Neither hard nor fast: a smarter way to achieve sustainability goals

In order for society to thrive within planetary boundaries, a profound and non-conventional economic transformation is required, suggests a new report by the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Norwegian Business School in Oslo. The study updates the classic “Limits to Growth”, which predicted economic destabilisation due to environmental degradation in the 21st century.

The new report explores how four different scenarios can help to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. A model based on economic and social data from the last 40 years was used to extrapolate possible development trajectories considering different dynamics of the input variables. The scenarios ranged from staying with the current policies of slow growth and partial delivery of the goals to shifting towards fast growth, trying harder on every goals or exploring the potential of smart policy mix.

The authors found that 11 out of 17 goals can be achieved without changes in conventional growth policies; however, this would make it “virtually impossible to reduce the speed of global warming, to stop overfishing in the oceans or to stop land degradation, let alone to halt biodiversity loss”. Meanwhile, the two other scenarios would lead to increased inequalities, higher ecological footprints and higher risks of trespassing planetary boundaries.

Only the fourth scenario, suggesting differentiated development across the globe, made it possible to achieve long-term success. The “Smarter Scenario” explores an integrated mix of five policies that can most effectively support the goals. And though there is no silver bullet, it is the combined effect of different leverage points that researchers relied on.  

The policies include exponential renewable energy implementation and the halving of emissions every decade after 2020, which is both realistic and economically feasible according to the team. Equally important is fast transition to a sustainable food system that can feed 10 billion people by 2050 and intensify by 1% every year. Researchers also emphasize the importance of learning from economic policies of countries like South Korea, Ethiopia and Costa Rica on combining sustained economic development with meeting environmental objectives.

Next, the reduction of inequality through fairer taxation should allow the richest 10% to receive no more than 40% of income. This will be “the hardest nut to crack”, according to David Collste from the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Last but not least comes the stabilization of populations through the promotion of education, gender equality, health, and family planning.

The most interesting suggestion of the report is that “the costs of implementing the five actions would result in a global GDP in 2051 at the same level as global GDP would have been 2050. This equals postponing economic gain for 12 month”. Life on Earth, the researchers say, is worth it.