the urban land projected to be present in 2030 is
forecast to be built just in the period 2000–2030 (Elmqvist et al. 2013). Urbani-
zation thus not only presents challenges for global sustainability, but also nu-
merous opportunities. In the next two to three decades, we have unprecedented
chances to vastly improve global sustainability through designing systems for
increased resource efficiency, as well as for exploring how cities can be respon-
sible stewards of biodiversity and ecosystem services both within and beyond
city boundaries.
Although cities often strive to optimize their resource use, increase their effi-
ciency, and minimize waste, they can never become fully self-sufficient. There-
fore, individual cities cannot be considered “sustainable” without acknowledging
and accounting for their dependence on ecosystems, resources and populations
from other regions around the world (McGranahan and Satterthwaite 2003,
Seitzinger et al. 2012). Consequently, there is a need to fundamentally revisit the
concept of sustainability, as its narrow definition and application may not only
be insufficient, but can also result in unintended consequences such as the “lock-
in” of undesirable urban development trajectories (Fig. 4).
An example is represented by one of the most critical resources, the provi-
sion of freshwater. Urban areas depend on freshwater availability for residential,
industrial, and commercial purposes; yet, they also affect the quality and amount
of freshwater available to them. Water availability is likely to be a serious prob-
lem in most cities in semiarid and arid climates. Currently 150 million people
already live in cities with perennial water shortage. By 2050, population growth
is projected to increase this number to almost a billion people, and climate
change is projected to cause water shortage for an additional 100 million urban-
ites. There are strong incentives for cities to engage in active and better man-
agement of large and sometimes distant watersheds to ensure the delivery of
sufficient quantities and qualities of freshwater.
To integrate in a meaningful way urban sustainability in the SDGs, it is im-
portant to develop more integrated and scalable indicators. Using indicators that
make sense on a local scale and then possible to scale up on a regional and global
scale opens up the possibility to engage local stakeholder, citizen groups, indige-
nous groups and many other knowledge holders in the monitoring and reporting
on the SDGs. It is necessary that such indicators also capture to what extent urban
regions provide stewardship of all the distant ecosystems on which they depend.
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 21
Fig. 4. Urban centers have moved from being more directly linked to their hinter-lands and resource base to a situation where food and other resources are transported across the globe resulting in complex and often masked feedback mechanisms
Illustration: J. Lokrantz/Azote.
22 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
Box 3 – The benefits of ecosystems services from the Baltic Sea and their
relation to a “regional boundary” of nutrient elements
Source: BalticStern, 2013.
The Baltic Sea provides multiple ecosystem services, including economic activi-
ties such as the fisheries and tourism industries, as well as non-monetary bene-
fits such as a recreational resources as well as natural heritage. Recent surveys
of thousands of people showed how residents from all countries around the
Baltic Sea valued these benefits (Söderqvist et al. 2010). Although the value
people perceived varied by country, these values are notably not captured in
normal calculations of countries’ economic performance.
While the Baltic Sea provides these benefits to the nine countries surround-
ing it, the sea is a complex integrated ecosystem, which is also affected by the
economic activities and industries in these countries, which in turn affect the
ecosystem services that it provides.
One specific problem that has received policy attention is nutrient enrich-
ment of the Baltic Sea, and its undesirable ecological impacts. Phosphorus and
nitrogen compounds, primarily from inefficient fertilizer use, may find their way
into waterways and into the sea. The enhanced nutrient load (eutrophication)
can lead to toxic and unsightly algal blooms. It may further cause oxygen deple-
tion in deep waters affecting organisms living on the sea floor, risking the crea-
tion of “dead zones”. Eutrophication along with other impacts, such as overfish-
ing, pollution and global climate change, alter the Baltic Sea ecosystem and with
that its ecosystem services.
Baltic Sea countries have agreed on the multilateral, cross-sectorial “Baltic
Sea Action Plan” to reduce pollution levels below certain boundaries in order to
guarantee the health of the sea and the benefits it provides. Surveys showed that
people are affected and concerned by pollution, and that they value the benefits
of implementing the Action Plan in full, significantly more than the cost of mak-
ing the changes to ensure the boundaries are met. The way in which the plan is
actually implemented, and how responsibilities and costs are distributed be-
tween nations remains to be finally negotiated.
This regional experience provides important lessons that also apply at the
global level. When environmental thresholds have been identified, the challenge
is to ensure boundaries are set which ensure environmental security and protect
the multiple ecosystem service benefits to humanity.
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 23
2.3 Ecosystem Services and Human Wellbeing: What is the evidence?
Overwhelming evidence clearly demonstrates that humans have
changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively in the last 50 years
than in any other period in history (MA 2005), while simultaneously
human wealth, health, education, and life span has been increasing. This
situation appears to be a paradox assuming that human wellbeing in-
deed relies upon nature (Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2010). However, vari-
ous explanations for this paradox exist. Four common explanations are:
Human well-being is actually declining because current ways to
measure this are incomplete.
Food production and continued agricultural growth trumps all other
ecosystems because provisioning services are easier recognized as
important for human well-being.
Technology makes humans less dependent on ecosystem services.
The worst is yet to come: there is a time lag after ecosystem service
degradation before human well-being is affected.
The evidence supporting these hypotheses is mixed, but examining it
clarifies the relationship between ecosystem services and human well-
being. There is a large body of evidence demonstrating that human well-
being, even of the worst off, has in fact increased during the past fifty
years (MA, 2005), suggesting that the paradox is not an illusion. The
second hypothesis that increases in agricultural ecosystem services have
more than compensated for declines in other ecosystem services is sup-
ported. However, the support for hypotheses three and four is mixed.
Great advances in technology and social organisation have increased the
efficiency with which global civilization uses nature, but this increase in
efficiency has not been used to decrease global reliance on ecosystems.
Rather, global civilization has expanded its use of ecosystem and materi-
als, making our society ever more dependent on a reliable supply of eco-
system services. There is limited evidence from the past of sustained
decreases in human wellbeing caused by environmental decline. Howev-
er, there is substantial evidence that the scale of human activity cannot
increase at the rate it has done so far, and that current use of ecosystems
is undercutting their ability to regulate themselves and provide regulat-
ing services to people. This is illustrated by the concept of overshooting
planetary boundaries.
24 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
These findings do not show that the environment is unimportant, but
rather that people are innovative and adaptive. However, the careless
destruction of ecological infrastructure is leaving people worse off than
they would be if we made more thoughtful investments in ecological
infrastructure. We have a good understanding on how humanity alters
the biosphere, but little is known on how these changes influence hu-
manity. There is evidence that regulating ecosystem services (e.g. carbon
uptake, water purification and climate regulation) that maintain stable
environments for people are decreasing locally, while we are also push-
ing the entire earth system across its planetary boundaries. This sug-
gests that there should be more investment in maintaining and enhanc-
ing these regulating services.
We need further transdisciplinary research that better answers ques-
tions of how human wellbeing and the environment are intertwined
both locally and globally to improve global governance. However, we
have enough understanding that we can start to act now.
As human civilization pushes beyond planetary boundaries it desta-
bilizes the natural capital that enables the reliable production of ecosys-
tem services. As the global economy grows, its demand for ecosystem
services increases. However this squeeze between the destabilization of
the planet and the need for more, suggests that civilization needs to gov-
ern the global economy to ensure that it supports rather than undercuts
the biosphere, in order to ensure that the biosphere can continue to
support the economy (e.g. Folke et al. 2011).
2.4 The planetary boundaries: humanity’s safe operating space
The success of human development in the future relies on continued
progress and willingness to protect the ability of the Earth to provide the
ecosystem services that sustain humanity. The concept of planetary
boundaries has recently been introduced to define a “safe operating
space for humanity” in the Anthropocene (Rockström et al. 2009a, b).
The planetary boundary framework seeks to define critical Earth system
processes that regulate the stability of the biosphere and the Earth sys-
tem as a whole, and establish the “Holocene-like” boundaries that pro-
vide a high likelihood of avoiding the transgression of thresholds result-
ing in deleterious or catastrophic changes. In other words, it seeks to
define the planetary conditions under which human societies can con-
tinue to develop and prosper. What the planetary boundary concept
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 25
shows is that specific types of human activities can reduce or risk reduc-
tions in the ability of the planet to provide the ecosystem services that
support humanity.
Rockström et al. (2009a, b) identified nine planetary boundaries: cli-
mate change, biodiversity loss, changes in the nitrogen and phosphorus
cycles, freshwater use, land system change, ocean acidification, strato-
spheric ozone depletion, chemical pollution and atmospheric aerosol
loading (Tables 1 and 2).
Research and debate continues in this new area of global change sci-
ence (outlined more fully below). However, the scientific message is
clear: the Earth system is a complex and dynamic system with hard-
wired biophysical processes and interactions that need to be respected
in order to maintain a stable environment for world development. The
profound changes being observed in the Earth system today therefore
need to be taken seriously by the world community.
2.4.1 Human-caused environmental changes have global impacts
Table 1 summarizes the large and growing body of evidence of human
disturbance of Earth system processes, and the increasing social impacts
of these global changes. It can be tempting to consider the planetary
boundary processes in isolation from one another. However, the Earth
system is a tightly coupled system where all parts – land, oceans, atmos-
phere, and life – interact.
Climate change gives many clear examples of this interconnection.
Climate change affects land cover and biodiversity, the global biogeo-
chemical cycles, ocean acidification and freshwater flows, and air quality
and atmospheric aerosol dynamics. The interacting processes regulate
the state of the planet.
For example, when CO2 concentrations rise in the atmosphere due to
human emissions from burning of fossil fuels, land and ocean ecosys-
tems respond by drawing down a substantial portion (approximately
50%) of the CO2 through multiple chemical and biophysical processes.
This biosphere response dampens or buffers the global energy disturb-
ance that the higher emissions of greenhouse gases cause. Moreover, as
we increase our stress on the Earth system through rising emissions
(which have grown from ~4 to ~9 billion tonnes of carbon per year over
the past 50 years), the biosphere carbon sink has increased from ~2 to
~4.5 billion tonnes (Beer et al. 2010). This is Earth resilience at play –
but it also means that without the responsive land and marine ecosys-
26 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
tems, sustained by suitable atmospheric and water system conditions, a
much larger amount of CO2 would remain in the atmosphere and climate
impacts would be more severe. However, these interactions also have
ecosystem consequences. A quarter of the CO2 emitted by humans is
dissolved in the oceans, which is leading to increasing ocean acidifica-
tion (Sabine et al. 2004). Moreover, if land systems are degraded (such
as through deforestation), the risk is that carbon stores, sequestered
during periods of stable environmental conditions, may abruptly be re-
leased, causing a feedback and accelerating climate change.
Similarly, human activities do not act on single planetary boundaries
but rather impact on multiple processes at once. For instance, land-use
change is a key driving force behind reductions in biodiversity, changes
in the properties and distribution of atmospheric aerosol, and the preva-
lence of chemical pollution, and it profoundly influences the biogeo-
chemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus (Rockström et al.
2009b). Land-use change is also closely linked to altered freshwater
flows, and both are closely interlinked with climate change.
These systemic interconnections have implications for global sus-
tainability policy. For example, efforts to reduce human impacts on the
climate change boundary by shifting from fossil fuels to renewable bio-
fuels to reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases can
potentially put pressure on other boundary processes, for example by
contributing to biodiversity loss.
The planetary boundaries concept acknowledges the inherent uncer-
tainty that will always be associated with large-scale changes in such a
complex system as our own planet. The risk of triggering abrupt and
irreversible changes is extremely difficult to assess, due to the complex
interactions between the living and non-living parts of the Earth system
(i.e., between different planetary boundary processes). In the planetary
boundary approach, the choice was made to place the “safe” boundary
position for each environmental process at the lower (safest) end of the
scientific uncertainty range. Taking climate change as an example, scien-
tific evidence indicates that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in the
range of 350–550 parts per million (ppm) have a high risk of abrupt and
deleterious changes that could push the Earth system outside of the pre-
sent stable Holocene state. The proposed safe boundary is set at an equi-
librium CO2 concentration of 350 ppm, which is at the lower end of the
assessed uncertainty range. Transgressing a boundary thus does not mean
that humanity immediately faces the imminent risk of a catastrophic tip-
ping point. Rather, it means that the world (or its major ecosystems) has
entered a danger zone where large-scale, permanent and socially very
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 27
costly changes are likely to occur. For climate change, we are already in
the danger zone (at 400 ppm CO2). The world is seeing the first clear signs
of large scale tipping points, e.g., with the accelerated melting of ice in the
Arctic and major shifts in marine ecosystems (IPCC AR5 2013).
Table 1. Social impacts of the Planetary Boundaries issues
Global problems Assessments and evidence sources
Climate
Many social impacts – health, envi-
ronmental hazards and risks, food
and water security
IPCC Assessment Reports 1990, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2013/14 (WGII
due 2014).
IPCC WG I and II (2012) Managing the risks of extreme events and
disasters. Cambridge University Press.
UN HDR (2007/8) Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a
divided world. http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2007-8
Ocean acidification
Impacts on food security, commercial
fisheries, coastal environments
Gattuso J.-P. & Hansson L. (Eds.), Ocean acidification, pp. 122–153. Oxford University Press. European Project on Ocean Acidification: www.epoca-project.eu/
index.php/what-do-we-do/science/publications.html
Destruction of ecosystems and
biodiversity
Loss of ecosystem services – e.g.,
impacts on food security, water
quality, environmental hazards,
fuel/fibre resources, many regulating
and cultural services
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) Biodiversity and human
wellbeing: current states and trends. Island Press.
IPBES Sub-Global Assessments repository,
http://ipbes.unepwcmc-004.vm.brightbox.net
Cardinale, B. (2012). Impacts of biodiversity loss. Science 336 552–553.
Reich, P.B. et al. (2012) Impacts of biodiversity loss escalate through
time as redundancy fades. Science 336 589–592.
CBD (2010) Global Biodiversity Outlook 3.
www.cbd.int/gbo3/?pub=6667§ion=6673
TEEB (2010) Ecological and economic foundations. The Economics of
Ecosystems and Biodiversity. Island Press.
FAO reports:
2010 – The state of the world’s plant genetic resources.
www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1500e/i1500e00.htm
2010 – The Global Forest Resources Assessment.
www.fao.org/forestry/fra/en/
2012 –The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA).
www.fao.org/publications/sofa/en
2012 –The State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA).
www.fao.org/fishery/sofia/en
UNEP (2012) Global Environment Outlook 5: Environment for the
future we want. UN Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya.
Disturbance of life’s nutrient cycles
Imbalance in global N and P cycles
causes major environmental, health
and economic problems. Projected
increases in population and per
capita consumption of energy and
animal products will exacerbate
nutrient losses, air and water pollu-
tion levels, and land and ecosystem
degradation.
Sutton M.A. et al. (2013). Our Nutrient World: The challenge to
produce more food and energy with less pollution. CEH Edinburgh,
for GPNM/INI. Available from www.unep.org
GESAMP (1990). The State of the Marine Environment. GESAMP
Reports and Studies No 39, IMCO/ FAW/ UNESCO/ WMO/ IAEA/
UN/ UNEP.
28 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
Global problems Assessments and evidence sources
Alteration of atmospheric chemistry –
ozone layer, atmospheric aerosols
Direct human impacts (health);
indirect impacts through perturbed
ecological and physical/climate
functioning.
Thornton, J. (2000) Beyond risk: an ecological paradigm to prevent
global chemical pollution. International Journal of Occupational and
Environmental Health 6, 318–330.
Land use and degradation
Reduced food security, reduced
options for climate mitigation
through biosphere management,
risks of conflict, impacts on water
quality and quantity.
Lambin, E.F. and H.J. Geist, eds. (2006). Land-Use and Land-Cover
Change. Local processes and global impacts. The IGBP Series,
Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Water use
Water stress, risks of conflict, ecolog-
ical degradation.
Bogardi et al. (2012). Water Security for a Planet under Pressure.
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 4, 1–9.
Pollution by hazardous substances
Particular concern over bioaccumula-
tive, persistent and toxic substances;
substances that interfere with repro-
duction and healthy development.
Direct human health and wellbeing
effects, indirect impacts through
ecological impacts.
UNEP (2013) Global Chemicals Outlook www.unep.org/pdf
UNEP (2013) Costs of inaction on the sound management of chemi-
cals. www.unep.org/hazardoussubstances/ UNEPs-
Work/Mainstreaming/CostsofInactionInitiative
AMAP (2009) Arctic Pollution 2009. Arctic Monitoring and Assess-
ment Program, http://amap.no
Depledge M, et al. (2013) Are marine environmental pollutants
influencing global patterns of human disease? Marine Environmen-
tal Research 83, 93–95.
2.4.2 Adapting science and policy for planetary boundaries
Research on planetary boundaries
The planetary boundaries concept draws on several decades of research
on physical, biogeochemical and ecological change over multiple
timeframes, using modelling and observational tools (including palaeo
records of past changes) to explain and predict Earth system dynamics.
Rockström et al. (2009) was an expert deliberation to identify the “core
set” of processes where human perturbation is driving the system out-
side of the functional range seen in the Holocene. As an academic article,
it was intended primarily as a new strategic agenda for Earth system
science research. Accordingly, there have been research developments
in recent years.
Recently published commentaries include discussion and refinement
of the boundaries for phosphorus (Carpenter and Bennett 2011), nitro-
gen (de Vries et al. 2013), freshwater use (Rockström and Karlberg
2010), an analysis of a state shift in the global biosphere (Barnosky et al.
2012), and an integrative boundary linking land, water and terrestrial
biodiversity based on net primary productivity (Running 2012). Chemi-
cal pollution has also received further attention (Handoh and Kawai
2011, Persson et al. 2013). The complexity of chemical use and envi-
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 29
ronmental release and impacts means that a single quantitative bounda-
ry is not appropriate. However, the conditions under which chemical
pollution poses a planetary boundary threat can be defined for improved
policy application. Persson et al. (2013) argue for new proactive hazard
identification strategies that consider issues like long-range transport
and the reversibility of chemical pollution. All these studies provide evi-
dence of systemic thresholds and biophysical regime shifts, arguing in
favour of boundaries that set strong reductions in the current levels of
anthropogenic perturbation.
An expanding area of research is the better characterization of the
Holocene and Anthropocene, and the integration of human dimensions
of global change (e.g. Steffen et al. 2011, Zalasiewicz et al. 2011, Crumley
2013). In the planetary boundaries framework, protecting human well-
being is the underlying rationale for limiting the use and degradation of
natural resources in order to avoid critical transitions in Earth system
processes, but the human drivers and impacts are not explicitly set out.
Raworth (2012) has extended the planetary boundary concept to social
objectives. The “Oxfam doughnut” framework focuses explicitly on social
justice principles underpinning sustainability. Others are exploring how
to “downscale” the boundaries, in terms of a national-level attribution of
responsibility for approaching the boundaries (Nykvist et al. 2013), or
alternatively applying the issues framework at a sub-global scale. To
apply the planetary boundaries concept in practice, especially at sub-
global scales, it becomes necessary to give explicit attention to the hu-
man drivers of change and distributional issues (Raworth 2012, Steffen
and Stafford-Smith 2013).
An international Planetary Boundaries research network (PB.net)1 is
being established to support the development of new dynamic modelling
tools and conceptualisations of human-environment system interaction.
These new tools are needed to enable us to move beyond the use of stat-
ic measures to describe the state of a dynamic system. Earth system
models and integrated assessment models (as used in global assess-
ments like the IPCC reports) were developed to address just some of the
planetary boundaries issues, and so can only give a very partial picture
of the impacts of interacting processes. The enduring problem that re-
search is carried out in disciplinary “silos” means that many of these
────────────────────────── 1 PB.net currently consists of research groups in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia.
The network will have its first international workshops in Spring 2014.
30 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
interactions are still poorly characterized. The current priority is to ad-
dress the interactions of direct importance to humanity, notably in the
climate-energy-food-water nexus (for instance, in the UN Global Sus-
tainable Development Report 2013).2
2.4.3 Governance implications of the planetary boundaries
An important area of research and analysis addresses the governance
implications of the planetary boundaries (Biermann 2012, Galaz et al.
2012, Whiteman et al. 2012). These highlight the need for adaptive gov-
ernance and co-management, and polycentricity and “scale-matching” for
the complex issues arising as humanity both alters Earth system function-
ing and develops a more predictive understanding of global changes.
Table 2 and section 3.3 below summarize the policy coverage of the
planetary boundary issues. The current suite of international environ-
mental agreements broadly cover the planetary boundary issues – but
there are significant gaps in terms of the issue focus and geographical
scale of the objectives. In general terms, policies have been developed at
national and international levels to address direct and immediate im-
pacts of environmental problems. For example, water, chemical pollu-
tion and nutrient cycles (nitrogen and phosphorus) are essentially treat-
ed as local to regional concerns, even though there is growing scientific
evidence that these issues have effects on larger and longer-term scales
than that. For chemicals and nutrient flows, knowledge is still fragment-
ed, and global management is made more difficult by the rapid shifts in
global patterns of production, consumption and environmental release.
These emerging issues require improved science/policy dialogue.
Furthermore, the current suite of policies have not been developed to
handle the potentially cascading social effects, nor the emergent risks
associated with the complex interactions of biophysical processes. In
this context, the consequences of implementation gaps and missed tar-
gets are likely to be much more serious than a single-issue perspective
would indicate. There is sometimes a presumption that global problems
demand global agreements, but IEAs can not be assumed to be a sensi-
tively responsive mechanism for governance of globally important pro-
────────────────────────── 2 UN Global Sustainable Development Report 2013 http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/
index.php?menu=1621
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 31
cesses. It can take a prohibitively long time to obtain the international
consensus to set and review their objectives. As Galaz et al. (2012) ar-
gue, future pathways for the management of Earth system processes
may require new attention to overarching principles and the strategic
management of multi-level institutional interactions.
The policy interest in the concept has also triggered considerable de-
bate about the role of scientific expertise in governance of global change
issues (e.g., Nordhaus et al. 2012). These debates highlight the fact that
scientific assessment, including the kinds of quantitative assessment
that underlie the planetary boundaries, is only one part of societal risks
and impacts assessments.
Tab
le 2
. Th
e P
lan
eta
ry B
ou
nd
arie
s (R
ock
strö
m e
t a
l. 2
00
9)
and
th
eir
cu
rre
nt
po
licy
con
text
Pla
ne
tary
bo
un
dar
y
Cu
rre
nt
stat
e*
Po
licy
goal
s an
d t
arge
ts?
Po
licy
con
text
Scie
nti
fic
po
licy
foru
ms
Cu
rre
nt
(glo
bal
)
gove
rnan
ce
Co
mm
en
t
Clim
ate
chan
ge
< 3
50
pp
m C
O2
in
atm
osp
her
e
< +1
W m
-2 r
adia
tive
forc
ing
~396
pp
m
+1.8
7 W
m-2
2 °
C w
arm
ing
is c
on
sist
ent
wit
h 3
50
pp
m C
O2
++
IPC
C, U
NFC
CC
SB
STA
U
NFC
CC
, Kyo
to
Pro
toco
l; V
ien
na
Co
nve
nti
on
,
Mo
ntr
eal P
roto
col;
UN
ECE
CLR
TAP
Wh
ile t
he
UN
FCC
C h
as a
co
mp
atib
le le
vel o
f am
bit
ion
(2
°C
goal
), t
he
Kyo
to P
roto
col a
nd
cu
rren
t p
led
ges
for
a fu
ture
agre
emen
t h
ave
faile
d t
o m
eet
th
is le
vel.
The
Kyo
to P
roto
-
col w
ill li
kely
be
succ
ess
fully
imp
lem
ente
d in
itse
lf, b
ut
will
no
t le
ad t
o a
chie
vem
en
t o
f th
e U
NFC
CC
ob
ject
ive.
Oce
an a
cid
ific
atio
n
CO
32
-sat
ura
tio
n s
tate
2.7
5 (
>80
% o
f p
re-
ind
ust
rial
leve
ls)
2.9
0
No
exp
licit
go
al.
Clim
ate
2 °
C g
oal
will
als
o
kee
p o
cea
n a
cid
ific
atio
n
wit
hin
th
e b
ou
nd
ary.
–
IPC
C. O
CB
, EP
OC
A.
Min
imal
att
enti
on
to d
ate
un
de
r
UN
FCC
C.
No
sp
ecif
ic IE
A in
pla
ce, b
ut
the
key
po
licy
mea
sure
wo
uld
be
mit
igat
ion
by
limit
ing
anth
rop
oge
nic
CO
2 e
mis
sio
ns,
hen
ce t
he
issu
e is
ind
irec
tly
add
ress
ed
by
the
UN
FCC
C.
Stra
tosp
her
ic o
zon
e
dep
leti
on
27
6 D
U
(< 5
% r
edu
ctio
n
in [
O3
] fr
om
pre
-
ind
ust
rial
leve
l of
29
0 D
U)
28
3 D
U
Po
licy
goal
s fr
amed
in t
erm
s
of
ph
asin
g o
ut
of
ozo
ne
dep
lete
rs (
ie, t
he
anth
rop
o-
gen
ic d
rive
rs o
f ch
ange
, no
t
the
envi
ron
men
tal e
ffec
t)
+++
U
NEP
Ozo
ne
Secr
e-
tari
at A
Ps
Vie
nn
a C
on
ven
tio
n,
Mo
ntr
eal P
roto
col
Rel
evan
t an
d q
ua
nti
fied
tar
gets
hav
e b
een
set
th
rou
gh
th
e
19
87
Mo
ntr
eal P
roto
col a
nd
th
ey h
ave
hig
h c
ove
rage
an
d
hig
her
leve
l of
amb
itio
n t
han
th
e P
B. T
he
targ
ets
are
lega
lly
bin
din
g an
d t
her
e is
a c
lear
co
mp
lian
ce m
ech
an
ism
. Th
e
Pro
toco
l has
bee
n s
ucc
ess
fully
imp
lem
ente
d, w
ith
th
e
exce
pti
on
of
un
de
sire
d c
limat
e ef
fect
s o
f su
bst
itu
te s
ub
-
stan
ces
and
ille
gal t
rad
e.
Bio
div
ersi
ty lo
ss
< 1
0 e
xtin
ctio
ns
per
mill
ion
sp
eci
es
per
yea
r
>10
0 E
/MSY
P
reve
nti
on
of
exti
nct
ion
of
kno
wn
th
reat
ened
sp
ecie
s
(CB
D A
ich
i Tar
get
12
)
++
IPB
ES, C
BD
SB
STTA
C
BD
; Ram
sar;
Bo
nn;
Ber
n; C
ITES
[m
ore
:
ww
w.c
bd
.int/
eco
lex/
]
The
Aic
hi T
arge
ts u
nd
er U
NC
BD
dir
ectl
y o
r in
dir
ect
ly a
d-
dre
ss (
asp
ect
s o
f) t
he
PB
by
spe
cify
ing
targ
ets
for
exti
nct
ion
rate
s an
d h
abit
at lo
ss. T
he
leve
l of
amb
itio
n is
mo
der
ate
to
very
hig
h, b
ut
succ
ess
in im
ple
men
tin
g p
revi
ou
s si
mila
r
targ
ets
has
be
en li
mit
ed a
nd
th
ere
is a
lack
of
har
d c
om
-
mit
men
ts s
tip
ula
tin
g h
ow
th
e ta
rget
s w
ill b
e ac
hie
ved
.
Bio
geo
chem
ical
flo
ws:
nit
roge
n an
d
ph
osp
ho
rus
Syn
thet
ic n
itro
gen
fixa
tio
n <
35 M
t N
yr-
1
Ph
osp
ho
rus
infl
ow t
o
oce
ans
<10
Mt
yr-1
(<10
tim
es b
ackg
rou
nd
wea
ther
ing
rate
)
12
1 M
t N
yr-
1
~9 M
t P
yr-
1
No
agr
eed
glo
bal
go
al.
Div
erse
nat
ion
al a
nd
reg
ion
al
targ
ets
air
and
wat
er p
oll
u-
tio
n r
edu
ctio
n. G
PN
M p
ro-
po
sed
go
al o
f im
pro
vin
g fu
ll-
chai
n u
se e
ffic
ien
cy o
f N
an
d
P f
erti
lizer
s b
y 2
0%
fro
m
curr
en
t le
vels
.
(+)
Inte
rnat
ion
al N
itro
-
gen
Init
iati
ve;
Glo
bal
Ph
osp
ho
rus
Re-
sear
ch In
itia
tive
;
UN
EP-G
lob
al P
art-
ner
ship
on
Nu
trie
nt
Man
agem
en
t; W
HO
;
FAO
; W
MO
, IP
CC
;
Reg
ion
al s
eas
(e.g
.,
Arc
tic
Co
un
cil)
.
UN
FCC
C, C
BD
(eg
,
Aic
hi T
arge
t 8
);
[UN
ECE]
CLR
TP,
Wat
er C
on
ven
tio
n;
Reg
ion
ally
–
HEL
CO
M (
Bal
tic
nat
ion
s, E
U),
OSP
AR
Co
nve
nti
on
(N
ort
h
Sea,
NE
Atl
anti
c)
No
IEA
wit
h g
lob
al c
ove
rage
exi
sts,
bu
t th
ere
are
vari
ou
s
regi
on
al a
gree
men
ts t
o r
ed
uce
nu
trie
nt
inp
uts
to
reg
ion
al
seas
. Th
e le
gal s
tatu
s an
d t
he
exte
nt
to w
hic
h t
he
se a
gre
e-
men
ts in
clu
de
qu
an
tifi
ed t
arge
ts v
ary.
It is
like
ly t
hat
th
e
com
bin
ed le
vel o
f am
bit
ion
, wh
ere
exp
ress
ed q
uan
tita
tive
-
ly, i
s si
gnif
ican
tly
low
er t
han
th
e P
Bs.
Pla
ne
tary
bo
un
dar
y
Cu
rre
nt
stat
e*
Po
licy
goal
s an
d t
arge
ts?
Po
licy
con
text
Scie
nti
fic
po
licy
foru
ms
Cu
rre
nt
(glo
bal
)
gove
rnan
ce
Co
mm
en
t
Glo
bal
fre
shw
ate
r u
se
< 4
,00
0 k
m3
yr-
1
con
sum
pti
ve u
se o
f
run
off
re
sou
rce
s
2,6
00
km
3 y
r-1
No
exp
licit
glo
bal
go
al.
(+)
Glo
bal
Wat
er F
oru
m.
Als
o W
orl
d W
ater
Co
un
cil;
pri
ori
ty
them
es
in F
AO
,
WH
O.
Sin
ce 2
009
, Clim
ate
and
Wat
er is
a
them
e in
UN
FCC
C
pro
cess
. Mill
enni
um
Dev
elo
pmen
t G
oal
7
add
ress
es p
eop
le’s
acce
ss t
o w
ater
an
d
san
itat
ion
.
As
of
20
13
, no
IEA
wit
h p
ote
nti
al g
lob
al c
ove
rage
exi
sts.
It is
un
clea
r to
wh
at e
xten
t ex
isti
ng
bila
tera
l an
d m
ult
ilate
ral
agre
emen
ts o
n t
ran
sbo
un
dar
y w
ater
s in
clu
de
targ
ets
on
wat
er e
xtra
ctio
n, a
s o
pp
ose
d t
o p
ollu
tio
n r
edu
ctio
n. E
xtra
c-
tio
n f
rom
nat
ion
al w
ater
s is
no
t re
gula
ted
th
rou
gh a
ny
IEA
.
Lan
d u
se c
han
ge
< 1
5%
of
ice-
free
lan
d
as c
rop
lan
d
11
.7%
C
BD
Aic
hi T
arge
t 1
1 s
ets
con
serv
atio
n t
arge
ts b
y ar
ea.
UN
FCC
C h
as p
rovi
sio
ns
for
mea
suri
ng
and
mo
nit
ori
ng
LULU
CF.
Un
clea
r h
ow
th
ese
rela
te t
o P
B.
+
Glo
bal
Lan
d P
roje
ct
(wit
hin
Fu
ture
Ear
th)
CB
D
The
Aic
hi T
arge
ts u
nd
er U
NC
BD
ind
irec
tly
add
ress
(p
arts
of)
the
PB
by
spec
ifyi
ng
targ
ets
for
pro
tect
ed
are
as a
nd
red
uc-
tio
n o
f h
abit
at lo
ss. T
hei
r le
vel o
f am
bit
ion
in r
elat
ion
to
th
e
PB
is u
ncl
ear
and
it a
pp
ears
th
ere
is n
o s
tro
ng
com
plia
nce
mec
ha
nis
m.
Ch
em
ical
po
lluti
on
N
o b
ou
nd
ary
def
ine
d
No
glo
bal
go
al. P
ollu
tio
n
con
trol
s ar
e ge
ner
ally
loca
l,
ori
ente
d t
owar
ds
hum
an
hea
lth
and
ecot
oxic
olo
gy, a
nd
retr
osp
ecti
ve s
o n
ot
pre
cau
-
tion
ary
for
plan
etar
y co
nse
-
qu
ence
s (a
s th
e o
zon
e/C
FC
exp
erie
nce
dem
on
stra
ted
).
n/a
W
HO
-
Inte
rgo
vern
me
nta
l
Foru
m o
n C
hem
ical
Safe
ty, S
ETA
C, S
CI.
Seve
ral I
EAs,
incl
ud
ing
Sto
ck-
ho
lm C
on
ven
tio
n,
CLR
TAP
, etc
.
PB
tb
d, n
o c
om
pa
riso
n p
oss
ible
. No
te t
hat
sev
eral
rel
evan
t
IEA
s ex
ist
(e.g
., o
n h
aza
rdo
us
was
te, P
OP
s an
d h
eavy
met
als)
, bu
t th
ey d
o n
ot
yet
cove
r al
l ch
emic
al s
ub
sta
nce
s
of
po
ten
tial
glo
bal
/pla
net
ary
con
cern
.
Atm
osp
her
ic a
ero
sol
load
ing
No
bo
un
da
ry
def
ine
d
No
glo
bal
go
al. M
eeti
ng
exis
tin
g lo
cal a
ir q
ual
ity
targ
ets
set
wit
h h
um
an a
nd
eco
syst
em h
ealt
h o
bje
ctiv
es
is li
kely
als
o t
o p
reve
nt
pla
net
ary
regi
me
shif
ts.
n/a
G
EIA
, UN
ECE-
EMEP
,
GA
P F
oru
m
UN
ECE
CLR
TAP
;
UN
FCC
C.
PB
tbd
, no
co
mp
aris
on
po
ssib
le. N
ote
that
WH
O h
as is
sued
a
glob
al p
arti
cula
tes
guid
elin
e an
d th
ere
are
seve
ral r
egio
nal
IEA
s o
n p
arti
cula
tes
con
cen
trat
ion
an
d em
issi
ons,
bu
t th
ey a
re
pri
mar
ily b
ased
on
hea
lth
co
nce
rns
rath
er t
han
env
iro
nm
ent
and
clim
ate
con
cern
s.
34 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
2.5 A safe and just space for humanity within boundaries
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005) applied the concept
of ecosystem services specifically to “human wellbeing and poverty alle-
viation,” highlighting how ecosystem services can contribute to multiple
dimensions of wellbeing including security, basic material for a good life,
health, good social relations and freedom of choice and action. The im-
pact of ecosystem services on human wellbeing can appear most tangi-
ble and obvious at the local level, but they also operate at all intermedi-
ate scales right up to the global. The planetary boundaries aim to identi-
fy the conditions under which regulating ecosystem services can be
maintained at the planetary scale. These are the Earth system processes
that maintain conditions for prosperous development, dubbed “Earth
system services” by Steffen et al. (2011).
The changing patterns of human demand for ecosystem services also
have impacts on the biosphere across all scales, often eroding natural
capital. For example, one of the main human activities is agriculture, and
the human transformation of wild ecosystems to agro-ecosystems has
enhanced the supply of many ecosystem services, such as food produc-
tion. However, it has done this at the expense of other services, such as
climate regulation and water purification (MA, 2005). As currently prac-
ticed, agriculture is a major contributor towards the overshoot of many
of the planetary boundaries (Foley et al. 2011).
Ultimately the survival of humanity depends upon the biosphere, and
the continued functioning of the global economy relies upon the reliable
supply of the ecosystem services that a stable planet provides. Mean-
while the well-being of individuals is intimately linked to their ability to
access ecosystem services, as well as the many products and services
produced by economies. Thus destabilizing the Earth system by crossing
planetary boundaries can have consequences for human wellbeing by
reducing the supply of ecosystem services, and also by impairing the
functioning of the global economy increasing the costs of maintaining
essential services needed to achieve a good life. This economic dimen-
sion requires explicit attention.
Economic valuations of ecosystem services seek to capture their ag-
gregate societal value. In reality different individuals and groups benefit
from different ecosystem services to different extents, so that changes in
ecosystem services create winners and losers. The poor are typically
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 35
more sensitive to impacts on ecosystem services, due to their greater
reliance on natural resource-based livelihoods, and their vulnerability to
natural hazards. This also applies globally, as poorer nations have suf-
fered more costs and reaped fewer rewards from environmental chang-
es (Srinivasan et al. 2008).
The contributions that ecosystem services make to wellbeing also
depend on the perspectives and circumstances of the beneficiaries. Thus,
from a poverty alleviation perspective, ecosystem services should be
appraised in terms of how poor people’s lives are actually improved
(Daw et al. 2011). For example, the wellbeing impact of food or flood
protection depends on how hungry someone is or how exposed their
wealth is to flooding. This also has implications for the way in which the
ecosystem services concept is deployed in economic policy. The financial
income from a payment for ecosystem services could have a greater
wellbeing impact on poor individuals than the same income might have
for a wealthier individual.
Thus the challenge of sustainable development is not just about the
simple existence of natural capital or remaining within planetary
boundaries. For the biosphere to support wellbeing, access to the bene-
fits from ecosystem services needs to be equitably shared. Some have
attempted to illustrate this challenge by depicting the sustainability
challenge as aiming to meet a “floor” of basic social requirements for
poverty alleviation within the biophysical constraints of the planetary
boundaries (Raworth, 2012). This approach has been depicted as a
framework shaped like a doughnut which creates a “safe and just space”
between the two, in which humanity can thrive (Figure 5).
36 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
Fig. 5. Planetary and social boundaries: a safe and just space for humanity
Source: Raworth, 2012.
3. International policy and the move towards global sustainability
There are many international environmental agreements that contribute
to the global sustainable development agenda. Most prominent are the
three Rio Conventions adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de
Janeiro, in response to the most pressing issues of environmental unsus-
tainability. These are the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
and the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD).
With the planetary boundary framework, a scientific rationale for
linking and reinforcing these agreements is brought into the picture,
providing an Earth system “dashboard” for assessing their effectiveness
in terms of safeguarding global sustainability. By setting contemporary
environmental changes into the context of the natural processes seen
through the geological history of the planet, the planetary boundaries
concept has direct relevance to the widely-used Brundtland definition of
sustainable development: “meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
It also provides an important foundation for efforts to “Protect the integ-
rity of the global environmental and development system,” as empha-
sized in the preamble of the 1992 Rio Principles.
Much needs to be learned from the experiences of earlier global col-
lective efforts towards sustainability. Prominent in these experiences,
and closely linked to the SDG process, is the development and imple-
mentation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In the follow-
ing section, we discuss the MDGs, exploring the lessons and opportuni-
ties for the SDGs.
38 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
3.1 The Millennium Development Goals
In year 2000, the UN adopted the Millennium Development Goals to
address the problems associated with poverty, in a 15-year timeframe.
The eight MDGs address different issues including extreme poverty and
hunger, universal education, gender equality, child health, maternal
health, HIV/AIDS, environmental sustainability and global partnership
to address national disparities in development. Each goal has targets
that are to be achieved by 2015. Good progress has been made in many
areas. The targets for poverty, slums and water supply have already
been reached. But projections indicate that in 2015 close to one billion
people will be living on an income of less than $1.25 per day. Hence,
abject poverty remains a global challenge, hampering people’s capacity
to meet their basic needs for nutrition, sanitation, empowerment and
health. And since 2000, many other global issues have become promi-
nent sustainability concerns deserving global attention. The MDG pro-
cess gives important insights for this process.
3.1.1 Clear overarching objectives mobilize global cooperative action
The outcome document from the UN Rio+20 conference states that SDGs
should be
“action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate, limited in number, aspi-
rational, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries while tak-
ing into account different national realities, capacities and levels of develop-
ment and respecting national policies and priorities.”
Many of these characteristics are shared with the MDGs. Importantly,
the MDGs provide easily understood, quantitative targets; with time-
bound objectives that promote awareness, political accountability, im-
proved metrics, social feedback, and public pressure for human devel-
opment goals (Sachs 2012).
3.1.2 SDGs are an opportunity to better integrate environment and human development issues
The MDGs have been criticized for focusing too narrowly on social de-
velopment, while not providing for social-ecological interactions, inno-
vation and adaptation (Waage et al. 2010). Goals 2 to 6, and to a large
extent Goal 1, focus almost entirely on the social dimensions of devel-
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 39
opment, not fully reflecting how deeply linked they are with environ-
mental and economic factors (UN Task Team 2012; see also fig 8).
MDG7 set environmental sustainability targets addressing natural re-
source depletion, biodiversity destruction, inadequate access to water
and sanitation, and the worst problems of slum environments. While
these are serious problems in many parts of the world, a very large pro-
portion of environmental unsustainability is left untouched. Also, the
MDG process frames these environmental issues in one “stand-alone”
goal. This means that many interdependent social and ecological issues
have not been prioritised, where they could have offered “win-wins”. For
example, healthy and productive ecosystems play a vital role in address-
ing hunger and nutrition. Better integration of environment and devel-
opment within goals would also ensure scrutiny of the potentially dam-
aging environmental consequences of activities towards other goals
(e.g., ODA funding).
Environmental policies have been primarily oriented towards “prob-
lem fixing,” often focused on technical and economic responses. Earth’s
degraded ecosystems and landscapes are subject to more policy protec-
tion than ever before, but the damage of the past has not been fully re-
versed. Current efforts are not enough in key areas of climate (and its
twin problem, ocean acidification; IPCC AR5 2013), destruction of eco-
systems and biodiversity (MA 2005, GBO3 2010, GEO5 2012), and the
release of polluting substances into land, water and atmosphere (UNEP
2012). Development policies need to go further to recognize the connec-
tions between (narrowly defined) economically productive actions and
effects on the environment. They also need to recognize that people are
part of the world’s ecosystems, affecting the functioning of the whole
Earth at multiple, linked scales.
Social dimensions of unsustainability have so far been most clearly
reflected in the global concern about reducing poverty. This may help
explain the tendency for the primacy of economic development in “triple
bottom line” formulations of sustainability. At Rio+20 and in debates
since then, there have been calls for more effort addressing issues of
governance and social justice. Here too, a focus on social-ecological in-
teractions can enrich understanding. Good governance and environmen-
tal justice are tightly linked, because people obtain many benefits and
services from well-functioning ecosystems. These values need to be rec-
ognized and taken into account in decision-making (TEEB 2010), even if
they do not necessarily need to be translated into monetary terms and
embedded in market mechanisms.
40 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
3.1.3 SDGs can focus on greater equity while recognizing Earth’s fundamental limits
Taking current population projections and present levels of anthropo-
genic environmental impact into account, global society faces an enor-
mous challenge in order to “live within global environmental limits.”
Since equity for human development is an underpinning concept of sus-
tainability (affirmed in Agenda 21 and the Rio Principles), it needs to be
more prominent in the SDGs than it has been in the MDGs. The MDGs
focused on meeting the most basic needs of the world’s poorest people.
Fulfilling these needs marks a baseline condition for global equity. How-
ever, equity also implies that burdens and rewards of development
should not be spread too divergently. The SDGs present an opportunity
to strengthen this dimension of equity, in accordance with the intentions
agreed in Rio 1992, and reaffirmed in Rio+20.
Several concepts have been proposed that provide a framework for rec-
ognizing both environmental limits and the principle of equity. These in-
clude environmental space (Siebert 1982, Buhrs 2009, Kitzes et al. 2008),
and Cap-and-Trade of ecological footprints (Ohl et al. 2008). The latter two
extend the ecological footprint concept (Wackernagel and Rees 1996) to
include a broader range of demands within an equity framework.
For many reasons, footprinting approaches may not be directly useful
for the design of global sustainability policy (Ayres 2000, Van den Bergh
and Verbruggen 1999, Wiedmann et al. 2006). The footprint approach
cannot easily include non-renewable resources, nor does it address key
social aspects of sustainability such as access to education and
healthcare. It is also insufficient when it comes to assessing how viable
or vulnerable the natural ecosystems providing goods and services are
(Deutsch et al. 2000). Moreover, history suggests that elites push the
burden of compliance onto marginalised groups. So while footprinting
approaches can provide important aggregate frameworks for equity in
terms of material interactions between humans and nature, the “how” of
global sharing is as important as the “what.”
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 41
3.1.4 A fairer process for developing and implementing goals
An important component of an equitable and sustainable development is
that policy should be defined and implemented with fairness, impartiali-
ty, and justice.
The MDGs recognized that inequality of opportunities between men
and women (MDG3 and 5) and among the world’s nations (MDG8) pre-
sents major barriers to sustainable development. Continuing in this spir-
it, human rights and fundamental freedoms need to be respected and
observed in the process of developing and implementing the SDGs. At
the level of individual people, addressing the enduring problems of dis-
parity and discrimination on the basis of gender will need to continue
beyond 2015. Attention is also turning to other marginalized and under-
privileged groups.
At the level of nations, progress towards MDG8 (global partnership)
has been much too weak. The UN’s 2012 Gap Task Force report is explic-
it about the extent of rhetoric: poor nations still face unsustainable debt
obligations; miniscule aid commitments have not been met; and “the
Task Force has had difficulty identifying areas of significant new pro-
gress towards the MDGs.” The need for delivery on MDG8 commitments
has been described as at “emergency proportions” (UN General Assem-
bly 2010) – the vulnerability of the poorest is rigidly institutionalized. It
is in this context futile to pursue efforts to improve the health and edu-
cation of poor individuals while their nations (and thus their post-2015
prospects) are still being crippled by inequitable institutional relations.
The UN General Assembly (e.g., UNGA 2010) has sought to learn les-
sons from the MDG process. This learning requires scrutiny of the insti-
tutional processes, documentation and monitoring of the whole process
from design to implementation (and ultimately, goal achievement), and
engagement with the stakeholders in the process. There is strong con-
sensus that more participation is needed in public decision-making pro-
cesses, especially in the case of complex issues characterized by diver-
gent norms and values and high uncertainty. Participation matters for
several reasons:
42 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
It strengthens legitimacy, as part of a transparent and democratic
process – Agenda 21 (Sors 2001, also http://habitat.igc.org/
agenda21/app.htm), Aarhus convention (Lee and Abbott 2003).
It deepens the available knowledge in the context of contested and
complex issues – precautionary approaches require engaging with
the full diversity of knowledge, creativity and perspectives (Stirling
and Gee 2002, Stirling 2009).
Ethical and normative dimensions, because people are the source of
values in society, and because participation builds inclusion and fairness.
3.1.5 Urgent, universal, unambiguous goals
A key to the relative success of the MDGs is that they are clear and simp-
ly-stated goals that address a well-recognized global problem – extreme
poverty. The SDGs would do well to structure themselves that way too.
They should not be about defining a new, multi-dimensional long-term
shared sustainability vision for the global community, because aiming for
global consensus at that scale is more likely to fail.
The SDGs should be about dealing with today’s most pressing and un-
acceptable problems, as soon as possible. Since the SDGs were first sug-
gested, the number of proposed goal areas has ebbed and flowed, often
looking like a shopping list. A challenge for the SDGs (and partly shared
by the MDGs) is that the complex architecture of the world presses
against simple, “modular” goals. Whatever the set of desirable target
areas for the SDGs might be, the real power of the concept comes from
linking them together under a single shared overarching statement. The
MDG shows how this works: the MDG targets cover a very wide range of
issues, but they are all oriented towards the unifying objective of pov-
erty alleviation.
Another challenge arising from real-world complexity is that interac-
tions among social groups, and between society and nature, are fluid,
transformative and often unpredictable. Policies for sustainability need
to be adaptive and adaptable. This also argues for a fixed-term and
probably near-term focus for the SDGs (the MDGs were time-limited,
over a 15 year period). There have been discussions about extending the
frame of the SDGs to 20+ years into the future, on the basis that funda-
mental institutional and infrastructural transformations are needed and
these take time. The problem with this argument is that the short-
termism that characterizes the world’s decision-making processes is not
going to disappear (because it is part of human behaviour and psycholo-
gy; it is an essential part of adaptive governance; it reflects cultural uni-
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 43
versals of power in politics, and for many more reasons). Long-term
objectives often simply slip down the agenda unless specific time-bound
steps are set in place – and it is precisely those steps where concerted
international action should be focused.
3.2 SDGs and developments in UN
To achieve sustainable development, it was suggested by the govern-
ments of Colombia, Guatemala and Peru that specific sustainable devel-
opment goals should be established. This proposal was discussed during
the UN Rio+20 conference, where a decision to establish SDGs was made.
Initially Colombia, together with a group of other countries, identified a
suite of priority issues that constituted the basis for first discussions.
Nations and international organisations are now working to define
what such goals should be. The UN plays an important role in these devel-
opments. A priority is to identify a post-2015 agenda, as 2015 is the year
the MDG objectives are to be achieved. Three of the SDG-linked initiatives
are the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (OWG),3
the High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the post-2015 agenda (HLP),
and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
The OWG is a 30-member group of the UN General Assembly that was
established in January 2013. Its objective is to prepare a proposal on
SDGs. They will report to the General Assembly in 2014. The HLP was
initiated by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in July 2012 to advise on the
global development framework post 2015. The report “A new global
partnership: eradicate poverty and transform economies through sus-
tainable development” was submitted to the Secretary-General in May
2013. It presents a universal agenda to eradicate extreme poverty by
2030 and underlines the importance of putting sustainable development
at the core of the agenda for the future. To achieve this a new global
partnership is needed. Twelve goals have been proposed that cover var-
ious issues including: poverty, gender equality, education, health, food
security, water and sanitation, energy, jobs, natural resources, govern-
ance, peace and a global enabling environment. The report has received
a positive response but some critique has also been expressed. For ex-
ample it does not mention the Convention on Biological Diversity and
────────────────────────── 3 See http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?menu=1549
44 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
the Aichi targets in relation to Goal 9 that aims at managing natural re-
source assets sustainably. A report by Rockström et al. (2013). “Sustain-
able Development and Planetary Boundaries,” was submitted to the HLP.
It states that
“Rather than knowingly crossing the planetary boundaries, the world can
agree and cooperate on living within the playing field they imply, by adopting
improved technologies, stabilizing the world’s population, and protecting
threatened species and ecosystems. Such a strategy would leave all regions of
the world better off than on the business-as-usual path. Placing the world on
such a ‘Sustainable Development Trajectory’…must be a central objective of
the post-2015 framework.”
Another key initiative is the SDSN, that aims to be a facilitator in support
of sustainable development problem solving by involving technical and
scientific expertise from various disciplines including not only academia
but also civil society and the private sector. There are twelve thematic
groups within SDSN that aim at identifying common solutions and find-
ing best practices within different fields. SDSN published the report “An
action agenda for sustainable development” in which they suggest a list
of ten SDGs. One of them, goal number 2, is directly related to planetary
boundaries: “Achieve development within planetary boundaries.” It
states that “All countries have a right to development that respects plan-
etary boundaries, ensures sustainable production and consumption pat-
terns, and helps to stabilize the global population by mid century.” Three
specific targets are brought forward within goal number 2:
“(1) Each country reaches at least the next income level as defined by the
World Bank; (2) Countries report on their contribution to planetary bounda-
ries and incorporate them together with other environmental and social indi-
cators into expanded GDP measures and national accounts; (3) Rapid volun-
tary reduction of fertility through the realization of sexual and reproductive
health rights in countries with total fertility rates above three children per
woman and a continuation of voluntary fertility reductions in countries
where total fertility rates are above replacement level.”
The SDGs outlined by SDSN bear a similarity to those listed in the UN
General Assembly report to the Secretary-General, “A life of dignity for
all: accelerating progress towards the Millennium Development Goals
and advancing the United Nations development agenda beyond 2015.”
In March 2013, a month before the SDSN’s proposed goals and targets,
Griggs et al. (2012) published a set of six Sustainable Development Goals
(see also Appendix 4). These two sets of SDGs have been formulated based
on the latest science, while also considering IEAs and the MDGs (see Fig-
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 45
ure 6). The six SDGs suggested by Griggs and co-workers consider both
MDGs and global sustainability objectives. The targets set within each SDG
directly address social, economic and environmental dimensions. These
goals, and the targets beneath, may be operationalized through a policy
framework across levels from international to local (see Figure 6 and 7).
One example of an already existing international environmental agree-
ment that is important in the process of establishing SDGs is the Strategic
Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020, adopted at the tenth meeting of the Con-
ference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Strate-
gic Plan for Biodiversity contains a number of elements, for instance the
twenty Aichi Biodiversity Targets, which are readily available for integra-
tion into the SDGs. The incorporation of these goals, targets and indicators
into the SDGs has multiple benefits, not only ensuring policy coherence and
building on existing implementation processes, but also reflecting the politi-
cal will of the 193 Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. At the
latest Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity the SDGs were discussed. In
an information document4 to the conference the proposed SDGs were divid-
ed into four different types of goals based on their linkages to biodiversity
(Figure 7). These four types have then been matched with relevant targets
and other elements of a strategic plan (Appendix 6).
────────────────────────── 4 Biodiversity and Sustainable Development – the relevance of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020
and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets for the post-2015 development agenda and the Sustainable Development
Goals. Key Messages, The seventh Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity, Trondheim, Norway, 27–31 May
2013 Document TC7/INF2
46 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
Fig. 7. Potential types of goals based on the linkages of social objectives to biodi-versity and ecosystem services
Source: Biodiversity and Sustainable Development – the relevance of the Strategic Plan for Biodiver-
sity 2011–2020 and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets for the post-2015 development agenda and the
Sustainable Development Goals. Key Messages, The seventh Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity,
Trondheim, Norway, 27–31 May 2013 Document TC7/INF2.
Fig
. 6. S
ix s
ust
ain
ab
le d
evel
op
men
t g
oa
ls (
SDG
s) fo
r in
teg
rate
d d
eliv
ery
of
Mil
len
niu
m D
evel
op
men
t G
oa
ls a
nd
pla
net
ary
“m
ust
-ha
ves”
(o
r G
lob
al S
ust
ain
ab
ilit
y O
bje
ctiv
es).
(F
rom
Gri
gg
s et
al.
20
13
. Su
sta
ina
ble
Dev
elo
pm
en
t G
oa
ls f
or
peo
ple
an
d p
lan
et. N
atu
re 4
95
, 30
5– 3
07
)
Illu
stra
tio
n: J
. Lo
kran
tz/A
zote
.
48 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
3.3 International Environmental Agreements
For the development of the post-2015 agenda and the SDG process, it is
necessary to examine how existing international environmental agreements
(IEAs) and/or policy targets can be used and to what extent they address
global sustainability goals as well as how they relate to critical Earth system
processes as outlined in the planetary boundaries framework.
The biophysical processes underpinning planetary boundaries have
partly been addressed in some IEAs (see Table 1) but even where they
are considered, that does not mean that targets have been identified.
Progress may also be restrained by the implementation gap, such as in
the situation with climate change. A success story is the Montreal Proto-
col and its effect on limiting emissions of ozone-depleting substances
(The 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Lay-
er). When going through existing IEAs and institutions it becomes clear
that they can be utilized more effectively in order to calibrate policy tar-
gets in relation to the scientific evidence on PBs and global environmental
thresholds. To the extent that policy-makers wish to use this evidence to
develop new policies, implementation deficits need to be addressed
properly and the level of ambition of existing targets need to increase.
The policy context of the planetary boundaries has been examined
further in a research report by Stockholm Environment Institute and
Stockholm Resilience Centre for the Swedish EPA in which a methodolo-
gy for measuring national performance on PBs is developed (Nykvist et
al. 2013). Another relevant assessment on global environmental goals
has recently been concluded by UNEP (UNEP 2012), summarized in Ap-
pendix 2. The results from mapping out IEAs relevant to the planetary
boundaries can be considered to be consistent with the “Environment
Scorecard” coming out of UNEP’s report, where comparison is made
with environmental goals themselves and not with planetary boundaries
(see Appendix 2). An important message from these two reports is that a
range of environmental goals and targets already exist, but that there
are significant implementation deficits.
A more detailed comparison of planetary boundaries and targets
agreed under IEAs needs to consider several aspects; how relevant the
target is to the planetary boundaries, its coverage, its level of ambition,
whether the target is legally binding, whether a strong compliance mech-
anism exists, and whether the target has so far been successfully achieved.
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 49
Overall, the planetary boundaries framework does not introduce new
issues on the policy agenda as such but rather suggests specific values
for boundaries, based on scientific research. However, with the plane-
tary boundaries concept a number of new institutional issues need to be
addressed. Notably, IEAs are not equipped to manage compounded and
complex effects (e.g. the cocktail effect from different chemical pollu-
tants) or tipping points. Part of the problem is that it requires a signifi-
cant time span to review and revise targets (e.g. for emission levels or
resource extraction rates). Another part of the problem is the uncertain-
ty of how policy targets under different IEAs or institutions relate to
each other, which has been characterised as the “institutional interplay”
(Oberthür and Stokke 2011).
To avoid “problem shifting,” i.e. reducing pressure on one planetary
boundary by increasing pressure on another (e.g. by expanding feed-
stock for biofuels to mitigate climate change which leads to increased
pressure on local freshwater resources in cultivation areas), one ap-
proach that could be examined further is whether the boundaries could
be used as a set of criteria when undertaking environmental impact as-
sessment of major policies and societal investments (Nilsson and
Persson 2012). Environmental impact assessment is one of the most
established tools in the environmental governance toolbox and has in-
creasingly been used at “higher” and more strategic levels in policy-
making. In the same way, global impacts could be considered by using
planetary boundaries as benchmarks. In this way, they could be used
both in impact assessment of local or national policies and investments
and in policies and investments that have a clear transboundary dimen-
sion. The main challenge would be to agree which institution could be
given the authority to demand and propose changes in light of such im-
pact assessments, as it would likely involve a compromise with the sub-
sidiarity principle.
Among the seven quantified planetary boundaries and their control
variables, we found that six are addressed directly in IEAs, while ocean
acidification is only addressed in the Strategic Plan of the CBD.5 This may
not come as a surprise given that ocean acidification is a relatively new
scientific finding. In addition, the problem relates to climate as reduction
in anthropogenic CO2 emissions is needed to reduce the problem; this is
already addressed by the UNFCCC (see also Kim, 2012). Nevertheless,
────────────────────────── 5 Mentioned in UN CBD Aichi Target No. 10.
50 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
IEAs for specific environmental issues have generally been created for
different reasons than for the same issue being included in the planetary
boundaries framework. For example, particulates (as atmospheric aero-
sols) have been addressed for their human health effects rather than envi-
ronmental and climate effects, and phosphorus emissions for their local
eutrophication effect rather than for the global consequences it may
have.6 However, the specific issues raised in the planetary boundaries
framework are not new as such as most of the planetary boundaries have
been addressed to some extent in several IEAs in force to date. What is
new is the attempt to find boundaries and identify thresholds for various
environmental and natural resource variables of global relevance and to
put it in a framework that is useful for policy and management.
Table 1 primarily shows to what extent PBs have been addressed. As
mentioned above the planetary boundary for stratospheric ozone deple-
tion was successfully dealt with. UNEP’s Global Environmental Goals
project highlights other successfully achieved goals, such as lead in gaso-
line and the supply of safe drinking water (UNEP 2012; see Appendix 2).
Common to all these issues is that they have direct and clear human
health effects, as opposed to more environmentally mediated effects on
human well-being. This suggests that if impacts on humans can be clear-
ly communicated it is given higher priority.
In order to connect potentially harmful anthropogenic interference
with Earth system processes with visible and measurable effects on hu-
man beings, the notion of “Earth system services” could be used. Drawing
on terminology for ecosystem services, Steffen and colleagues (2011)
identify examples of provisioning, regulating and supporting Earth system
services, in an effort to concretise how societies and economies are de-
pendent on seemingly abstract and large-scale environmental processes.
Another reason why existing goals have not yet been adequately ef-
fective, according to the UNEP’s Global Environmental Goals project, is
that many are simply not specific enough; the few goals that are specific
and measurable appear to have a much better record of success than the
ones that are more aspirational (see Appendix 2).
When considering how well matched the proposed planetary bound-
aries are by existing policy responses, it should be emphasised that IEAs
may not always be a sufficient approach. As explored by Galaz and col-
────────────────────────── 6 Oceanic anoxic events occur when oceans become completely depleted of oxygen below the surface levels.
No such events have happened for millions of years, but geological records show they have happened many
times in the past and they have been associated with mass extinctions.
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 51
leagues (2012), a focus on formal international agreements alone gives a
too simplistic perspective on the features of global environmental gov-
ernance. They suggest that insights from planetary boundaries research
highlight the need to consider flexible multilevel forms of state and non-
state collaborations and partnerships; the importance of legitimate and
inclusive international and regional scientific assessments; the im-
portant role played by international organizations; and the need for
international policies that support social-ecological innovation (Olsson
and Galaz 2012, Westley et al. 2012). Surely international agreements
and national enforcement matter, but these should not be decoupled
from local and regional adaptive forms of ecosystem stewardship as
these have been proven to be critical in dealing with key features of
global change.
As an example of activities of a non-state actor, the planetary bound-
aries concept has been included in the work of the World Business
Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). To connect resilience
and the planetary boundaries concept with their business strategy, they
embarked on a collaborative project with Stockholm Resilience Centre
and other science inputs worldwide.
Overall, planetary boundaries may be viewed as an issue for multi-
level governance.
To sum up, comparing planetary boundaries and the current suite of
IEAs suggests that there are four important avenues for future engage-
ment in IEAs relevant for the development of SDGs:
Reduce implementation deficits in relation to existing targets and
commitments – Typical for climate change, biodiversity loss and land
use. The latter also suffer from a lack of more direct targets addressing
the problem that the planetary boundary is trying to capture.
Highlight the global scale and implications of problems currently
addressed regionally – Freshwater and biogeochemical cycles are dealt
with through regional approaches, failing to consider the global picture.
Extend the rationale for acting from effects on human health and well-
being to effects on ecological and Earth system resilience – Concerning
aerosols, for example, there has been progress when the problem
directly results in measurable risks to human health but less so when
it relates to (more uncertain) risks to the environment. Momentum
for “environmental” policy initiatives could be strengthened if there
is a stronger and clearer connection to human well-being, since the
latter is commonly perceived as more urgent.
52 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
Pursue other tools for international cooperation other than formal
IEAs –A range of voluntary initiatives exist and capacity-building
efforts targeted at developing countries could be an effective way of
reducing implementation deficits.
3.4 Synergising legal systems for the emerging new development agenda
The emerging Sustainable Development Goals can also benefit from link-
ing International Environmental Agreements to progressive interpreta-
tions of International Human Rights Law, in particular to the associated
environmental cross-cutting dimensions (Darcy et al. 2009). Human
rights are inalienable rights and imply State obligations of “doing” and
“not doing” towards individuals and collectives. While in the 1970s, civil
and political rights (e.g. freedom of speech and freedom of assembly)
were sometimes seen in clash with economic, social and cultural rights
(Nicholson and Chong 2011). Since the 1990, there is an increasing
recognition that civil and political rights are indivisible and interde-
pendent to economic, social and cultural rights (Howard 1983) and that
both set of rights include State’s obligations of action and inaction.
Moreover, many State’s Constitutions – the legal instrument with highest
hierarchy and legitimacy in many countries – also enshrine these rights
as well as environment-specific rights; national legal systems are espe-
cially important for providing coercive enforcement mechanisms for
these rights as international mechanisms have significant limitations
(Nicholson and Chong 2011).
Hence, the progressive recognition of crosscutting environmental
dimensions of human rights can contribute to the theoretical framing
including equity dimensions as well as providing legal basis and legiti-
macy for the SDG. For example, proposals of SDGs, linked to the biodi-
versity planetary boundary include “thriving lives and livelihoods” and
“healthy and productive ecosystems.” Article 11 under the International
Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, referring to the State’s
obligation to improving living conditions can contribute to provide legal
basis for these proposed goals and planetary boundary. This Article 11
has been interpreted to include State obligations to reduce pollution
(Churchill 1998) and ensuring that the corporate sector fulfills its asso-
ciated responsibilities. Hence, this Article could also contribute to pro-
vide legal basis to other proposed SDGs such as “clean energy” as well as
to action towards respecting other planetary boundaries.
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 53
Sustainability depends on global and local action where not only States
but also other non-State actors take action and recognise their own respon-
sibilities towards a sustainable future. Hence, synergies with voluntary
standards (e.g. Plan Vivo) as well as local norms (e.g. Community Protocols)
can contribute to secure people’s rights and healthy ecosystems.
In sum, the legal framework for the new development agenda can build
on synergies between Multilateral Environmental Agreements and Human
Rights Law (see table 3.) as well as on legal landscapes at distinct scales.
Grounding the emerging Sustainable Development Goals in crosscutting
environmental dimensions of human rights can contribute to provide legal
basis and legitimacy to action towards fostering spaces where humanity
as well as other living beings and ecosystems can thrive.
Tab
le 3
. Th
e le
gal f
ram
ew
ork
fo
r th
e n
ew
de
velo
pm
en
t ag
en
da
can
bu
ild
on
syn
erg
ies
be
twe
en
Mu
ltil
ate
ral E
nvi
ron
me
nta
l A
gre
em
en
ts a
nd
Hu
ma
n R
igh
ts L
aw
In
tern
atio
nal
tre
atie
s7 (
bin
din
g)
De
clar
atio
ns,
pri
nci
ple
s an
d g
uid
elin
es a
gre
ed
be
twe
en S
tate
s (n
on
-bin
din
g)
Envi
ron
men
t C
on
ven
tio
n o
n B
iolo
gica
l Div
ersi
ty, 1
992
/199
3.
Nag
oya
Pro
toco
l on
Acc
ess
to G
enet
ic R
eso
urc
es a
nd
the
Fair
an
d Eq
uita
ble
Shar
ing
of B
enef
its
Ari
sing
fro
m t
hei
r U
tiliz
atio
n 2
010
.
Car
tage
na P
roto
col o
n B
iosa
fety
20
00/2
003
.
The
Nag
oya
– K
uala
Lu
mp
ur S
up
ple
men
tary
Pro
toco
l on
Liab
ility
an
d R
edre
ss t
o
the
Cart
agen
a Pr
oto
col o
n B
iosa
fety
201
0.
Uni
ted
Nat
ion
s Fr
amew
ork
Co
nve
ntio
n o
n C
limat
e C
han
ge 1
992
/.
Uni
ted
Nat
ion
s C
onv
enti
on
to C
omb
at D
eser
tifi
cati
on
in T
ho
se C
ou
ntri
es E
xper
i-
enci
ng S
erio
us
Dro
ught
an
d/o
r D
eser
tifi
cati
on, P
arti
cula
rly
in A
fric
a, 1
994
/199
6.
Co
nve
nti
on
on
Wet
lan
ds
of
Inte
rnat
iona
l Im
por
tan
ce E
spec
ially
as
Wat
erfl
ow
Hab
itat
, 197
1/1
975.
Co
nve
nti
on
on
the
Inte
rnat
ion
al T
rad
e in
En
dan
gere
d Sp
ecie
s o
f W
ild F
lora
an
d
Fau
na
197
3/19
75
.8
Co
nve
nti
on
on
the
Co
nse
rvat
ion
of M
igra
tory
Sp
ecie
s o
f Wild
Flo
ra a
nd
Fau
na,
197
3/1
975
.9
Co
nve
nti
on
on
Acc
ess
to In
form
atio
n, P
ubl
ic P
arti
cip
atio
n in
Dec
isio
n-M
akin
g, a
nd
Acc
ess
to J
ust
ice
in E
nvir
on
men
tal M
atte
rs, 1
998/
2001
.
The
Inte
rnat
iona
l Tre
aty
on
Plan
t G
enet
ic R
eso
urce
s fo
r Fo
od
and
Agr
icul
ture
,
200
1/2
004
.
Sto
ckh
olm
Dec
lara
tio
n o
f th
e U
nit
ed N
atio
ns
Co
nfe
ren
ce o
n t
he
Hu
man
En
viro
nm
ent,
19
72
.
Rio
Dec
lara
tio
n o
n E
nvi
ron
me
nt
and
Dev
elo
pm
en
t, 1
99
2.
Age
nd
a 2
1, 1
99
2.
Fore
st P
rin
cip
les,
Un
ited
Nat
ion
s C
on
fere
nce
on
En
viro
nm
ent
and
Dev
elo
pm
ent
No
n-L
egal
ly B
ind
ing
Au
tho
rita
tive
Sta
tem
en
t o
f P
rin
cip
les
for
a G
lob
al C
on
sen
sus
on
th
e M
anag
em
ent,
Co
nse
rvat
ion
an
d
Sust
ain
able
De
velo
pm
en
t o
f A
ll Ty
pes
of
Fore
sts,
19
92
.
Akw
on
Vo
lun
tary
gu
idel
ines
fo
r th
e co
nd
uct
of
cult
ura
l, en
viro
nm
enta
l an
d s
oci
al im
pac
t as
sess
men
ts
rega
rdin
g d
evel
op
men
ts p
rop
ose
d t
o t
ake
pla
ce o
n, o
r w
hic
h a
re li
kely
to
imp
act
on
, sac
red
sit
es
and
on
lan
ds
and
wat
ers
trad
itio
nal
ly o
ccu
pie
d o
r u
sed
by
ind
igen
ou
s an
d lo
cal c
om
mu
nit
ies
(CB
D 2
00
4).
Ad
dis
Ab
aba
Pri
nci
ple
s an
d G
uid
elin
es f
or
the
Sust
ain
able
Use
of
Bio
div
ersi
ty (
CB
D 2
00
4).
Inte
rlak
en D
ecla
rati
on
on
An
imal
Ge
net
ic R
eso
urc
es
.
Tkar
ihw
aié:
ri C
od
e o
f Et
hic
al C
on
du
ct t
o E
nsu
re R
esp
ect
fo
r th
e C
ult
ura
l an
d In
telle
ctu
al H
erit
age
of
Ind
igen
ou
s an
d L
oca
l Co
mm
un
itie
s (C
BD
20
10
).
The
Bo
nn
Gu
idel
ines
on
Acc
ess
to G
enet
ic R
eso
urc
es a
nd
Fai
r an
d E
qu
itab
le S
har
ing
of
the
Ben
efit
s
Ari
sin
g o
ut
of
thei
r U
tiliz
atio
n (
CB
D 2
002
).
Hu
man
Rig
hts
In
tern
atio
nal
Co
ven
ant
on
Civ
il an
d P
olit
ical
Rig
hts
, 19
66
/19
76.
Inte
rnat
ion
al C
ove
nan
t o
n E
con
om
ic, S
oci
al a
nd
Cu
ltu
ral R
igh
ts, 1
96
6/1
97
6.
Inte
rnat
ion
al C
on
ven
tio
n o
n t
he
Elim
inat
ion
of
All
Form
s o
f R
acia
l Dis
crim
ina-
tio
n, 1
96
5/1
96
9.
Co
nve
nti
on
on
th
e R
igh
ts o
f th
e C
hild
, 19
89
/19
90
.
Co
nve
nti
on
on
th
e El
imin
atio
n o
f A
ll Fo
rms
of
Dis
crim
inat
ion
Aga
inst
Wo
men
.
Ind
igen
ou
s an
d Tr
ibal
Peo
ples
Co
nve
ntio
n N
o. 1
69
, 198
9/1
990
(dep
osi
tary
: ILO
).
Un
iver
sal D
ecla
rati
on
of
Hu
ma
n R
igh
ts, 1
94
8.
Dec
lara
ció
n s
ob
re e
l Der
ech
o y
Des
arr
ollo
en
lo S
oci
al, 1
96
9.
Un
ited
Nat
ion
s D
ecla
rati
on
on
th
e R
igh
t to
Dev
elo
pm
ent,
19
86
.
Dra
ft D
ecla
rati
on
of
Pri
nci
ple
s o
n H
um
an
Rig
hts
an
d t
he
Envi
ron
men
t 1
99
4.
Dec
lara
tio
n o
n t
he
Re
spo
nsi
bili
ties
of
the
Pre
sen
t G
en
erat
ion
s To
war
ds
Futu
re G
en
era
tio
ns
19
97
.
Dec
lara
tio
n o
n th
e R
ight
s o
f P
erso
ns
Bel
ong
ing
to N
atio
nal
or
Eth
nic,
Rel
igio
us
and
Lin
guis
tic
Min
ori
ties
.
Un
ited
Nat
ion
s D
ecla
rati
on
of
the
Rig
hts
of
Ind
igen
ou
s P
eop
les
20
07
.
The
Un
iver
sal D
ecla
rati
on
on
Cu
ltu
ral D
iver
sity
UN
ESC
O 2
00
1.
The
Un
iver
sal D
ecla
rati
on
on
Bio
eth
ics
and
Hu
man
Rig
hts
UN
ESC
O 2
00
5.
Sou
rce:
Itua
rte-
Lim
a, C
., Sc
hul
tz, M
., H
ahn
, T. a
nd
Cor
nel
l, S.
(201
2) “
Safe
guar
ds
in s
calin
g-u
p b
iod
iver
sity
fin
anci
ng a
nd
po
ssib
le g
uidi
ng
prin
cip
les”
, Sto
ckho
lm R
esili
ence
Cen
tre,
Info
rmat
ion
do
cum
ent
for
the
CB
D-C
on
fere
nce
of
the
Part
ies
11, (
UN
EP/C
BD
/CO
P/11
/IN
F/7)
. htt
p:/
/ww
w.c
bd
.int/
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c/m
eeti
ngs/
cop
/co
p-1
1/i
nfo
rmat
ion
/co
p-1
1-i
nf-
07-
en.p
df
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4. Formulating Sustainable Development Goals in the Anthropocene
4.1 An integrated framework for SDGs
As previously described a number of different initiatives, networks and
organisations around the world are currently working to provide guid-
ance and recommendations on the post-2015 development agenda. The
UN has launched a number of initiatives (see section 3.2) and the Over-
seas Development Institute provides an online and continuously updat-
ed collection of all the publicly available proposals for future SDGs.10
The scope of the current report is not to go through all these in detail
but rather to describe and review how the post-2015 agenda and formu-
lation of SDGs can incorporate the scientific insights provided by Earth
system and Resilience science. From this work three overarching in-
sights emerge:
SDGs must address the new challenge of meeting the twin universal challenge
of poverty alleviation and human wellbeing on the one hand, and global envi-
ronmental sustainability on the other. Global sustainability being an over-
arching precondition for human prosperity.
Scientific insights number 1
SDGs must go beyond the disciplinary division (pillars) of social, eco-
nomic and environmental goals, and avoid becoming a collection of sin-
gle issue-based objectives. Any accepted set of SDGs need to
acknowledge that ecological and social systems are inseparably linked
and must facilitate a deeper analysis of the multiple interconnections,
trade-offs and synergies between goals and targets. SDGs should be de-
signed to enhance the awareness of, and focus on, the role of natural
────────────────────────── 10 http://tracker.post2015.org
56 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
capital and ecosystem services within (not alongside) economic devel-
opment and poverty reduction.
In Griggs et al. (2013), it is argued that the twin priorities for the
formulation of SDGs must be the protection of Earth’s life-support sys-
tem and poverty reduction. In other words, it is not sufficient to simply
extend the MDGs, as some are suggesting, because humans are already
transforming the planet’s atmosphere, oceans, waterways, forests, ice
sheets and biodiversity in ways that could undermine development
gains. In this context, the classic model of sustainable development, of
three integrated pillars – economic, social and environmental – is re-
garded as flawed. Instead, it is suggested that sustainable development
should be redefined as “development that meets the needs of the pre-
sent while safeguarding Earth’s life-support system, on which the wel-
fare of current and future generations depends” (ibid.). Taking this
new definition of sustainable development, and using existing interna-
tional agreements, six provisional SDGs are proposed (see Figure 6,
A Unified Framework):
1. Thriving lives and livelihoods.
2. Food security.
3. Water security.
4. Clean energy.
5. Healthy and productive ecosystems.
6. Governance for sustainable societies.
Reducing poverty and hunger, improving health and well-being and cre-
ating sustainable production and consumption patterns remain driving
principles. The proposed goal of improving lives and livelihoods, for
example, would promote sustainable access to food, water and energy
while protecting biodiversity and ecosystem services. The targets be-
neath each goal include updates and expanded targets under the MDGs,
including ending poverty and hunger, combating HIV/aids, and improv-
ing maternal and child health. But also a set of planetary “must haves”:
climate stability, reducing biodiversity loss, protection of ecosystem
services, a healthy water cycle and oceans, sustainable nitrogen and
phosphorus use, clean air and sustainable material use (see Fig 8. and
Appendix 4 for a detailed list of the goals and targets).
Fig
. 8. A
n in
fog
rap
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des
crib
ing
th
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. Lo
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tz/A
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.
58 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
The “infographic” in Figure 8 summarises how an integrated approach is
part of an evolution of thinking and continuous scientific explorations
and insights on the complex interactions between human development
and the environment and the main components of such an approach.
1. It starts with the seminal “Limits to growth” report in 1972, which
was a reaction to the conventional economic view that “Land” (nature
and natural resources) was something passive and unimportant to
the production of wealth (compared to the much more important
“Labour” and “Capital”).
2. The timeline continues with the Venn diagram of sustainable
development, a concept which gained attention in 1987 and became
mainstreamed during the first Rio conference in 1992. In reality the
global sustainable development agenda has mostly focused too much
on economic development and marginalised both the social end
environmental aspects (see “Mickey Mouse sustainability” model in
the upper left corner). Likewise, the MDGs (plotted inside the circles
of the Venn diagram) have also been criticized for focusing too
narrowly on some aspects of development, while not providing for
social-ecological interactions, innovation and adaptation. Actually,
goals 2 to 6 and to a large extent goal 1, focus almost entirely on the
social dimension of development, not fully reflecting how deeply
linked they are with environmental and economic factors.
3. In 2005 and 2008 the MA (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment) and
TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) reports
respectively, emphasised the importance of ecosystem services for
human development and this was followed in 2009 by the planetary
boundaries approach reiterating (in a new way) the biophysical
limits to economic development.
4. This framework was later adapted by the “Oxfam doughnut” which
added a “floor” of basic social requirements for poverty alleviation
within the constraints of the planetary boundaries. From 2015 we
show a possible unified framework for Sustainable Development
Goals, combining the sustainable development, ecosystem services
and planetary boundaries concepts in the adoption of a “development
within Earth limit” approach (see e.g. Griggs et al. 2013). This unified
framework even redefines sustainable development as “development
that meets the needs of the present while safeguarding Earth’s life-
support system, on which the welfare of current and future
generations depends.”
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 59
5. The pie chart in the upper right corner shows one example of how a
SDG for sustainable food security could be framed based on this
unified framework. It is an example of how the post-2015 agenda and
formulation of SDGs can incorporate the scientific insights provided
by Earth system and Resilience science, meeting the twin universal
challenge of poverty alleviation and human wellbeing on the one
hand, and global sustainability on the other.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN)
has proposed a list of ten transformations needed in the “A Framework
for Sustainable Development” document:11
1. Ending Extreme Poverty and Promoting Sustainable Growth.
2. Promoting Healthy Lives and Sustainable Fertility.
3. Promoting Quality Education, Job Skills, and Decent Work.
4. Promoting Gender Equality, Personal Security, and Wellbeing.
5. Averting Dangerous Climate Change and Industrial Pollution.
6. Ensuring Food Security and Sustainable Food Supplies.
7. Protecting Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
8. Building Smart, Healthy and Resilient Cities.
9. Fulfilling the Promise of Technologies for Sustainable Development.
10. Ensuring Good Governance and Accountability.
While there is substantial overlap with the set of SDGs suggested by
Griggs et al. 2013, the SDSN develops the traditional three pillars of sus-
tainable development – economic, social, and environmental – by adding
good governance and personal security as a fourth dimension “to high-
light several enabling conditions for sustainable development, including
transparency, effective institutions, the rule of law, participation and
personal security, accountability, and adequate financing for public
goods.” They also conclude that well-crafted post-2015 goals should
“promote integrated thinking and put to rest the futile debates that pit
one dimension of sustainable development against another.” See Appen-
dix 5 for detailed list of the goals and targets.
────────────────────────── 11 http://unsdsn.org/files/2012/12/121220-Draft-Framework-of-Sustainable-Development.pdf
60 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
The SDGs must be made operational through a bottom-up approach with
scalable indicators.
Scientific insights number 2
Measuring progress on the SDGs will require agreed sets of indicators
for use at national, regional and international levels and in developed
and developing countries. Although environmental indicators have been
developed since the 1960s (OECD 1998), they have in the past been
treated separately from social and economic indicators. While significant
advances toward developing indicators for multidimensional policy tar-
gets have been made, much work remains to be done (e.g. Attaran 2005,
McArthur et al. 2005, Walpole et al. 2009, Reyers et al. 2013). Principal-
ly, two major obstacles are impeding further progress: (1) inadequate
data with which to measure changes in the biosphere, human well-being,
poverty, and other components relevant to policy targets (Scholes et al.
2008, Reyers et al. 2013), and (2) the difficulty in actually measuring the
policy target of interest, often on account of poorly understood, unquan-
tified, and complex concepts (e.g. ecosystem services, poverty, and well-
being). In the rush to address the first obstacle, data inadequacy issues,
the second obstacle has been largely overlooked. This has resulted in a
plethora of measures and indicators (based on existing data) that fre-
quently fall short of their intended purpose (Mace and Baillie 2007, Rey-
ers et al. 2013).
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005) developed a
framework that allowed for the use of a wide range of indicators (Perei-
ra et al. 2005), although these still lacked integration and were not scal-
able. Indicators were originally designed to span national to global
scales (Butchart et al. 2010, GBO3 2010) but it has been repeatedly em-
phasized that there is a need for a set of scalable indicators, which could
be used for upscaling of observations from local to global scales as well
as downscaling (SCBD 2011). A global observation network with the aim
of providing the data and indicators needed by the scientific community,
international conventions and IPBES, is now being developed under the
auspices of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation
Network (Scholes et al. 2012, Pereira et al. 2013).
The task of developing more integrated and scalable indicators will be
crucial for SDGs, since it is important to base information on the results of
localized interactions. Using indicators that make sense on a local scale
and then possible to scale up on a regional and global scale opens up the
possibility to engage local stakeholder, citizen groups, indigenous groups
and many other knowledge holders in the monitoring, reporting and de-
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 61
velopment of the SDGs. One example which aims to do this is the IPBES
decision to base assessments on the enriched picture provided by multi-
ple knowledge holders and recognition of multiple sources of evidence for
understanding drivers of change and responses in social-ecological sys-
tems, the Multiple Evidence Base approach MEB (Box 4).
MEB implies that different knowledge systems are viewed as generat-
ing equally valid evidence for interpreting change, trajectories, and
causal relationships in ecosystem assessments. A peer-review process
for a MEB approach takes into account that different criteria of valida-
tion should be applied to data and information originating from different
knowledge systems (Duraiappah et al. 2012). Placing insights from
knowledge systems side by side will enable an enriched understanding
of the social-ecological system or the issues at hand, such as understand-
ing effects of climate change in the Arctic, rangeland dynamics, or the
role of sacred sites for human well-being (Berkes, 2007, Moller et al.
2004). A MEB approach can serve as a learning platform for generating
insights and triangulation across knowledge systems, as well as a basis
for further co-production of knowledge (see Figure 9 in Box 4).
Box 4. The Multiple Evidence Base (MEB)
Within IPBES, the member states have demanded that the platform “should rec-
ognize and respect the contribution of indigenous and local knowledge to the
conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems”, as a means of
contributing to the platforms four objectives; perform assessments, generate
knowledge, identify policy relevant tools, and capacity building. In response to
these demands, and similar demands from other assessments and processes, a
Multiple Evidence Base (MEB) approach has been developed (Tengö et al. 2013)
for diverse knowledge systems to contribute on their own terms to an enriched
picture based on qualitative and quantitative knowledge and understanding. To
secure the legitimacy, credibility, and salience the approach is developed as a
dialogue process in partnership between researchers, representatives of indige-
nous peoples and local communities (and their networks and organizations),
practitioners, and governmental, international and intergovernmental institu-
tions (Tengö et al. 2013).
62 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
Fig. 9. Outlining the Multiple Evidence Base Process, where diverse knowledge systems are viewed as generating different manifestations of valid and useful forms of knowledge, and complementarities and innovations to be gained from cross-fertilization
Illustration: J. Lokrantz/Azote.
The SDGs must consider economic targets and indicators.
Scientific insights number 3
Many argue that we will never achieve sustainable development unless
we change the current economic paradigm, which is a fundamental
cause of the current crises (e.g. Costanza et al. 2012). Hence, it is im-
portant to consider GDP and other current measures of national income
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 63
accounting in the context of sustainable development goals. Such
measures are “notorious for overweighting market transactions, under-
stating resource depletion, omitting pollution damage, and failing to
measure real changes in well-being” (ibid.). In the words of Dasgupta
and Duraiappah (2012) “we are mis-measuring our lives by using per
capita GDP as a yardstick for progress.” A number of alternative
measures have been proposed (and to some extent applied) to integrate
environmental social aspects in measures of well-being on the national
level, e.g. inclusive wealth, genuine savings, Index of Sustainable Eco-
nomic Welfare (ISEW) and the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). How-
ever, as noted by Stiglitz et al. (2009) there is a risk of integrating too
many aspects in aggregated measures, implying that urgently needed
measures centred on people’s well-being and sustainability must be
plural. There is no single measure that can summarize the full complexi-
ty of human well-being in different socio-economic and geographic con-
texts. What ever system we choose it should not just measure average
levels of well-being within a given community, and how they change
over time, but also document the diversity of peoples’ experiences and
the linkages across various dimensions of people’s life (ibid.).
In summary, the unified framework for the post-2015 agenda and
formulation of SDGs that is suggested in this report implies another ad-
dition to the evolution of the economic model, beyond the “Green Econ-
omy Model” and complementing the “Ecological Economics Model” de-
scribed by Costanza et al. (2012). Such incorporation of the scientific
insights provided by Earth system and resilience science could be called
a “Biosphere Economics Model” (see table 4).
64 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
Table 4. Basic characteristics of the current economic model, the “green economy” model, the “eco-logical economics” model and the “biosphere economics” model (adapted from Costanza et al. 2012)
Current Economic
Model
Green Economy
Model
Ecological Econo-
mics Model
Biosphere Econo-
mics Model
Primary
policy goal
More:
Conventional
economic growth
measured by GDP.
Assumption is that
growth will ultimate-
ly allow the solution
of all other prob-
lems. More is always
better.
More but with lower
impact:
GDP growth “de-
coupled” from
carbon and from
other material and
energy impacts
Better:
Focus must shift
from merely growth
to “development” in
the real sense of
improvement in
sustainable human
wellbeing. More is
not always better.
More resilient:
Integrating the role
of the biosphere and
global resilience in
macro-economic
models to safe-
guard well-being in
an increasingly
turbulent world.
Primary
measure of
progress
GDP Still GDP, but
recognizing impacts
on natural capital
Index of Sustainable
Economic Welfare
(ISEW)/Genuine
Progress Indicator
(GPI) (or other
improved measures
of real welfare)
Plural welfare
measures centred
on sustainability, no
single measure can
capture the full
complexity of
human well-being
and its relation to
the biosphere.
5. Conclusions and recommendations
Based on this overview of the state of the art, our conclusions and rec-
ommendations are:
First: We recommend the adoption of a “development within Earth limits”
approach in the further process of designing SDGs. We argue that the twin
priorities for the formulation of SDGs must be the protection of the biosphere
– society’s non-negotiable “life-support systems” – and the reduction of pov-
erty as an essential part of a fair and just global society.
Second: We believe it is important to build the further development on inte-
grating what we already have, respecting the fact that any SDG development
needs to build on the MDGs, learning from experiences of the MDGs, ensuring
that their advances towards poverty eradication are achieved.
Together, these recommendations require a deeper analysis of the multiple
interconnections, trade-offs and synergies between SDGs. Measuring pro-
gress in reaching the targets for the SDGs must require an agreed set of scal-
able indicators that should be inclusive of different knowledge systems,
building data and knowledge from local to national, regional and internation-
al levels. The environmental targets should be based on the latest research
on the dynamics of the Earth system, and benefit from learning and early
warning and monitoring activities emerging in multiple knowledge systems.
Third: There are many existing global environmental agreements (such as the
Aichi-Biodiversity Targets, see also Table 1) that link closely to planetary
boundaries. These form the foundations of a robust policy framework for
both the formulation of the SDGs and their implementation. Better integra-
tion across the social and environmental dimensions can provide the needed
impetus towards closing the current implementation gap.
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7. Svensk sammanfattning
Hur ska FN jobba vidare med hållbar utveckling efter att millenniemålen
gått ut 2015? Vad kan den tvärvetenskapliga forskningen om ekosystem-
tjänster, resiliens och planetens hållbara gränser bidra med i denna pro-
cess? Detta diskussionsunderlag från Stockholm Resilience Centre vid
Stockholms Universitet (som togs fram under perioden mars–oktober
2013) undersöker sambanden mellan mänskligt välbefinnande och bio-
sfären, och beskriver hur och varför dessa länkar bör påverka utform-
ningen av de nya hållbarhetsmålen. Rapporten är finansierad av Nor-
diska ministerrådet och utgör en uppföljning av ett tidigare diskussions-
underlag, som presenterades för de nordiska miljöministrarna under
deras möte i Jukkasjärvi den 7 februari 2013.
Att utarbeta globala hållbarhetsmål – Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) – var ett av de viktigaste besluten som togs under Rio+20, FNs
konferens om hållbar utveckling som hölls i Brasilien i juni 2012. Denna
process utgör ett gyllene tillfälle för det internationella samfundet att ta
itu med både sociala behov och miljömässiga utmaningar på en och
samma gång. Erfarenheterna av arbetet med millenniemålen visar att
samordnade ansträngningar för att hantera globala problem kan ge posi-
tiva resultat, öka medvetenheten och utkräva globalt politiskt ansvar.
Millenniemålen har på så sätt varit framgångsrika när det gäller att
uppmärksamma en rad frågor kopplade till extrem fattigdom, men de
har inte varit lika lyckosamma när det gäller att koppla de globala miljö-
och klimatutmaningarna till fattigdomsbekämpning och människors
välbefinnande.
Denna uppföljningsrapport analyserar både vad vi kan lära oss av ar-
betet med millenniemålen, och hur befintliga internationella överens-
kommelser bör återspeglas i utvecklingen av en ny global utvecklingsa-
genda efter år 2015. Rapporten syftar också till att bidra till utarbetan-
det av de faktiska hållbarhetsmålen, inklusive processorienterade mål
och skalbara indikatorer, som lämpar sig för att mäta mänsklig utveckl-
ing och global hållbarhet i en alltmer föränderlig omvärld.
Utifrån rapportens genomgång av den senaste forskningen om kopp-
lade sociala och ekologiska system dras tre övergripande slutsatser om
utformningen av de nya globala hållbarhetsmålen:
74 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
De måste bygga på ett synsätt som betonar ”utveckling inom planetens
hållbara gränser”
Vi hävdar att de två huvudprioriteringarna i formuleringen av de nya
målen måste vara skyddet av biosfären (samhällets icke
förhandlingsbara ”livsuppehållande system”) och minskning av
fattigdomen som en avgörande del av ett rättvist globalt samhälle.
De måste bygga vidare på erfarenheterna från arbetet med
millenniemålen så att deras framsteg mot att utrota bland annat
fattigdom och hunger verkligen uppnås
Tillsammans kräver dessa rekommendationer att de nya
hållbarhetsmålen måste gå ett steg längre än den klassiska
uppdelningen i sociala, ekonomiska och miljömässiga mål, och
undvika att bli en samling enfrågemål. Målen måste istället bygga på
insikten att ekologiska och sociala system är oskiljaktigt
sammanlänkade och underlätta en djupare analys av alla de
kopplingar, avvägningar och synergier som finns mellan olika mål
och indikatorer.
Genom att utveckla indikatorer som fungerar på lokal nivå och sedan
skala upp dem på regional och global nivå ges möjligheten att
engagera lokala intressenter, medborgargrupper, urbefolkningar och
många andra kunskapsbärare i övervakning, rapportering och
utveckling av hållbarhetsmålen.
Målen och indikatorerna bör baseras på den senaste forskningen om
dynamiken i jordens klimat- och ekosystem, och dra nytta av lärande
och kunskap om tillståndet i miljön och tidiga varningssignaler som
växer fram i flera olika kunskapssystem (alltifrån forskningsbaserad
kunskap till praktiska erfarenheter bland resursnyttjare och
lokalbefolkningar).
De bör även integrera de många befintliga globala
miljööverenskommelser som redan är nära kopplade till planetens
hållbara gränser
Överenskommelser som t ex Aichimålen för biologisk mångfald bildar
grunden för ett robust ramverk för både utformningen av de nya
hållbarhetsmålen och deras genomförande. Genom bättre integration
mellan de sociala och miljömässiga dimensionerna kan de nya
hållbarhetsmålen ge den nödvändiga drivkraften för att överkomma
det nuvarande genomförandegapet mellan många föreslagna
åtgärder och satta mål.
8. Appendix
8.1
A
pp
end
ix 1
List
of
eco
syst
em
se
rvic
es,
as
de
fin
ed
in t
he
Mill
en
niu
m E
cosy
ste
m A
sse
ssm
en
t (a
dap
ted
fro
m W
orl
d R
eso
urc
es
Inst
itu
te, 2
00
8)
Serv
ice
Su
bca
tego
ry
De
fin
itio
n
Exam
ple
s
Pro
visi
on
ing
serv
ice
s: T
he
go
od
s o
r p
rod
uct
s o
bta
ined
fro
m e
cosy
ste
ms
such
as
foo
d, t
imb
er
and
fib
er.
Foo
d
Cro
ps
Cu
ltiv
ated
pla
nts
or
agri
cult
ura
l pro
du
ce t
hat
are
har
vest
ed
by
pe
op
le f
or
hu
man
or
anim
al c
on
sum
pti
on
as
foo
d
Gra
ins
Veg
etab
les
Fru
it
Live
sto
ck
An
imal
s ra
ised
fo
r d
om
esti
c o
r co
mm
erci
al c
on
sum
pti
on
or
use
C
hic
ken
Pig
s
Cat
tle
Cap
ture
fis
her
ies
Wild
fis
h c
aptu
red
th
rou
gh t
raw
ling
and
oth
er n
on
farm
ing
met
ho
ds
Co
d
Cra
bs
Tun
a
Aq
uac
ult
ure
Fi
sh, s
hel
lfis
h, a
nd
/or
pla
nts
th
at a
re b
red
an
d r
eare
d in
po
nd
s, e
ncl
osu
res,
an
d
oth
er f
orm
s o
f fr
esh
wat
er o
r sa
ltw
ater
co
nfi
nem
ent
for
pu
rpo
ses
of
har
vest
ing
Shri
mp
Oys
ters
Salm
on
Wild
fo
od
s Ed
ible
pla
nt
and
an
imal
sp
ecie
s ga
ther
ed o
r ca
ptu
red
in t
he
wild
Fr
uit
an
d n
uts
Fun
gi
Bu
shm
eat
Fib
er
Tim
ber
an
d o
ther
wo
od
fib
er
Pro
du
cts
mad
e fr
om
tre
es
har
vest
ed f
rom
nat
ura
l fo
rest
eco
syst
em
s, p
lan
tati
on
s,
or
no
nfo
rest
ed la
nd
s
Ind
ust
rial
ro
un
dw
oo
d
Wo
od
pu
lp
Pap
er
Oth
er f
iber
s (e
.g.,
cott
on
, h
emp
, silk
) N
on
wo
od
an
d n
on
fuel
fib
ers
extr
acte
d f
rom
th
e n
atu
ral e
nvi
ron
men
t fo
r a
vari
ety
of
use
s
Text
iles
(clo
thin
g, li
nen
, acc
esso
ries
)
Co
rdag
e (t
win
e, r
op
e)
Bio
mas
s fu
el (
wo
od
fu
el)
Bio
logi
cal m
ater
ial d
eriv
ed f
rom
livi
ng
or
rece
ntl
y liv
ing
org
anis
ms
– b
oth
pla
nt
and
an
imal
– t
hat
ser
ves
as a
so
urc
e o
f en
erg
y
Fuel
wo
od
an
d c
har
coal
Gra
in f
or
eth
ano
l pro
du
ctio
n
Du
ng
Fres
hw
ater
In
lan
d b
od
ies
of
wat
er, g
rou
nd
wat
er, r
ain
wat
er, a
nd
su
rfac
e w
ater
s fo
r h
ou
se-
ho
ld, i
nd
ust
rial
, an
d a
gric
ult
ura
l use
s
Fres
hw
ater
fo
r d
rin
kin
g, c
lean
ing,
co
olin
g,
ind
ust
rial
pro
cess
es, e
lect
rici
ty g
ener
atio
n, o
r
mo
de
of
tran
spo
rtat
ion
Serv
ice
Su
bca
tego
ry
De
fin
itio
n
Exam
ple
s
Gen
etic
res
ou
rces
G
enes
an
d g
enet
ic in
form
atio
n u
sed
fo
r an
imal
bre
edin
g, p
lan
t im
pro
vem
ent,
an
d
bio
tech
no
logy
Gen
es u
sed
to
incr
ease
cro
p r
esis
tan
ce
Bio
chem
ical
s, n
atu
ral m
edic
ines
, an
d p
har
ma
ceu
tica
ls
Med
icin
es,
bio
cid
es, f
oo
d a
dd
itiv
es,
an
d o
ther
bio
logi
cal m
ater
ials
der
ive
d f
rom
eco
syst
ems
for
com
mer
cial
or
do
mes
tic
use
Ech
inac
ea, g
inse
ng,
gar
lic
Pac
litax
el a
s b
asis
fo
r ca
nce
r d
rugs
Tree
ext
ract
s u
sed
fo
r p
est
co
ntr
ol
Re
gula
tin
g se
rvic
es
incl
ud
ing
sup
po
rtin
g se
rvic
es:
Re
gula
tin
g se
rvic
es
are
th
e b
ene
fits
ob
tain
ed
fro
m a
n e
cosy
ste
m’s
co
ntr
ol o
f n
atu
ral p
roce
sse
s su
ch a
s cl
imat
e, d
ise
ase
, ero
sio
n, w
ate
r fl
ow
s, a
nd
po
llin
atio
n, a
s w
ell
as p
rote
ctio
n f
rom
na
tura
l
haz
ard
s. R
egu
lati
ng
serv
ice
s n
orm
ally
incl
ud
e a
lso
Su
pp
ort
ing
serv
ice
s, i.
e. t
he
nat
ura
l pro
cess
es s
uch
as
nu
trie
nt
cycl
ing
an
d p
rim
ary
pro
du
ctio
n t
hat
mai
nta
in t
he
oth
er
serv
ice
s.
Air
qu
alit
y re
gula
tio
n
Infl
uen
ce e
cosy
ste
ms
hav
e o
n a
ir q
ual
ity
by
emit
tin
g ch
emic
als
to t
he
atm
osp
her
e
(i.e
., se
rvin
g as
a “
sou
rce”
) o
r ex
trac
tin
g ch
em
ical
s fr
om
th
e at
mo
sph
ere
(i.e
.,
serv
ing
as a
“si
nk”
).
Lake
s se
rve
as a
sin
k fo
r in
du
stri
al e
mis
sio
ns
of
sulp
hu
r co
mp
ou
nd
s
Veg
etat
ion
fir
es e
mit
par
ticu
late
s, g
rou
nd
-lev
el
ozo
ne,
an
d v
ola
tile
org
anic
co
mp
ou
nd
s
Clim
ate
regu
lati
on
G
lob
al
Infl
uen
ce e
cosy
ste
ms
hav
e o
n g
lob
al c
limat
e b
y em
itti
ng
gree
nh
ou
se g
ases
or
aero
sols
to
th
e at
mo
sph
ere
or
by
abso
rbin
g gr
een
ho
use
gas
es
or
aero
sols
fro
m t
he
atm
osp
her
e
Fore
sts
cap
ture
an
d s
tore
car
bo
n d
ioxi
de
Cat
tle
and
ric
e p
add
ies
emit
met
ha
ne
Reg
ion
al a
nd
loca
l In
flu
ence
eco
syst
em
s h
ave
on
loca
l or
regi
on
al t
emp
erat
ure
, pre
cip
itat
ion
, an
d
oth
er c
limat
ic f
acto
rs
Fore
sts
can
imp
act
regi
on
al r
ain
fall
leve
ls
Lake
s re
gula
te h
um
idit
y le
vels
an
d in
flu
ence
freq
uen
cy o
f fr
ost
s, im
po
rtan
t fo
r ag
ricu
ltu
re
C
arb
on
se
qu
est
rati
on
Th
e ex
trac
tio
n o
f ca
rbo
n d
ioxi
de
fro
m t
he
atm
osp
he
re s
ervi
ng
as a
sin
k Ex
pan
din
g ar
eas
of
bor
eal f
ore
sts,
incr
ease
s th
e
sin
k
Def
ore
stat
ion
in t
he
tro
pic
s, d
ecre
ases
th
e si
nk
Oce
an c
arb
on
seq
ues
trat
ion
Wat
er r
egu
lati
on
In
flu
ence
eco
syst
em
s h
ave
on
th
e ti
min
g an
d m
agn
itu
de
of
wat
er r
un
off
, flo
od
ing,
and
aq
uif
er r
ech
arge
, par
ticu
larl
y in
ter
ms
of
the
wat
er s
tora
ge p
ote
nti
al o
f th
e
eco
syst
em o
r la
nd
scap
e
Per
mea
ble
so
il fa
cilit
ates
aq
uif
er r
ech
arg
e
Riv
er f
loo
dp
lain
s an
d w
etla
nd
s re
tain
wat
er –
wh
ich
can
dec
rea
se f
loo
din
g d
uri
ng
run
off
pea
ks
– re
du
cin
g th
e n
eed
fo
r en
gin
eere
d f
loo
d c
on
tro
l
infr
astr
uct
ure
Ero
sio
n r
egu
lati
on
R
ole
veg
etat
ive
cove
r p
lays
in s
oil
rete
nti
on
V
eget
atio
n su
ch a
s gr
ass
and
tree
s p
reve
nts
soil
loss
du
e to
win
d a
nd
rain
an
d si
ltat
ion
of
wat
er-
way
s
Fore
sts
on
slop
es h
old
soil
in p
lace
, th
ereb
y
pre
ven
ting
lan
dsl
ides
Wat
er p
uri
fica
tio
n a
nd
was
te t
reat
me
nt
Ro
le e
cosy
stem
s p
lay
in t
he
filt
rati
on
an
d d
eco
mp
osi
tio
n o
f o
rgan
ic w
aste
s an
d
po
lluta
nts
in w
ater
; as
sim
ilati
on
an
d d
eto
xifi
cati
on
of
com
po
un
ds
thro
ugh
so
il an
d
sub
soil
pro
cess
es
Wet
lan
ds
rem
ove
har
mfu
l po
lluta
nts
fro
m w
ater
by
trap
pin
g m
etal
s an
d o
rgan
ic m
ater
ials
Soil
mic
rob
es
deg
rad
e o
rgan
ic w
aste
, ren
der
ing
it
less
har
mfu
l
Serv
ice
Su
bca
tego
ry
De
fin
itio
n
Exam
ple
s
Dis
ease
reg
ula
tio
n
Infl
uen
ce t
hat
eco
syst
ems
hav
e o
n th
e in
cid
ence
an
d ab
und
ance
of
hum
an p
ath
ogen
s
Som
e in
tact
fo
rest
s re
du
ce t
he
occ
urr
ence
of
stan
din
g w
ater
―a
bre
edin
g ar
ea f
or
mo
squ
i-
toes
―w
hic
h lo
wer
s th
e p
reva
len
ce o
f m
alar
ia
Pes
t re
gula
tio
n
Infl
uen
ce e
cosy
stem
s ha
ve o
n th
e p
reva
len
ce o
f cr
op
and
lives
tock
pes
ts a
nd
dise
ases
P
red
ato
rs f
rom
nea
rby
fore
sts
– su
ch a
s b
ats,
toad
s, a
nd
sn
ake
s –
con
sum
e cr
op
pe
sts
Po
llin
atio
n
Ro
le e
cosy
stem
s p
lay
in t
ran
sfer
rin
g p
olle
n f
rom
mal
e to
fem
ale
flo
we
r p
arts
B
ees
fro
m n
earb
y fo
rest
s p
olli
nat
e cr
op
s
Nat
ura
l haz
ard
reg
ula
tio
n
Cap
acit
y fo
r ec
osy
stem
s to
red
uce
th
e d
am
age
cau
sed
by
nat
ura
l dis
aste
rs s
uch
as
hu
rric
anes
an
d t
o m
ain
tain
nat
ura
l fir
e fr
equ
ency
an
d in
ten
sity
Man
gro
ve f
ore
sts
and
co
ral r
eefs
pro
tect
co
ast-
lines
fro
m s
torm
su
rge
s
Bio
logi
cal d
eco
mp
osi
tio
n p
roce
sse
s re
du
ce
po
ten
tial
fu
el f
or
wild
fire
s
Nu
trie
nt
cycl
ing
Ro
le e
cosy
stem
s p
lay
in t
he
flo
w a
nd
rec
yclin
g o
f n
utr
ien
ts (
e.g.
, nit
rog
en, s
ulp
hu
r,
ph
osp
ho
rus,
car
bo
n)
thro
ugh
pro
cess
es s
uch
as
dec
om
po
siti
on
an
d/o
r ab
sorp
tio
n
Dec
om
po
siti
on
of
org
anic
mat
ter
con
trib
ute
s to
soil
fert
ility
Cu
ltu
ral s
erv
ice
s: T
he
no
nm
ate
rial
be
ne
fits
ob
tain
ed
fro
m e
cosy
ste
ms
such
as
recr
eati
on
, sp
irit
ual
val
ue
s, a
nd
aes
the
tic
enjo
ymen
t.
Rec
reat
ion
an
d e
coto
uri
sm
Rec
reat
ion
al p
lea
sure
peo
ple
de
rive
fro
m n
atu
ral o
r cu
ltiv
ated
eco
syst
em
s
Hik
ing,
cam
pin
g, a
nd
bir
d w
atch
ing
Go
ing
on
saf
ari
Spir
itu
al, r
elig
iou
s an
d e
thic
al v
alu
es
Spir
itu
al, r
elig
iou
s, a
esth
etic
, in
trin
sic,
“ex
iste
nce
”, o
r o
ther
val
ue
s p
eop
le a
ttac
h t
o
eco
syst
ems,
lan
dsc
apes
, or
spec
ies
Spir
itu
al f
ulf
ilmen
t d
eriv
ed f
rom
sa
cre
d la
nd
s an
d
rive
rs
Bel
ief
that
all
spec
ies
are
wo
rth
pro
tect
ing
rega
rdle
ss o
f th
eir
uti
lity
to p
eop
le –
“b
iod
iver
si-
ty f
or
bio
div
ersi
ty’s
sak
e”
Aes
thet
ic v
alu
es
The
bea
uty
an
d a
esth
etic
val
ues
of
nat
ure
in a
ll it
s ap
pea
ran
ces.
B
eau
ty o
f n
atu
re, f
rom
a m
ole
cule
to
a f
low
er t
o
a fo
rest
8.2
A
pp
end
ix 2
Th
e U
NE
P r
epo
rt M
easu
rin
g P
rogr
ess:
En
viro
nm
enta
l G
oal
s an
d G
aps,
12 o
utl
ines
fin
din
gs f
rom
a U
NE
P s
tud
y t
hat
has
cat
a-
logu
ed a
nd
an
aly
zed
exi
stin
g “G
lob
al E
nvi
ron
men
tal
Go
als”
co
nta
ined
in
in
tern
atio
nal
agr
eem
ents
an
d c
on
ven
tio
ns.
It
ask
s th
e
fun
dam
enta
l qu
esti
on
as
to w
hy
the
aim
s an
d g
oal
s o
f th
ese
po
licy
in
stru
men
ts h
ave
oft
en f
alle
n f
ar s
ho
rt o
f th
eir
ori
gin
al a
mb
i-
tio
n a
nd
in
ten
tio
ns.
On
e p
oss
ible
rea
son
is
that
man
y o
f th
e go
als
are
sim
ply
no
t sp
ecif
ic e
no
ugh
; th
e fe
w g
oal
s th
at a
re s
pe
cifi
c
and
mea
sura
ble
ap
pea
r to
hav
e a
mu
ch b
ette
r re
cord
of
succ
ess.
Are
a G
lob
al E
nvi
ron
me
nt
Go
al
IEA
P
rogr
ess
Atm
osp
her
e
Clim
ate
:
...d
eep
cu
ts in
glo
bal
gre
enh
ou
se g
as e
mis
sio
ns
are
req
uir
ed a
cco
rdin
g to
sci
en
ce .
.. w
ith
a v
iew
to
red
uci
ng
glo
bal
gre
enh
ou
se g
as e
mis
sio
ns
so a
s to
ho
ld t
he
incr
ease
in g
lob
al a
vera
ge t
emp
era
ture
bel
ow
2°C
ab
ove
pre
-in
du
stri
al le
vels
.
The
Can
cun
Agr
eem
ents
, De
cisi
on
1/C
P.1
6 o
f th
e C
on
fere
nce
of
the
Par
ties
of
the
UN
Fra
mew
ork
Co
nve
n-
tio
n o
n C
limat
e C
han
ge
Litt
le o
r n
o p
rogr
ess
St
rato
sph
eric
ozo
n:
Det
erm
ined
to
pro
tect
th
e o
zon
e la
yer
by
taki
ng
pre
cau
tio
na
ry m
easu
res
to c
on
tro
l eq
uit
ably
to
tal g
lob
al
emis
sio
ns
of
sub
stan
ces
that
dep
lete
it, w
ith
th
e u
ltim
ate
ob
ject
ive
of
thei
r el
imin
atio
n.
Mo
ntr
eal P
roto
col o
n S
ub
stan
ces
that
Dep
lete
th
e O
zon
e La
yer,
Pre
am
ble
Sign
ific
ant
pro
gres
s
Le
ad
in g
aso
line:
Red
uce
re
spir
ato
ry d
isea
ses
and
oth
er h
ealt
h im
pac
ts r
esu
ltin
g fr
om
air
po
lluti
on
, wit
h p
arti
cula
r at
ten
-
tio
n t
o w
om
en a
nd
ch
ildre
n, b
y...
sup
po
rtin
g th
e p
has
ing
ou
t o
f le
ad in
gas
olin
e
Joh
ann
esb
urg
Pla
n o
f Im
ple
men
tati
on
,
par
a. 5
6(b
)
Sign
ific
ant
pro
gres
s
O
utd
oo
r a
ir p
ollu
tio
n:
Enh
ance
co
op
erat
ion
at
the
inte
rnat
ion
al, r
egio
nal
an
d n
atio
nal
leve
ls t
o r
ed
uce
air
po
lluti
on
, in
clu
din
g
tran
sbo
un
dar
y ai
r p
ollu
tio
n [
and
] ac
id d
epo
siti
on
.
Joh
ann
esb
urg
Pla
n o
f Im
ple
men
tati
on
,
par
a. 3
9
Som
e p
rogr
ess
In
do
or
air
po
lluti
on
:
[Ass
ist]
dev
elo
pin
g co
un
trie
s in
pro
vid
ing
affo
rda
ble
en
ergy
to
ru
ral c
om
mu
nit
ies,
par
ticu
larl
y to
red
uce
dep
end
ence
on
tra
dit
ion
al f
uel
so
urc
es
for
coo
kin
g an
d h
eati
ng,
wh
ich
aff
ect
the
hea
lth
of
wo
men
an
d
child
ren
Joh
ann
esb
urg
Pla
n o
f Im
ple
men
tati
on
,
par
a. 5
6(d
)
Litt
le o
r n
o p
rogr
ess
Bio
div
ersi
ty
Exti
nct
ion
risk
of
spec
ies:
Red
uce
bio
div
ersi
ty lo
ss, a
chie
vin
g, b
y 2
01
0,
a si
gnif
ican
t re
du
ctio
n in
th
e ra
te o
f lo
ss
Mill
enn
ium
Dev
elo
pm
en
t G
oal
7,
Targ
et B
Litt
le o
r n
o p
rogr
ess
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
1
2 U
NE
P (
20
12
) M
easu
rin
g P
rogr
ess
: En
vir
on
me
nta
l Go
als
and
Gap
s, N
airo
bi,
UN
EP
. htt
p:/
/ww
w.u
nep
.org
/ge
o/p
dfs
/geo
5/M
easu
rin
g_p
rog
ress
.pd
f
Are
a G
lob
al E
nvi
ron
me
nt
Go
al
IEA
P
rogr
ess
N
atu
ral H
ab
ita
ts:
By
20
20
, th
e ra
te o
f lo
ss o
f al
l nat
ura
l hab
itat
s, in
clu
din
g fo
rest
s, is
at
leas
t h
alve
d a
nd
wh
ere
fea
sib
le
bro
ugh
t cl
ose
to
zer
o, a
nd
deg
rad
atio
n a
nd
fra
gme
nta
tio
n is
sig
nif
ican
tly
red
uce
d
Aic
hi B
iod
iver
sity
Tar
get
5
Litt
le o
r n
o p
rogr
ess
In
vasi
ve a
lien
sp
ecie
s:
By
202
0, i
nva
sive
alie
n sp
ecie
s an
d pa
thw
ays
are
iden
tifi
ed a
nd
pri
ori
tize
d, p
rio
rity
sp
ecie
s ar
e co
ntro
lled
or
erad
icat
ed, a
nd
mea
sure
s ar
e in
pla
ce t
o m
anag
e p
athw
ays
to p
reve
nt t
hei
r in
tro
du
ctio
n a
nd
est
ablis
hm
ent
Aic
hi B
iod
iver
sity
Tar
get
9
Som
e p
rogr
ess
on
po
licy
resp
on
ses,
littl
e o
r n
o p
rogr
ess
on
tren
ds
in in
vasi
ve
alie
n s
pec
ies
A
cces
s a
nd b
enef
it s
har
ing:
By
201
5, t
he
Nag
oya
Pro
toco
l on
Acc
ess
to G
enet
ic R
eso
urc
es a
nd
the
Fair
and
Eq
uit
able
Sh
arin
g of
Ben
efit
s
Ari
sing
fro
m t
hei
r U
tiliz
atio
n is
in f
orc
e an
d o
per
atio
nal
, co
nsi
sten
t w
ith
nat
ion
al le
gisl
atio
n.
Aic
hi B
iod
iver
sity
Tar
get
16
So
me
pro
gre
ss
P
rote
cted
are
as:
By
202
0, a
t le
ast
17%
of
terr
estr
ial a
nd
inla
nd
wat
er, a
nd
10%
of
coas
tal a
nd
mar
ine
area
s, e
spec
ially
are
as o
f
par
ticu
lar
imp
ort
ance
for
bio
dive
rsit
y an
d e
cosy
stem
ser
vice
s, a
re c
on
serv
ed t
hro
ugh
effe
ctiv
ely
and
equi
ta-
bly
man
aged
, eco
logi
cally
rep
rese
ntat
ive
and
wel
l co
nn
ecte
d sy
stem
s o
f p
rote
cted
are
as a
nd
oth
er e
ffec
tive
area
-bas
ed c
on
serv
atio
n m
easu
res,
an
d in
tegr
ated
into
th
e w
ider
lan
dsc
apes
an
d se
asca
pes
.
Aic
hi B
iod
iver
sity
Tar
get
11
Som
e p
rogr
ess
Su
sta
ina
bly
ma
na
ged
pro
du
ctio
n a
rea
s:
By
20
20
area
s u
nd
er
agri
cult
ure
, aq
ua
cult
ure
an
d f
ore
stry
are
man
aged
su
stai
nab
ly, e
nsu
rin
g co
nse
rva-
tio
n o
f b
iod
iver
sity
Aic
hi B
iod
iver
sity
Tar
get
7
Litt
le o
r n
o p
rogr
ess
Sp
ecie
s h
arv
este
d f
or
foo
d a
nd
med
icin
e:
By
20
20
, th
e ge
net
ic d
iver
sity
of
cult
ivat
ed p
lan
ts a
nd
far
med
an
d d
om
esti
cate
d a
nim
als
and
of
wild
rela
tive
s, in
clu
din
g o
ther
so
cio
-eco
no
mic
ally
as
wel
l as
cult
ura
lly v
alu
able
sp
ecie
s, is
mai
nta
ined
, an
d
stra
tegi
es h
ave
bee
n d
evel
op
ed a
nd
imp
lem
en
ted
fo
r m
inim
izin
g ge
net
ic e
rosi
on
an
d s
afeg
uar
din
g th
eir
gen
etic
div
ersi
ty
Aic
hi B
iod
iver
sity
tar
get
13
Litt
le o
r n
o p
rogr
ess
Fi
sh s
tock
s:
To a
chie
ve s
ust
ain
able
fis
her
ies.
.. m
ain
tain
or
rest
ore
sto
cks
to le
vels
th
at c
an p
rod
uce
th
e m
axim
um
sust
ain
able
yie
ld w
ith
th
e ai
m o
f ac
hie
vin
g th
ese
goal
s fo
r d
eple
ted
sto
cks
on
an
urg
en
t b
asis
an
d w
her
e
po
ssib
le n
ot
late
r th
an 2
01
5
Joh
ann
esb
urg
Pla
n o
f Im
ple
men
tati
on
,
par
a. 3
1 (
a)
Furt
he
r d
ete
rio
rati
on
Ch
em
ical
s an
d w
aste
s So
un
d c
hem
ica
ls m
an
ag
emen
t:
Ren
ew t
he
com
mit
me
nt,
as
adva
nce
d in
Age
nd
a 2
1, t
o s
ou
nd
man
agem
ent
of
chem
ical
s th
rou
gho
ut
thei
r lif
e cy
cle.
.. a
imin
g to
ach
ieve
, by
20
20
, th
at c
hem
ical
s ar
e u
sed
an
d p
rod
uce
d in
way
s th
at le
ad t
o
the
min
imiz
atio
n o
f si
gnif
ican
t ad
vers
e ef
fect
s o
n h
um
an h
ealt
h a
nd
th
e e
nvi
ron
me
nt.
..
Joh
ann
esb
urg
Pla
n o
f Im
ple
men
tati
on
,
par
a. 2
3
Som
e p
rogr
ess
,
insu
ffic
ien
t d
ata
to
asse
ss g
lob
ally
H
eavy
met
als
:
Pro
mo
te r
edu
ctio
n o
f th
e ri
sks
po
sed
by
hea
vy m
etal
s th
at a
re h
arm
ful t
o h
um
an
hea
lth
an
d t
he
envi
ron
me
nt.
..
Joh
ann
esb
urg
Pla
n of
Impl
emen
tati
on
,
par
a. 2
3(g)
Som
e p
rogr
ess
Are
a G
lob
al E
nvi
ron
me
nt
Go
al
IEA
P
rogr
ess
P
ersi
sten
t o
rga
nic
pol
luta
nts
:
Each
Par
ty s
hal
l... p
roh
ibit
an
d/o
r ta
ke t
he
lega
l an
d a
dm
inis
trat
ive
mea
sure
s n
ece
ssar
y to
elim
inat
e it
s
pro
du
ctio
n a
nd
use
of
the
chem
ical
s lis
ted
in A
nn
ex A
[se
lect
ed p
ersi
sten
t o
rgan
ic p
ollu
tan
ts]
sub
ject
to
the
pro
visi
on
s o
f th
at A
nn
ex.
Sto
ckh
olm
Co
nve
nti
on
on
Per
sist
en
t
Org
anic
Po
lluta
nts
, art
icle
3.1
(a)(
i)
Som
e p
rogr
ess
So
un
d w
ast
e m
an
ag
emen
t:
Det
erm
ined
to
pro
tect
, by
stri
ct c
on
tro
l, h
um
an h
ealt
h a
nd
th
e en
viro
nm
ent
agai
nst
th
e ad
vers
e ef
fect
s
wh
ich
may
res
ult
fro
m t
he
gen
erat
ion
an
d m
anag
emen
t o
f h
azar
do
us
was
tes
and
oth
er w
aste
s.
Bas
el C
onv
enti
on
on
the
Co
ntro
l of
Tran
sbo
un
dary
Mo
vem
ents
of
Haz
ard
ous
Was
tes
and
Thei
r D
isp
osa
l, P
ream
ble
Som
e p
rogr
ess
,
insu
ffic
ien
t d
ata
to
asse
ss g
lob
ally
R
adio
act
ive
was
te:
The
ob
ject
ive
s o
f th
is C
on
ven
tio
n a
re (
i) t
o a
chie
ve a
nd
mai
nta
in a
hig
h le
vel o
f sa
fety
wo
rld
wid
e in
sp
en
t
fuel
an
d r
adio
acti
ve w
aste
man
agem
en
t...
(ii)
to
en
sure
... e
ffe
ctiv
e d
efen
ses
agai
nst
po
ten
tial
haz
ard
s...
(iii)
to
pre
ven
t ac
cid
ents
wit
h r
adio
logi
cal c
on
seq
uen
ces.
Join
t C
on
ven
tio
n o
n t
he
Safe
ty o
f Sp
ent
Fuel
Man
agem
ent
and
on
th
e Sa
fety
of
Rad
ioac
tive
Was
te M
anag
emen
t,
Art
icle
1
Som
e p
rogr
ess
Lan
d
Acc
ess
to f
oo
d:
Hal
ve, b
etw
een
19
90
an
d 2
01
5, t
he
pro
po
rtio
n
of
peo
ple
wh
o s
uff
er
fro
m h
un
ger
Mill
enn
ium
Dev
elo
pm
en
t G
oal
1,
Targ
et C
Som
e p
rogr
ess
on
red
uci
ng
hu
nge
r,lit
tle
or
no
pro
gres
s o
n
ensu
rin
g su
stai
nab
le
foo
d s
up
ply
D
eser
tifi
cati
on
an
d d
rou
gh
t:
...co
mb
at d
ese
rtif
icat
ion
an
d m
itig
ate
the
effe
cts
of
dro
ugh
t in
co
un
trie
s ex
per
ien
cin
g se
rio
us
dro
ugh
t
and
/or
des
erti
fica
tio
n, p
arti
cula
rly
in A
fric
a.
Un
ited
Nat
ion
s C
on
ven
tio
n t
o C
om
bat
Des
ert
ific
atio
n (
UN
CC
D),
Art
icle
2(1
)
Litt
le o
r n
o p
rogr
ess
D
efo
rest
atio
n:
Rev
erse
th
e lo
ss o
f fo
rest
co
ver
wo
rld
wid
e th
rou
gh s
ust
ain
able
fo
rest
man
agem
en
t, in
clu
din
g p
rote
ctio
n,
rest
ora
tio
n, a
ffo
rest
atio
n a
nd
ref
ore
stat
ion
, an
d in
crea
se e
ffo
rts
to p
reve
nt
fore
st d
egra
dat
ion
Gen
eral
Ass
em
bly
re
solu
tio
n 6
2/9
8 o
f
31
Jan
uar
y 2
00
8, s
ecti
on
IV, G
lob
al
Ob
ject
ive
1
Som
e p
rogr
ess
W
etla
nds:
The
Co
ntra
ctin
g P
arti
es s
hal
l fo
rmul
ate
and
impl
emen
t th
eir
plan
nin
g so
as
to p
rom
ote
the
con
serv
atio
n of
the
wet
lan
ds
incl
ud
ed in
th
e Li
st, a
nd
as f
ar a
s p
oss
ible
th
e w
ise
use
of w
etla
nd
s in
th
eir
terr
ito
ry
Ram
sar
Co
nve
nti
on
on
Wet
lan
ds,
arti
cle
3(1
)
Furt
he
r d
ete
rio
rati
on
Ec
osy
stem
ser
vice
s:
To im
pro
ve r
eco
gnit
ion
of
the
soci
al, e
con
om
ic a
nd
eco
logi
cal v
alu
es o
f tr
ees
, fo
rest
s an
d f
ore
st la
nd
s, in
clu
din
g th
e co
nse
qu
ence
s o
f th
e d
amag
e ca
use
d b
y
the
lack
of
fore
sts;
to
pro
mo
te m
eth
od
olo
gies
wit
h a
vie
w t
o in
corp
ora
tin
g so
cial
, eco
no
mic
an
d e
colo
gi-
cal v
alu
es o
f tr
ees,
fo
rest
s an
d f
ore
st la
nd
s in
to t
he
nat
ion
al e
con
om
ic a
cco
un
tin
g sy
stem
s...
Age
nd
a 2
1, C
hap
ter
11
,
par
agra
ph
21
(a)
Litt
le o
r n
o p
rogr
ess
Wat
er
Dri
nki
ng
wa
ter:
Hal
ve, b
y 2
01
5, t
he
pro
po
rtio
n o
f p
eop
le w
ith
ou
t su
stai
nab
le a
cce
ss t
o s
afe
dri
nki
ng
wat
er
Mill
enn
ium
Dev
elo
pm
en
t G
oal
7,
Targ
et C
Sign
ific
ant
pro
gres
s,
mo
re p
rogr
ess
in
urb
an t
han
in r
ura
l
area
s
Are
a G
lob
al E
nvi
ron
me
nt
Go
al
IEA
P
rogr
ess
Sa
nit
ati
on
:
Hal
ve, b
y 2
01
5, t
he
pro
po
rtio
n o
f p
eop
le w
ith
ou
t
sust
ain
able
acc
ess
to
... b
asic
san
itat
ion
Mill
enn
ium
Dev
elo
pm
en
t G
oal
7,
Targ
et C
Som
e p
rogr
ess
G
rou
nd
wa
ter
dep
leti
on
:
To s
top
th
e u
nsu
stai
nab
le e
xplo
itat
ion
of
wat
er r
eso
urc
es b
y d
evel
op
ing
wat
er m
anag
eme
nt
stra
tegi
es a
t
the
regi
on
al, n
atio
nal
an
d lo
cal l
evel
s, w
hic
h p
rom
ote
bo
th e
qu
itab
le a
cces
s an
d a
deq
uat
e su
pp
lies
Mill
enn
ium
Dec
lara
tio
n, G
ene
ral
Ass
emb
ly r
eso
luti
on
55
/2 o
f 1
8 S
ep
-
tem
be
r 2
00
0, p
ara.
23
Litt
le o
r n
o p
rogr
ess
on
gro
un
dwat
er p
ollu
tio
n
and
mo
nit
ori
ng,
furt
her
det
erio
rati
on
on
gro
un
dwat
er s
up
ply
W
ate
r u
se e
ffic
ien
cy:
Imp
rove
th
e ef
fici
ent
use
of
wat
er r
eso
urc
es a
nd
pro
mo
te t
hei
r al
loca
tio
n a
mo
ng
com
pet
ing
use
s in
a
way
th
at g
ives
pri
ori
ty t
o t
he
sati
sfac
tio
n o
f b
asic
hu
ma
n n
eed
s.
Joh
ann
esb
urg
Pla
n o
f Im
ple
men
tati
on
,
par
a. 2
6(c
)
Som
e p
rogr
ess
Fr
esh
wa
ter
po
lluti
on:
Inte
nsi
fy w
ater
po
lluti
on
pre
ven
tio
n t
o r
ed
uce
hea
lth
haz
ard
s an
d p
rote
ct e
cosy
ste
ms
by
intr
od
uci
ng
tech
no
logi
es f
or
affo
rda
ble
san
itat
ion
an
d in
du
stri
al a
nd
do
me
stic
was
tew
ater
tre
atm
ent,
by
mit
igat
ing
the
effe
cts
of
gro
un
dw
ater
co
nta
min
atio
n a
nd
by
esta
blis
hin
g, a
t th
e n
atio
na
l lev
el, m
on
ito
rin
g sy
ste
ms
and
eff
ecti
ve le
gal f
ram
ewo
rks
Joh
ann
esb
urg
Pla
n o
f Im
ple
men
tati
on
,
par
a. 2
5(d
)
Insu
ffic
ien
t da
ta t
o
asse
ss
M
ari
ne
po
lluti
on
:
Stat
es s
hal
l tak
e al
l mea
sure
s n
eces
sary
to
pre
ven
t, r
edu
ce a
nd
co
ntr
ol p
ollu
tio
n o
f th
e m
arin
e en
viro
n-
men
t re
sult
ing
fro
m t
he
use
of
tech
no
logi
es u
nd
er t
hei
r ju
risd
icti
on
or
con
tro
l.
Un
ited
Nat
ion
s C
on
ven
tio
n o
n t
he
Law
of
the
Sea,
art
icle
19
6, p
ara.
1
Litt
le o
r n
o p
rogr
ess
C
ora
ls:
Stat
es s
ho
uld
iden
tify
mar
ine
eco
syst
ems
exhi
biti
ng h
igh
leve
ls o
f bi
od
iver
sity
an
d p
rod
ucti
vity
an
d o
ther
crit
ical
hab
itat
are
as a
nd
sho
uld
pro
vid
e n
eces
sary
lim
itat
ion
s o
n u
se in
th
ese
area
s, t
hro
ugh
, in
ter
alia
,
des
ign
atio
n of
pro
tect
ed a
reas
. Pri
orit
y sh
oul
d b
e ac
cord
ed, a
s ap
pro
pri
ate
to: (
a) c
ora
l ree
f ec
osy
stem
s...
Age
nd
a 2
1, C
hap
ter
17
, par
a. 8
5
Joh
ann
esb
urg
Pla
n o
f Im
ple
men
tati
on
,
par
a. 1
34
Furt
he
r d
ete
rio
rati
on
Ex
trem
e ev
ents
:
Sup
po
rt e
ffo
rts
to p
reve
nt
and
mit
igat
e t
he
imp
acts
of
nat
ura
l dis
aste
rs..
.
So
me
pro
gre
ss in
dis
aste
r re
spo
nse
an
d
risk
red
uct
ion
,
furt
her
det
erio
rati
on
in d
isas
ter
imp
acts
Po
licie
s an
d p
rogr
am
me
s En
viro
nm
enta
l po
licie
s:
Acc
ord
ingl
y, w
e as
sum
e a
colle
ctiv
e re
spo
nsi
bili
ty t
o a
dva
nce
an
d s
tren
gth
en
th
e in
terd
epen
den
t an
d
mu
tual
ly r
ein
forc
ing
pill
ars
of
sust
ain
able
dev
elo
pm
ent
– ec
on
om
ic d
evel
op
men
t, s
oci
al d
evel
op
men
t
and
en
viro
nm
enta
l pro
tect
ion
– a
t th
e lo
cal,
nat
ion
al, r
egio
nal
an
d g
lob
al le
vels
Joh
ann
esb
urg
Dec
lara
tio
n o
n S
ust
ain
a-
ble
Dev
elo
pm
en
t, p
ara.
5
Som
e p
rogr
ess
Su
sta
ina
ble
dev
elo
pm
ent
in c
ou
ntr
y p
olic
ies/
pro
gra
mm
es:
Inte
grat
e th
e p
rin
cip
les
of
sust
ain
able
dev
elo
pm
en
t in
to c
ou
ntr
y p
olic
ies
and
pro
gram
mes
...
Mill
enn
ium
Dev
elo
pm
en
t G
oal
7,
Targ
et A
Insu
ffic
ien
t da
ta t
o
asse
ss
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity 83
8.3 Appendix 3
Comparison between proposed planetary boundary areas with how
UNEP chooses to bundle existing Global Environmental Goals, GEGs.13
Proposed planetary boundary areas UNEP bundles of GEGs
Athmospheric aerosol loading Air pollution and air quality
Biodiversity loss Biodiversity
Chemical pollution Chemicals and wastes
Climate change Climate change
Energy
Forests
Global freshwater use Freshwater
Ocean acidification Oceans and seas
Land system change Soil, land use, land degradation and desertification
Environmental governance
Perturbed biochemical flows (N2 & P)
Stratospheric ozone depletion
────────────────────────── 13 UNEP (2012) Compilation of Internationally Agreed Environmental Goals and Objectives, Nairobi, UNEP.
84 Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
8.4 Appendix 4
Six Sustainable Development Goals proposed by researchers in a com-
mentary article in Nature.14
Goal Target
Goal 1: Thriving lives and liveli-
hoods. End poverty and improve
well-being through access to
education, employment and
information, better health and
housing, and reduced inequality
while moving towards sustainable
consumption and production.
This extends many targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on
poverty, health and urban environments and applies them to developed
nations. It should include targets on clean air that build on World Health
Organization guidelines for pollutants such as black carbon6; reductions in
emissions of stratospheric ozone-depleting substances in line with projections
from the Montreal Protocol; critical loads for man-made chemical compounds
and toxic materials; and sustainable practices for extraction, use and recycling
of scarce minerals and metals and other natural resources.
Goal 2: Sustainable food security.
End hunger and achieve long-term
food security – including better
nutrition – through sustainable
systems of production, distribu-
tion and consumption.
The MDG hunger target should be extended and targets added to limit
nitrogen and phosphorus use in agriculture3,7,8. Nutrient-use efficiency
should improve by 20% by 2020; no more than 35 million tonnes of nitro-
gen per year should be extracted from the atmosphere; phosphorus flow to
the oceans should not exceed 10 million tonnes a year; and phosphorus
runoff to lakes and rivers should halve by 2030.
Goal 3: Sustainable water security.
Achieve universal access to clean
water and basic sanitation, and
ensure efficient allocation through
integrated water-resource
management.
This would contribute to MDG health targets, restrict global water runoff to
less than 4,000 cubic kilometres a year and limit volumes withdrawn from
river basins to no more than 50–80% of mean annual flow3,9.
Goal 4: Universal clean energy.
Improve universal, affordable
access to clean energy that
minimizes local pollution and
health impacts and mitigates
global warming.
This contributes to the UN commitment to sustainable energy for all, and
addresses MDG targets on education, gender equity and health. To ensure
at least a 50% probability of staying within 2°C warming10, sustainability
targets should aim for global greenhouse-gas emissions to peak in 2015–20,
drop by 3–5% a year until 2030, and fall by 50–80% by 2050.
Goal 5: Healthy and productive
ecosystems. Sustain biodiversity
and ecosystem services through
better management, valuation,
measurement, conservation and
restoration.
This combines the MDG environmental targets with 2030 projections of the
Aichi Targets adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (see
www.cbd.int/sp/ targets). Extinctions should not exceed ten times the
natural background rate. At least 70% of species in any ecosystem and 70%
of forests should be retained. Aquatic and marine ecosystems should be
managed to safeguard areas crucial for biodiversity, ecosystem services and
fisheries.
Goal 6: Governance for sustaina-
ble societies. Transform govern-
ance and institutions at all levels
to address the other five sustain-
able development goals.
This would build on MDG partnerships and incorporate environmental and
social targets into global trade, investment and finance4. Subsidies on fossil
fuels and policies that support unsustainable agricultural and fisheries practic-
es should be eliminated by 2020; product prices should incorporate social and
environmental impacts. National monitoring, reporting and verification
systems must be established for sustainable-development targets; and open
access to information and decision-making processes should be secured at all
levels.
────────────────────────── 14 Griggs, D., Stafford-Smith, M., Gaffney, O., Rockström, J., Öhman, M.C., Shyamsundar, P., Steffen, W., Glaser, G.
Kanie, N and Noble, I. (2013). Sustainable Development Goals for people and planet. Nature 495, 305–307).
8.5
A
pp
end
ix 5
Sust
ain
able
De
velo
pm
en
t G
oal
s an
d t
arge
ts p
rop
ose
d b
y th
e S
ust
ain
able
De
velo
pm
en
t So
luti
on
s N
etw
ork
15
Go
al
Go
al d
efi
nit
ion
Ta
rge
ts m
igh
t co
ver
Go
al 1
: En
d E
xtre
me
Po
vert
y B
y 2
03
0 ex
trem
e p
ove
rty
in a
ll it
s fo
rms
(as
def
ine
d b
y
the
MD
Gs)
sh
ou
ld b
e el
imin
ate
d e
very
wh
ere
, wit
h
frag
ile s
tate
s re
ceiv
ing
the
spec
ial s
up
po
rt t
hey
nee
d.
Red
uct
ion
to
[ze
ro]
in in
com
es b
elo
w $
1.2
5-p
er-d
ay.
[Su
itab
ly u
pd
ated
an
d e
xpan
ded
Tar
gets
of
MD
Gs
1–7
incl
ud
ed u
nd
er
the
goal
s b
elo
w].
Enh
ance
d s
up
po
rt f
or
hig
hly
vu
lner
able
sta
tes.
Go
al 2
: A
chie
ve D
evel
op
men
t w
ith
in P
lan
etar
y
Bo
un
dar
ies
All
cou
ntr
ies
hav
e a
righ
t to
dev
elo
pm
en
t th
at r
esp
ect
s
pla
net
ary
bo
un
dar
ies
and
th
at h
elp
s to
sta
bili
ze t
he
glo
bal
po
pu
lati
on
by
mid
-ce
ntu
ry.
Each
co
un
try
rea
che
s at
leas
t th
e n
ext
leve
l in
th
e W
orl
d B
ank
cou
ntr
y cl
assi
fica
tio
n.
Co
un
trie
s re
spec
t p
lan
etar
y b
ou
nd
ari
es in
nat
ion
al p
olic
ies
and
inco
rpo
rate
th
em in
to a
n
exp
and
ed m
easu
re o
f G
DP
.
All
hig
h-f
erti
lity
cou
ntr
ies
enco
ura
ge
the
rap
id v
olu
nta
ry r
edu
ctio
n o
f to
tal f
erti
lity
rate
s.
Go
al 3
: A
chie
ve G
end
er E
qu
alit
y, H
um
an R
igh
ts
and
th
e R
ule
of
Law
All
cou
ntr
ies
ensu
re t
he
del
iver
y o
f p
ub
lic s
ervi
ces
and
rule
of
law
irre
spec
tive
of
gen
de
r, e
thn
icit
y, n
atio
nal
or
soci
al o
rigi
n, t
o e
nd
dis
crim
inat
ion
an
d r
edu
ce
ineq
ual
ity.
En
sure
fre
edo
m f
rom
all
form
s o
f vi
ole
nce
,
esp
ecia
lly f
or
wo
men
an
d c
hild
ren
.
Gen
der
eq
ual
ity
in a
cces
s to
pu
blic
ser
vice
s a
nd
par
tici
pat
ion
in t
he
eco
no
my
and
gove
rna
nce
.
Erad
icat
ion
of
dis
crim
inat
ion
ba
sed
on
eth
nic
, nat
ion
al o
r so
cial
ori
gin
, in
clu
din
g in
th
e
del
iver
y o
f p
ub
lic s
ervi
ces
and
th
e ru
le o
f la
w.
Elim
inat
ion
of
all f
orm
s o
f vi
ole
nce
aga
inst
eve
ry s
egm
en
t o
f th
e p
op
ula
tio
n, e
spec
ially
wo
men
an
d c
hild
ren
.
Go
al 4
: Ach
ieve
Fo
od
Sec
uri
ty a
nd
Rur
al P
rosp
erit
y C
ou
ntr
ies
en
able
th
eir
farm
ers
to a
do
pt
imp
rove
d
farm
ing
pra
ctic
es a
nd
te
chn
olo
gies
to
rai
se f
oo
d y
ield
s
wit
h r
edu
ced
en
viro
nm
enta
l im
pac
ts.
Foo
d lo
sses
will
be
low
an
d a
ll p
eop
le w
ill e
njo
y h
ealt
hy
die
ts. T
he
rura
l sec
tor
will
pro
vid
e d
ece
nt
job
s an
d u
niv
ersa
l
acce
ss t
o b
asic
infr
astr
uct
ure
(w
ater
, sa
nit
atio
n,
tran
spo
rt, e
ne
rgy,
an
d c
on
nec
tivi
ty).
End
hu
ng
er in
clu
din
g st
un
tin
g o
f yo
un
g ch
ildre
n
Sust
ain
able
cro
p a
nd
an
imal
pro
du
ctio
n s
yste
ms
that
ach
ieve
hig
her
yie
lds
wit
h lo
wer
inp
uts
of
wat
er, e
ner
gy, a
nd
so
il n
utr
ien
ts a
nd
low
er p
ost
-har
vest
loss
es, a
nd
a h
alt
to
fore
st a
nd
wet
lan
d c
on
vers
ion
to
agr
icu
ltu
re.
Pro
vid
e u
niv
ersa
l acc
ess
to b
asic
infr
astr
uct
ure
ser
vice
s in
ru
ral a
reas
(w
ater
, san
itat
ion
,
mo
der
n e
ner
gy, t
ran
spo
rt, b
road
ban
d).
Go
al 5
: Em
po
wer
Incl
usi
ve, P
rod
uct
ive
and
Res
ilien
t C
itie
s
All
citi
es b
eco
me
soci
ally
incl
usi
ve, e
con
om
ical
ly
pro
du
ctiv
e, a
nd
res
ilien
t to
clim
ate
chan
ge. T
hey
will
imp
rove
go
vern
an
ce a
nd
po
licym
akin
g to
su
pp
ort
rap
id u
rban
tra
nsf
orm
atio
n.
Ever
y ci
ty m
ain
stre
am c
limat
e ch
ange
, dis
aste
r ri
sk r
edu
ctio
n, a
nd
en
viro
nm
enta
l
sust
ain
abili
ty in
to o
ngo
ing
and
pla
nn
ed in
vest
men
ts.
Ever
y ci
ty e
nsu
re u
niv
ersa
l acc
ess
to
infr
astr
uct
ure
in w
ater
, san
itat
ion
, en
ergy
,
tran
spo
rt, a
nd
was
te m
anag
em
ent.
Ever
y ci
ty r
edu
ce u
rban
air
an
d w
ater
po
lluti
on
to
saf
e le
vels
.
Go
al 6
: A
chie
ve H
ealt
h a
nd
Wel
lbei
ng
at a
ll A
ges
Ever
y co
un
try
en
sure
s u
niv
ersa
l acc
ess
to
pri
mar
y
hea
lth
car
e fo
r co
mm
un
icab
le a
nd
no
n-c
om
mu
nic
able
dis
ease
s, a
nd
pro
mo
tes
hea
lth
y an
d s
ust
ain
able
beh
avio
rs b
y al
l in
div
idu
als.
Rea
ch u
niv
ersa
l acc
ess
to p
rim
ary
hea
lth
care
th
at in
clu
des
rep
rod
uct
ive
hea
lth
ser
vice
s
and
co
ntr
ol o
f co
mm
un
icab
le a
nd
no
n-c
om
mu
nic
able
dis
ease
s.
Red
uce
ch
ild m
ort
alit
y to
no
mo
re t
han
[2
5]
per
1,0
00
an
d m
ater
nal
mo
rtal
ity
to n
o
mo
re t
han
[3
0]
per
10
0,0
00
bir
ths.
Co
un
trie
s re
po
rt in
dic
ato
rs o
f su
bje
ctiv
e w
ellb
ein
g an
d s
oci
al c
apit
al.
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
──
1
5 S
DSN
(2
01
3)
An
Act
ion
Age
nd
a fo
r S
ust
ain
able
Dev
elo
pm
ent,
a r
ep
ort
to
th
e U
N S
ecre
tary
Gen
eral
.
Go
al
Go
al d
efi
nit
ion
Ta
rge
ts m
igh
t co
ver
Go
al 7
: En
sure
Eff
ect
ive
Lear
nin
g fo
r Ev
ery
Ch
ild
for
Life
an
d L
ivel
iho
od
Each
co
un
try
ensu
res
that
all
child
ren
rec
eive
ear
ly
child
ho
od
ed
uca
tio
n a
nd
car
e, a
nd
pri
mar
y an
d
seco
nd
ary
edu
cati
on
, to
pre
par
e th
em f
or
the
cha
l-
len
ges
of
mo
der
n li
fe a
nd
fo
r d
ecen
t liv
elih
oo
ds.
All
girl
s an
d b
oys
rec
eive
qu
alit
y p
rim
ary
and
sec
on
dar
y ed
uca
tio
n, a
chie
vin
g st
age
-
app
rop
riat
e le
arn
ing
leve
ls.
All
girl
s an
d b
oys
hav
e ac
cess
to
ear
ly c
hild
ho
od
car
e an
d e
du
cati
on
pro
gra
ms.
You
th u
nem
plo
yme
nt
is b
elo
w [
10
] p
erce
nt.
Go
al 8
: C
urb
Hu
man
-In
du
ced
Clim
ate
Ch
ang
e
Each
co
un
try
red
uce
s gr
een
ho
use
gas
em
issi
on
s fr
om
ene
rgy,
agr
icu
ltu
re, a
nd
lan
d-u
se c
han
ge t
o b
e co
n-
sist
ent
wit
h g
lob
al e
ffo
rts
to c
urb
clim
ate
chan
ge.
Dec
arb
on
ize
the
ener
gy s
yste
m b
y 2
05
0 w
ith
inte
rmed
iate
tar
gets
fo
r 2
02
0 a
nd
20
30
.
Red
uce
no
n-e
ner
gy r
elat
ed e
mis
sio
ns
of
gree
nh
ou
se g
ases
th
rou
gh im
pro
ved
pra
ctic
es
in a
gric
ult
ure
, lan
d u
se, a
nd
in
du
stry
.
The
ado
pti
on
of
mar
ket-
ba
sed
ince
nti
ves
and
co
rre
ctiv
e p
rici
ng
to a
ccel
erat
e th
e tr
ansi
-
tio
n t
o lo
w-c
arb
on
en
ergy
sys
tem
s.
Go
al 9
: Sec
ure
Eco
syst
em S
ervi
ces
and
Bio
dive
rsit
y Ea
ch c
ou
ntr
y su
stai
nab
ly m
anag
es it
s m
arin
e an
d
terr
est
rial
eco
syst
ems
to e
nsu
re t
he
con
tin
uat
ion
of
rob
ust
pla
net
ary
life
sup
po
rt s
yste
ms,
tak
ing
into
acco
un
t o
ngo
ing
clim
ate
chan
ge,
eme
rgin
g d
isea
ses,
inva
sive
sp
ecie
s, h
abit
at f
ragm
enta
tio
n, a
nd
oth
er
dri
vers
of
glo
bal
ch
ange
.
Po
llute
rs p
ay t
he
full
soci
al c
ost
s o
f th
eir
po
lluti
on
an
d e
nvi
ron
men
tal r
eso
urc
e u
se.
All
cou
ntr
ies
ado
pt
po
licie
s fo
r al
l eco
syst
ems,
incl
ud
ing
oce
ans,
co
asta
l, fo
rest
s, w
et-
lan
ds,
an
d o
ther
s, t
o a
dd
ress
clim
ate
chan
ge,
em
ergi
ng
dis
ease
s, in
vasi
ve s
pec
ies,
ove
r-
extr
acti
on
, an
d o
ther
dri
vers
of
hab
itat
an
d b
iod
iver
sity
loss
.
All
cou
ntr
ies
inve
nto
ry t
he
bio
div
ersi
ty, e
cosy
ste
m f
un
ctio
ns,
an
d e
cosy
ste
m s
ervi
ces
at
bio
me
and
nat
ion
al s
cale
s.
Go
al 1
0:
Tran
sfo
rm G
ove
rna
nce
fo
r Su
stai
nab
le
Dev
elo
pm
en
t
All
pu
blic
an
d p
riva
te s
take
ho
lder
s co
mm
it t
o t
ran
s-
par
ency
, acc
ou
nta
bili
ty a
nd
go
od
go
vern
ance
. T
he
inte
rnat
ion
al r
ule
s go
vern
ing
inte
rnat
ion
al f
inan
ce,
trad
e, a
nd
inte
llect
ual
pro
pe
rty
are
refo
rme
d a
nd
mad
e co
nsi
sten
t w
ith
su
stai
nab
le d
evel
op
men
t. T
he
fin
anci
ng
of
po
vert
y re
du
ctio
n a
nd
glo
bal
pu
blic
go
od
s
incl
ud
ing
clim
ate
chan
ge a
re s
tren
gth
en
ed
an
d b
ased
on
a g
rad
uat
ed s
et o
f gl
ob
al r
igh
ts a
nd
res
po
nsi
bili
ties
.
Ever
y st
akeh
old
er c
om
mit
s to
ach
ievi
ng
the
SDG
s, w
ith
go
vern
men
ts (
nat
ion
al a
nd
loca
l)
and
maj
or
com
pan
ies
rep
ort
ing
on
per
form
ance
.
Ad
equ
ate
pu
blic
fin
ance
fo
r p
ove
rty
erad
icat
ion
, in
clu
din
g th
e go
al o
f 0
.7%
of
targ
ets
for
all h
igh
-in
com
e co
un
trie
s, a
nd
glo
bal
pu
blic
go
od
s:
Inte
rnat
ion
al t
rad
e, in
vest
men
t, t
ax, i
nte
llect
ual
pro
per
ty, a
nd
dis
clo
sure
ru
les
refo
rmed
to b
e co
nsi
sten
t w
ith
th
e Su
stai
nab
le D
eve
lop
me
nt
Go
als.
8.6
A
pp
end
ix 6
Tab
le A
. Pro
po
sed
SD
Gs
div
ide
d in
to f
ou
r ty
pe
s b
ase
d o
n t
he
ir li
nka
ges
to b
iod
ive
rsit
y*
Typ
e
Gri
ggs
et
al.
(20
13
) B
olt
z e
t al
. (2
01
3)
Co
lom
bia
/Gu
ate
mal
a p
rop
osa
l (D
ESA
, 20
12)
Typ
e 1
: G
oa
ls t
hat
rel
ate
to c
on
stit
uen
ts o
r
det
erm
ina
nts
of
hu
ma
n w
ell-
bei
ng
tha
t
dir
ectl
y d
epen
d o
n, a
nd
imp
act
, bio
div
ersi
ty
an
d e
cosy
stem
s
Go
al 2
: Su
stai
nab
le f
ood
sec
uri
ty. E
nd
hu
nger
an
d
ach
ieve
long
-ter
m f
oo
d se
curi
ty –
incl
udi
ng
bet
ter
nu
trit
ion
– th
roug
h su
stai
nab
le s
yste
ms
of
pro
du
ctio
n, d
istr
ibu
tio
n an
d co
nsu
mpt
ion
.
Go
al 3
: Su
stai
nab
le w
ater
sec
uri
ty. A
chei
ve
un
iver
sal a
cces
s to
cle
an w
ater
and
bas
ic s
anit
a-
tion
, an
d en
sure
eff
icie
nt
allo
cati
on
thro
ugh
inte
grat
ed w
ater
res
ou
rce
man
agem
ent.
Go
al 4
: Uni
vers
al c
lean
ene
rgy.
Impr
ove
un
iver
sal,
affo
rdab
le a
cces
s to
cle
an e
ner
gy t
hat
min
imiz
es
loca
l pol
luti
on
and
hea
lth
imp
acts
an
d m
itig
ates
glob
al w
arm
ing.
Foo
d s
ecu
rity
fo
r a
ll: p
hys
ical
an
d e
con
om
ic
acce
ss t
o s
uff
icie
nt,
nu
trit
ion
ally
ad
equ
ate
and
safe
fo
od
an
d it
s ef
fect
ive
uti
liza
tio
n;
fou
nd
ed
up
on
eco
logi
cally
su
stai
nab
le a
gric
ult
ure
,
fish
erie
s an
d r
ura
l dev
elo
pm
ent
po
licie
s an
d
pra
ctic
es.
Wa
ter
secu
rity
fo
r a
ll: a
cces
s to
saf
e d
rin
kin
g
wat
er a
nd
san
itat
ion
, sec
ure
en
viro
nm
en
tal
flo
ws
to s
ust
ain
hu
man
an
d e
cosy
stem
hea
lth
,
and
pro
tect
ion
aga
inst
wat
er-r
elat
ed h
aza
rds.
Hea
lth
fo
r al
l: h
ealt
h e
qu
ity,
hea
lth
se
curi
ty a
nd
hea
lth
y en
viro
nm
ents
, en
suri
ng
acce
ss t
o
trea
tmen
t fo
r in
fect
iou
s d
isea
se a
nd
fam
ily
hea
lth
, mit
igat
ing
the
emer
gen
ce a
nd
inci
de
nce
of
dis
ease
.
Sust
ain
ab
le e
ner
gy
for
all:
un
iver
sal a
cces
s to
ene
rgy,
wit
h in
crea
sed
sh
are
of
ren
ewab
le
ene
rgy
sou
rce
s an
d im
pro
ved
en
ergy
eff
icie
ncy
.
Ad
van
cin
g F
oo
d S
ecu
rity
Ener
gy,
incl
ud
ing
fro
m r
enew
ab
le s
ou
rces
Typ
e 2
: G
oa
ls t
hat
rel
ate
to c
on
stit
uen
ts o
r
det
erm
ina
nts
of
hu
ma
n w
ell-
bei
ng
tha
t d
o n
ot
dir
ectl
y d
epen
d o
n, o
r im
pa
ct, b
iodi
vers
ity
an
d
eco
syst
ems
O
pp
ort
un
itie
s fo
r a
ll: r
edu
ced
po
vert
y an
d
ineq
ual
ity,
acc
ess
to
so
cial
ser
vice
s an
d s
ecu
rity
.
Pea
ce a
nd
just
ice
for
all:
per
son
al s
ecu
rity
,
po
litic
al v
oic
e, t
ran
spar
ent
and
eq
uit
able
gove
rna
nce
an
d a
cce
ss t
o f
air
just
ice.
Pro
mo
tin
g S
ust
ain
ab
le H
um
an
Set
tlem
ent
Dev
elo
pm
ent
Typ
e 3
: G
oa
ls t
hat
rel
ate
to t
he
mai
nte
na
nce
of
the
pla
net
’s li
fe s
up
po
rt s
yste
m
Go
al 5
: H
ealt
hy
an
d p
rod
uct
ive
eco
syst
ems.
Sust
ain
bio
div
ersi
ty a
nd
eco
syst
em s
ervi
ces
thro
ug
h b
ette
r m
an
ag
emen
t, v
alu
atio
n, m
eas-
ure
,em
t, c
on
serv
ati
on
an
d r
esto
rati
on
.
Eart
h s
yste
m s
ecu
rity
: p
olic
ies
and
ince
nti
ves
for
an e
ffec
tive
glo
bal
pro
gram
me
of
eco
syst
em
con
serv
atio
n, r
esto
rati
on
an
d lo
w e
mis
sio
ns
to
avo
id h
arm
ful o
r ir
reve
rsib
le d
amag
e to
eco
sys-
tem
s.
Bio
div
ersi
ty a
nd
Fore
sts
Oce
an
s
Wa
ter
Res
ou
rces
Typ
e 4
: O
vera
rch
ing
go
als
th
at e
nco
mp
ass
mu
ltip
le d
imen
sio
ns
of
sust
ain
ab
le d
evel
op
-
men
t.
Go
al 1
: Th
rivi
ng
lives
an
d liv
elih
oo
ds.
En
d
po
vers
ty a
nd
imp
rove
wel
l-b
ein
g th
rou
gh a
cce
ss
to e
du
cati
on
, em
plo
yme
nt
and
info
rmat
ion
,
bet
ter
hea
lth
an
d h
ou
sin
g, a
nd
red
uce
d in
equ
al-
ity
wh
ile m
ovi
ng
tow
ard
s su
stai
nab
le c
on
sum
p-
tio
n a
nd
pro
du
ctio
n.
Go
al 6
: G
ove
rna
nce
fo
r su
sta
ina
ble
soci
etie
s.
Tran
sfo
rm g
ove
rnan
ce a
nd
inst
itu
tio
ns
at a
ll
leve
ls t
o a
dd
ress
th
e o
ther
fiv
e su
stai
nab
le
dev
elo
pm
ent
goal
s.
C
om
ba
tin
g P
ove
rty
Ch
an
gin
g C
on
sum
pti
on
Pa
tter
ns
* B
iod
iver
sity
an
d S
ust
ain
ab
le D
evel
op
men
t –
the
rele
van
ce o
f th
e St
rate
gic
Pla
n f
or
Bio
div
ersi
ty 2
01
1-2
02
0 a
nd
th
e A
ich
i Bio
div
ersi
ty T
arge
ts f
or
the
po
st-2
01
5 d
evel
op
me
nt
agen
da
an
d t
he
Sust
ain
ab
le D
evel
op
me
nt
Go
als.
Key
Mes
sage
s, T
he
sev
enth
Tro
nd
hei
m C
on
fere
nce
on
Bio
div
ersi
ty, T
ron
dh
eim
, No
rway
, 27
–31
May
20
13
Do
cum
en
t TC
7/I
NF2
.
Tab
le B
. Ho
w t
he
Str
ate
gic
Pla
n f
or
Bio
div
ers
ity
20
11
–20
20
an
d t
he
Aic
hi t
arge
ts c
an b
e in
tegr
ate
d in
to d
iffe
ren
t ty
pe
s o
f p
rop
ose
d S
DG
s*
Typ
e
Mo
dal
ity
for
inte
grat
ion
of
bio
div
ers
ity
Re
leva
nt
targ
ets
an
d o
the
r e
lem
en
ts o
f th
e
Stra
tegi
c P
lan
Exam
ple
In
dic
ato
rs
Typ
e 1
: G
oa
ls t
hat
rel
ate
to c
on
stit
uen
ts o
r
det
erm
ina
nts
of
hu
ma
n w
ell-
bei
ng
tha
t
dir
ectl
y d
epen
d o
n, a
nd
imp
act
, bio
div
ersi
ty
an
d e
cosy
stem
s
Targ
ets
or
ind
icat
ors
rel
ated
to
bio
div
ers
ity
cou
ld b
e in
tegr
ate
d u
nd
er t
his
typ
e o
f go
al
Targ
ets
5, 6
, 7, 8
, 9, 1
3
E.g
for
foo
d:
Div
ersi
ty o
f cr
op
s an
d li
vest
ock
in p
rod
uct
ion
.
Fert
ilize
r u
se e
ffic
ien
cy.
Pes
tici
de
use
.
Wat
er u
se.
Lan
d u
se c
han
ge.
Cat
ch p
er
un
it e
ffo
rt (
fish
erie
s).
Typ
e 2
: G
oa
ls t
hat
rel
ate
to c
on
stit
uen
ts o
f
det
erm
ina
nts
of
hu
ma
n w
ell-
bei
ng
tha
t d
o n
ot
dir
ectl
y d
epen
d o
n, o
r im
pa
ct, b
iodi
vers
ity
an
d
eco
syst
ems
Info
rmat
ion
(b
ut
no
sp
ecif
ic r
efer
ence
in t
he
fram
ewo
rk)
Targ
et 1
, tar
get
18
Typ
e 3
: G
oa
ls t
hat
rel
ate
to t
he
mai
nte
na
nce
of
the
pla
net
’s li
fe s
up
po
rt s
yste
m
The
Go
al it
self
co
uld
be
a b
iod
iver
sity
go
al
wh
ich
co
uld
be
der
ived
fro
m t
he
Vis
ion
of
the
Stra
tegi
c P
lan
. Th
is c
ou
ld b
e su
pp
ort
ed
by
mo
re
spe
cifi
c ta
rgte
s an
d in
dic
ato
rs.
Vis
ion
sta
tem
ent
Po
ten
tial
ly a
ll ta
rget
s, b
ut
esp
ecia
lly T
5, T
10
,
T11
, T1
2, T
13
, T1
4, T
15
Fore
st a
rea.
Wet
lan
d a
rea.
Pro
tect
ed
are
as.
Ab
un
dan
ce (
LPI;
fish
sto
cks)
Thre
ate
ne
d s
pe
cies
sta
tus.
Typ
e 4
: O
vera
chin
g g
oa
ls t
hat
en
com
pa
ss
mu
ltip
le d
imen
sio
ns
of
sust
ain
ab
le d
evel
op
-
men
t.
Targ
ets
or
ind
icat
ors
rel
ated
to
bio
div
ers
ity
cou
ld b
e in
tegr
ate
d t
o t
his
typ
e o
f go
al.
Vis
ion
sta
tem
ent
Targ
et 4
: R
efer
ence
to
su
stai
nab
le c
on
sum
pti
on
and
pro
du
ctio
n (
Go
al o
r Ta
rget
)
Go
al A
an
d t
arge
ts 1
–4
Bro
ad b
ase
d m
easu
res
of
soci
etal
pro
gres
s –
bey
on
d G
DP
(In
dic
ato
r) in
lin
e w
ith
targ
et 2
* B
iod
iver
sity
an
d S
ust
ain
ab
le D
evel
op
men
t –
the
rele
van
ce o
f th
e St
rate
gic
Pla
n f
or
Bio
div
ersi
ty 2
01
1–2
02
0 a
nd
th
e A
ich
i Bio
div
ersi
ty T
arge
ts f
or
the
po
st-2
01
5 d
evel
op
me
nt
agen
da
an
d t
he
Sust
ain
ab
le D
evel
op
me
nt
Go
als.
Key
Mes
sage
s, T
he
sev
enth
Tro
nd
hei
m C
on
fere
nce
on
Bio
div
ersi
ty, T
ron
dh
eim
, No
rway
, 27
–31
May
20
13
Do
cum
en
t TC
7/I
NF2
.
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity– contribution to the Post-2015 agenda and the development of Sustainable Development Goals
Ved Stranden 18DK-1061 Copenhagern Kwww.norden.org
The development of a Post-2015 agenda and Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, provide a global window of opportunity to address both social needs and environmental challenges together. This discussion paper by the Stockholm Resilience Centre looks into the links between human wellbeing and the biosphere, and describes why and how these links should influence the formulation of the new SDGs. It explores what we can learn from the MDGs, and how existing international agreements can be reflected in the Post-2015 MDG process. The paper also seeks to contribute to the elaboration of targets, including process-oriented targets and scalable indicators suitable for a rapidly changing world.
Global Sustainability & Human Prosperity
TemaN
ord 2014:527
TemaNord 2014:527ISBN 978-92-893-2770-1ISBN 978-92-893-2771-8 (EPUB)ISSN 0908-6692
TN2014527 omslag.indd 1 09-04-2014 12:05:59