Equity in action: global to local

Two major updates of the planetary boundaries framework were published in the last few months.1 They reinforce what is now commonly seen in public media from local to global levels – that humanity is crossing an increasing number of limits of our single earth system. We are accelerating, rather than decelerating, into the Anthropocene. A key advance is that one of these updates expanded on the justice dimensions of crossing planetary limits. This is a critically important advance as it addresses the fears of many developing countries and disadvantaged groups of what should be done and by whom, in returning within planetary limits.

Three elements of planetary (in)justice have been clear for many years, sharpened by climate change. First and most obviously, some parts of the global (and national) populations are far more vulnerable to climate impacts. This is amplified by two further injustices: the same people have contributed least to the drivers of climate change, and in the process, their fair share of the global carbon budget has been appropriated by others, thereby limiting their available pathways to development.

The new work lays out two further injustices.2 While the study reinforces the identification of 1.5°C as a ‘safe limit’ for warming,3 given the demonstrated vulnerability of millions of people to climate-related hazards already, and of some countries to inevitable drowning by sea level rise from historic emissions, that a ‘just’ limit has already been crossed in the last decade, with unjust exposure of hundreds of millions of people already at 1°C warming.

The second new dimension is that certain of the planetary boundaries are actually expressed at local levels, not global. For example, one aspect of the biosphere boundary, the provisioning of ecosystem services – such as pollination by insects, or protection of soils from erosion by overlying vegetation – operates locally, down to scales of 1 km or less. And because of this localization, they must be active at the scale of individual people, for those people to have just access and be able to benefit from them.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO MITIGATE AND ADDRESS GLOBAL RISK EQUITABLY?

Agenda 2030 of the United Nations and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), requires that no-one be left behind, that the benefits of nature and global society be shared with all people on the planet. Among the key tools for protecting all people from global risks, are platforms that integrate sciences and knowledge relevant to specific risks, to feed these into policy frameworks. The IPCC has been established to do this for climate change, and IPBES for loss of biodiversity and its benefits to people. But these platforms address just some of the SDGs. Other key elements, such as food, water and disease risks do not yet have dedicated integrated platforms, and the existing ones do not necessarily cover sufficient elements of their risks and interactions. What is needed is a global ‘safety net’ that integrates knowledge and addresses risk across all countries, and down to local levels.

Multiple efforts are seeking solutions to this challenge – the Global Challenges Foundation sponsored a concept note4 on a component of such a safety net, focused around ‘earth system risk task forces’ that add functionality and responsivity to existing platforms, to specific challenges (such as polar glacier melt, or coral reef collapse). A Science- Policy Action Network is envisioned by the UN Secretary General’s High Level Advisory Board (HLAB) in its recommendations] for emerging priorities in reforming the United Nations.5 Emerging from increasingly integrated food systems sciences and networks the ‘Montpellier process’6 envisages ‘pooling collective intelligence’ through linking science-policy platforms to better address sustainable development challenges.

A critical challenge is to make these global initiatives relevant to the lives of the most vulnerable people, in highly diverse and contextualized local spaces. The Global Challenges Foundation concept note on reducing earth system risks7 envisions an approach that builds from the bottom up,8 starting with local contexts to identify what solutions might be most relevant to realities on the ground. This bottom-up process both enables and requires engagement and inclusion, assuring the right voices and rights-holders are engaged from the beginning. it incorporates three main elements:

First is to minimize exposure of people to any hazard, and reduce sensitivity. As local areas become heavily populated, people are forced to inhabit marginal locations previously avoided because of their high exposure, such as low-lying flood plains exposed to flooding, or hillsides at risk of landslides. This often is accompanied by poor governance that also allows environmental and building standards to be ignored, amplifying both exposure and sensitivity.

Second, the state of locally-expressed planetary boundaries is determined by local assets. For example, in places where lakes, rivers and wetlands have been modified or their natural processes and recharge interrupted, restoring them also restores the functions and benefits they supply, including those that reduce risk. The state of local natural assets is well within the control of local actors dependent on them, so investing in and supporting actors and governance may be of equal or even greater importance to, investing in direct action on the state of the assets.

Third, and a critical enabler of the first two, is addressing the full dimensions of justice laid out by the latest understanding of planetary boundaries. These include the five dimensions outlined earlier – unequal vulnerability among people, unequal contribution to the problem, unequal consumption of fair shares, unequal access to benefits, and that unjust exposure at local levels can precede the crossing of global limits.

All of these injustices disadvantage poorer communities and poorer countries. But in ways only now being reinforced by science, the local dimension of critical planetary boundaries provides powerful leverage through which justice is a primary solution. For all the ways in which nature provides solutions that support people, i.e. across all the classes of contribution from nature identified by IPBES, ‘nature-based solutions’ are key to meeting these needs. And for the locally-determined benefits the rebuilding of nature to provide these solutions across all local spaces can be a primary mechanism for addressing multiple dimensions of justice.

In thinking about what this means for addressing Anthropocene threats it is important to focus on local assets and ‘nature based solutions’, to build from the ground up:
• equity must drive decision-making as it is the foundational criterion that can identify fair direction of resource flows, and to turn nature- negative activities to nature- and people- positive ones. A simple heuristic is to identify the places and contexts where there is a justice deficit in any of the five dimensions indicated, to redirect resources to redress these;
• focus on natural assets as the foundations of resilience and welfare in all local spaces, down to 1 km2 scales. It is only by building up these natural assets will we be able to secure peoples’ resilience to multiple, and often surprising, future hazards.

These two principles can help countries respond at local scales to the challenges emerging from earth system risks, in an integrated framework and with aligned policies. And far from placing limits on the future development of disadvantaged countries or sectors of society, this perspective strengthens mechanisms for integrating resource flows in economic and policy processes, to raise people above the poverty line and establish a more level international ‘playing field’. Nature-based solutions implemented through a planetary boundaries lens provide a critical perspective to accelerate actions towards true sustainable development.

1. Richardson K, Steffen W, Lucht W, et al. (2023). Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Sci Adv 9:eadh2458.https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458; Rockström J, Gupta J, Qin D, et al. (2023). Safe and just Earth system boundaries. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06083-8

2. Rockström J, Gupta J, Qin D, et al. (2023). Ibid.

3. IPCC (2018) Global warming of 1.5°C An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/download/. Accessed 2 April 2020

4. https://globalchallenges.org/updates/connective-tissue-to-tackle-the-gl…

5. https://highleveladvisoryboard.org/

6. Initiated by the University of Montpellier and One-CG institutions based at the university, forthcoming event in March 2024.

7. https://globalchallenges.org/updates/connective-tissue-to-tackle-the-gl…

8. Obura DO, Katerere Y, Mayet M, et al. (2021). Integrate biodiversity targets from local to global levels. Science 373:746. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abh2234

SOURCE: https://globalchallenges.org//app/uploads/2024/01/Global-catastrophic-r…