A sustainable future requires new thinking: UN environment report

The agency calls the report the most comprehensive assessment of the global environment ever undertaken, with input from 287 multi-disciplinary scientists from 82 countries – stretching to well over 1,000 pages.

“The Global Environment Outlook lays out a simple choice for humanity,” said UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen.

“Continue down the road to a future devastated by climate change, dwindling nature, degraded land and polluted air, or change direction to secure a healthy planet, healthy people and healthy economies.”

Looking beyond GDP

The report makes a case for interconnected ‘whole-of-society’ and ‘whole-of-government’ approaches to transform economy and finance, materials and waste, energy, food and the environment.

Taking this path starts with moving beyond gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of economic wellbeing and instead using inclusive indicators that also track the health of human and natural capital.

It continues with a transition to circular economy models; a rapid decarbonisation of the energy system; a shift towards sustainable diets, reduced waste and improved agricultural practices; and expanding protected areas and restoring degraded ecosystems – all backed by behavioural, social and cultural shifts that include Indigenous and local knowledge.

Two pathways to change

The report lays out a social and a technological pathway to transformation.

1. Behaviour-focused transformation pathway: lifestyle, behavioural and value changes. Social awareness of the environmental crises drives a shift in worldview.
2. Technology-focused transformation pathway: innovation and technological solutions. An urbanized world with significant global trade and technological spill-over.

Why it matters

According to UNEP:

• The state of the environment will dramatically worsen if the world continues to power economies under a business-as-usual pathway.
• Without action, global mean temperature rise is likely to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in the early 2030s, exceed 2.0°C by the 2040s and keep climbing.
• Climate change would cut 4 per cent off annual global GDP by 2050 and 20 per cent by the end of the century.
• If made, the changes have the potential to avoid nine million pollution-related premature deaths, lift 200 million people out of undernourishment, and move 150 million people out of extreme poverty by 2050.

The agency called on countries to follow the whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches laid out in the report to achieve a sustainable future.

“This sounds like, and indeed is, a massive undertaking. But there is no technical reason why it cannot be done,” Ms. Andersen said.