All is not lost, with new global modelling outlining the path back to a healthy planet.
The first-of-its-kind study, out of The Netherlands, found that with bold and coordinated policy choices, across emissions, diets, food waste, and water and nitrogen efficiency, humanity could, by 2050, bring global environmental pressures back to levels seen in 2015.
Utrecht University Professor Detlef Van Vuuren said the shift would move the global population much closer to a future in which people around the world could live well within the Earth’s limits.
“Our results show that it is possible to steer back toward safer limits, but only with decisive, systemic change,” Professor Van Vuuren said.
He said a planetary boundaries framework, first introduced by an international team of scientists in 2009, defined nine critical Earth system processes that maintained the conditions under which human societies have flourished for the past 10,000 years.
“Crossing these boundaries increases the risk of destabilising the Earth system, pushing it into a much less hospitable state.”
Professor Van Vuuren said, to date, scientists estimated that six of these nine boundaries had already been crossed, those related to climate change, biosphere integrity, freshwater availability, land use, nutrient pollution and novel entities.
“This is the first time we’ve used a forward-looking global model to ask how do things develop if we continue like this? (and) can we still avoid transgressing or come back from transgressing these boundaries?” he said.
“The model projected outcomes for eight of the nine planetary boundaries under different future scenarios, including those with strong environmental policy action.”
Professor Van Vuuren said researchers identified five measures that together could significantly reduce environmental transgression:
- Climate mitigation: Achieving the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target through aggressive reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
- Food-consumption change: A widespread shift to diets that are both healthy and good for the environment, as defined by the EAT-Lancet Commission, reaching 80 percent global uptake by 2050.
- Reduction of food waste: Halving global food waste by reducing losses in supply chains and overconsumption.
- Improved water-use efficiency: Reducing water withdrawal for energy, households, and industry by 20 percent, and for irrigation by 30 percent, to ensure environmental sustainability.
- Improved nitrogen-use efficiency: Increasing nutrient-use efficiency to 70–80 percent in agriculture by 2050, up from 50 percent today.
“Combined, these measures could return the pressure on our planet to roughly that of 2015, a marked improvement over business-as-usual projections and a crucial step toward ensuring long-term human wellbeing while staying within the Earth’s limits.”
He said the study also showed it was possible to bring some of the planet’s systems back into the “safe zone” by 2050 if strong policies were put in place.
“However, for other systems, even the most ambitious efforts may not be enough by then, and we would still be exceeding safe limits.”
Professor Van Vuuren said the assumptions behind these scenarios were ambitious.
“Nonetheless, the message is clear. We can still bend the curve,” he said.
“The planet is seriously ill, but it’s certainly not terminal yet.”
Read the full study: Exploring pathways for world development within planetary boundaries.
