Scientists have warned that the declining wellbeing of the planet is also undermining our efforts to reduce poverty. According to the environmental wellness experts, who published an article in the journal Nature, all countries need to combine their poverty and environmental targets if they want any change of achieving global prosperity.
In their article, Professor David Griggs, director of the Monash Sustainability Institute in Australia, advised that world leaders sex six goals around universal clean energy, an end to water and food shortages, thriving lives and livelihoods, and healthy and productive ecosystems. Poverty alleviation targets were enshrined in the millennium development goals (MDG) that were agreed in 2000 but run out in 2015, and according to Griggs, countries can no longer simply pursue these targets.
With his colleagues, Griggs wrote, ‘Humans are transforming the planet in ways that could undermine any development gains. Mounting research shows that the stable functioning of Earth systems – including the atmosphere, oceans, forests, waterways, biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles – is a prerequisite for a thriving global society.’ The authors argued that the old goals need to be combined with science-based global environmental targets to create new ‘sustainable development goals’ (SDGs).
‘Pursuing a post-2015 agenda [which is] focused only on poverty alleviation could undermine the agenda’s purpose,’ the authors wrote. ‘Growing evidence and real-world changes convincingly show that humanity is driving global environmental change and has pushed us into a new geological epoch. Further human pressure risks causing widespread, abrupt and possibly irreversible changes to basic Earth-system processes. Water shortages, extreme weather, deteriorating conditions for food production, ecosystem loss, ocean acidification and sea-level rise are real dangers that could threaten development and trigger humanitarian crises across the globe.’
Sustainable development is presently defined as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” However, the scientists proposed a new definition; “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.”
Yet, as they noted in their article, ‘None of this is possible without changes to the economic playing field. National policies should, like carbon pricing, place a value on natural capital and a cost on unsustainable actions. International governance of the global commons should be strengthened, for example through binding agreements on climate change, by halting the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services and by addressing other sustainability concerns.’
They added, ‘A small number of goals is essential for focus; others could be added but should build on the core six. But the first step is for policymakers to embrace a unified environmental and social framework for the SDGs, so that today’s advances in development are not lost as our planet ceases to function for the benefit of a global population.’
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