Actions for a resilient planet

Some countries are sacrificing long-term interests for short-term gains, blocking progressive steps that aim for a better planet, writes K N Ninan

Mankind faces two stark choices: either pursue the current perilous path of unsustainable economic growth with severe financial and environmental costs, or change course and set a path of progress and prosperity with tremendous economic and ecological benefits. 

The recently released Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7) report of the United Nations Environment Programme, prepared by about 300 scientists from 82 countries, reveals the costs of inaction and the benefits of action in tackling the global environmental crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and land degradation.  

The costs of inaction are immense and worsening. Without accelerated climate mitigation, global mean temperature rise is likely to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in the early 2030s and 2.0°C by the 2040s, reducing annual global GDP by 4% by 2050 and by 20% by the end of the century. This, combined with biodiversity loss, will increase vulnerability to disasters and weather extremes and jeopardise human well-being and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Air pollution is responsible for approximately 6.7 million premature deaths globally each year, resulting in annual health costs of roughly 6.1% of global GDP, or $8.1 trillion in 2019 alone. Plastic pollution and mismanaged waste cause an estimated 0.4-1 million deaths every year. Global land degradation is estimated to cost more than 10% of global GDP due to the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The benefits of action far outweigh the costs of inaction. The GEO7 report indicates that investing in the global transformation of systems from energy to food can help avert 9 million premature deaths by 2050, many attributable to reduced air pollution, and lift 200 million people out of undernourishment and 150 million out of extreme poverty by 2050. Approximately 300 million people will have access to safe water sources by 2050. While this will entail up-front costs, the long-term returns on investment are tremendous. 

Restoring 350 million hectares of degraded lands by 2030 is projected to yield ecosystem benefits valued at over $9 trillion with an investment of $1 trillion, and to remove an additional 13–26 gigatons of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the atmosphere. The health co-benefits of reducing GHGs and air pollutants are estimated at $54 trillion compared with global costs of around $22 trillion.

The annual social and environmental costs of plastic pollution are projected to range from $300 billion to $600 billion. Shifting to a circular economy and relying on the 3R strategy – Reuse, Recycle, and Reorient – and diversification, as well as tackling the legacy of plastic pollution, could reduce plastic pollution by 80%, increase job opportunities, improve livelihoods and encourage innovation. In addition to reducing annual GHG emissions, it could yield $1.3 trillion in direct public and private cost savings over 2021–2040 and avoid $3.3 trillion in environmental and social costs associated with plastic pollution.

The overall macroeconomic annual benefits of transformation are estimated to begin around 2050, increase to approximately $20 trillion per year by 2070, and exceed $100 trillion per year by 2100, accounting for more than 25% of projected global GDP in 2100.

The GEO report calls for transformative changes across the food, energy, environment, materials/waste, and economic and financial systems. This involves shifting to sustainable and healthy diets, eating more plant-based foods, exploiting the potential of cultivated meat and other novel foods, reforming food production and marketing systems, conserving and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity, sustainable land management practices, implementing nature-based solutions, and emphasising circularity in the production and consumption sectors to tackle waste and reduce pressure on mining of critical minerals. Transformation in the energy sector involves diversifying energy sources, increasing the use of renewable energy, phasing out fossil fuels, and improving energy access and security.  

Apart from looking beyond the traditional GDP to gauge well-being by also tracking changes in human and natural capital, the report calls for economic and financial sector reforms by phasing out and repurposing environmentally harmful subsidies, estimated at $1.5 trillion per year from energy, food and mining as well as internalising environmental externalities into the prices of goods and services of about $45 trillion per year from the energy and food systems. This would help deliver an estimated $6-7 trillion per year of investment needed to reach global net zero GHG emissions by 2050 and bridge the estimated gap of $700 billion per year for implementing the Global Biodiversity Framework.  

Despite undergoing a rigorous review process by hundreds of expert reviewers and governments, the summary for policymakers (SPM) of the GEO report based on the latest scientific evidence was not approved at the UNEP’s approval session due to opposition from a few member countries, who objected to references about phasing out of fossil fuels and the shift to a circular economy.

Although SPMs of IPCC, IPBES, and UN scientific reports are not policy-prescriptive or legally enforceable, they provide signals to governments on which policies or actions will yield beneficial economic and environmental outcomes. Regrettably, some countries are sacrificing long-term interests for short-term gains. As some authors rightly argued in a recent article in the Nature Sustainability journal: “Scientific evidence should not be the subject of political negotiation.” The approval process for such reports requires review to prevent similar situations in the future.

(The writer is Lead Author, GEO-7, United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi)