The current sustainability paradigm builds on the Brundtland concept of sustainable development, and includes three dimensions: environmental protection, and economic and social development.

Sustainable development

The concept of sustainable development was coined by the Brundtland Commission as
… "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Despite its broad adoption, the concept has an important ethical flaw: it considers the needs of humans only, and shows no concern for the needs of other living species.

The term “development” is not fortunate either. It conveys a subtle but definite signal that sustainable development applies mostly to developing countries. Numbers tell otherwise, at least in the environmental dimension: in terms of non-LULUCF CO2 emissions, for example, two out of three developing countries emit less than the sustainable threshold*; conversely, many developed countries emit more than said threshold.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDG), the major international initiative so far, has flaws of its own. The SDG Agenda recognizes that peace is essential to sustainability but takes no action against war and its precursors, notably arsenals and military spending.

The power of existing thermonuclear weapons is unthinkable: 6,600 mt, or 680 kg of dynamite-equivalent per person on Earth. Military spending amounts to 1.85 trillion dollars per year and is on the rise. By comparison, the estimated implementation cost of the SDG Agenda is 2-3 trillion dollars per year.

Climate change

Under the Kyoto Protocol, most developed countries committed to reduce their emissions by 8% in the period 2008-2012, and by 20% in the period 2013-2020, against the 1990 levels.

Since reductions are set on absolute emissions, and reduction commitments imply de facto emission rights, the Kyoto Protocol grants developed countries per-capita emission rights two times the equitable rights**. In other words, the architecture of the Kyoto Protocol intrinsically allocates to the Parties unequal per-capita emission rights.

The inherent inequity of the Kyoto Protocol contradicts Article 3.1 of the Climate Convention:
“The Parties should protect the climate system … on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities …”

The Kyoto Protocol also contravenes the principle that all human beings are equal in rights, proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The inequity flaw of the Kyoto Protocol was carried over to the Paris Agreement. This is not surprising, as the Agreement uses the same architecture as the Protocol, i.e. reduction commitments are set on absolute emissions of parties.

Brazil and the US provide a good example of how inequitable the NDCs under the Paris Agreement actually are: Brazil pledged to reduce more than the US (37% vs. 28%, reference 2005, target 2025), despite having far lower CO2 emissions (2.0 vs. 22.6 tons/cap-yr, reference 1990, target 2008-2012).

Environmental change

Climate change is widely regarded as the major environmental threat to sustainability. Authoritative as it might seem, this claim is in the end surprising. Climate change is in fact part of a greater threat: environmental change. Environmental change has been happening since the dawn of human civilisation, and has become evident much before climate change.

A good example of environmental change is the loss of forest to human intervention, e.g. agriculture, firewood, timber, settlements, etc. A 2015 study, published in Nature, found that the number of trees worldwide has dropped by 46% since the onset of agriculture 12,000 years ago.

And yet, much of national and international efforts are dedicated to climate change, the lesser threat. Moreover, the UN system has always addressed environmental degradation and climate change separately.

Besides artificial, the divide between climate change and environmental degradation has led to the adoption of sub-optimal or even conflicting solutions. Renewable energy for example mitigates climate change but increases environmental degradation.

MacKay did the math for Britain. If fossil fuels are to be phased out with wind power, then a wind farm the size of Wales must be constructed off-shore. The resulting environmental degradation is not limited to the seabed. The building of turbines and interconnection lines requires an unprecedented amount of cement, copper, steel, aluminium, rare earths, and a myriad of other materials. Mining and refining of metal ores and rare earths are very destructive and polluting.

A simple and obvious way of overcoming the divide is to adopt the concept of environmental change, which considers all consequences of human activity on the environment, climate change and environmental degradation included.

Systemic sustainability

Time has come to transit to systemic sustainability, a new system-wide paradigm that explicitly incorporates ethical concerns, notably equity, justice, peace, nonviolence, and substantive rights. The boundaries of said concerns shall extend, where applicable, beyond humans to include all living beings.

Systemic sustainability requires both a more holistic approach within the conventional sustainability dimensions (i.e. environment, economy and society), and the inclusion of new dimensions.

Climate change and environmental degradation should be approached in an integrated way, under the above proposed concept of environmental change.

Technology seems the best positioned to become a new sustainability dimension, given its ever-increasing influence on the other three.


(*) Assuming that natural sinks uptake carbon at no environmental cost, sustainable carbon emissions are those that do not accumulate in the atmosphere. For non-LULUCF CO2 emissions, the sustainable threshold is 2.64 ton CO2 per capita/year, as of 2016.

(**) For the period 2008-2012, emission rights of developed Kyoto parties were 9.7 tons per capita/year, while equitable emission rights (i.e. total emissions divided by total population of all parties) were 4.8 tons. For 2013-2020, emission rights of developed parties will be 10.7 tons, compared to equitable rights of 4.7 tons.
Note: The above figures correspond to non-LULUCF CO2 emissions..
 

Sources:
Etology Concept Note
Yet black is greener than green
War: The elephant in the sustainability room
COP21: Historic, historical or hysterical?
Mapping tree density at a global scale, T. W. Crowther, Nature, 2015
 

Mhai Selph, March 2019

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