Living well within planetary boundaries

If we do not want our lives to be disrupted by one natural disaster after another, we not only need to move away from fossil fuels. Also the use of raw materials and energy must be drastically reduced in the coming few years. Backed by recent scientific findings, we advocate for a 65% EU-wide reduction of natural resource use by 2050, as compared to 2020 levels.  This brings us back to the share of resource use which everyone on Earth can consume without compromising global life conditions or depriving others from their own fair share.  Limiting this use automatically reduces our country’s energy consumption as well as its ecological impact inside and outside of its borders. This is how we will stop our societies from further trespassing planetary boundaries and bring them back within a safe and just operational space. Next to climate change, the 9 planetary boundaries include biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, land use changes, nitrogen and phosphorus loads, freshwater use, atmospheric aerosol levels, chemical pollution and ozone depletion.



Our society and our economy are embedded in the natural environment. The Earth is providing all the raw materials and natural resources we need to run our societies: metals and minerals to manufacture the products we use, land to grow the food we eat and water to irrigate it, fossil fuels to power up all these activities, etc. In the process, wastes and pollutants are produced. Mining effluents and agricultural run-off are discharged into water bodies, often polluting them; emissions are released into the air contributing to global warming and the deterioration of human health; the degradation and destruction of natural habitats causes the loss of biodiversity and mass extinction of species.

Scientists monitoring the damaging effects of human activities to the global ecosystem have found that six of the nine planetary boundaries have already been exceeded. The planetary boundaries are limits that are estimated necessary in order to avoid Earth system changes that cause ‘significant harm’: “widespread severe existential or irreversible negative impacts on countries, communities and individuals, such as loss of lives, livelihoods or incomes; displacement; loss of food, water or nutritional security; and chronic disease, injury or malnutrition”.

To stay within these planetary boundaries and to avoid irreversible damage to the planet, we thus need to reduce the rates at which we are using natural resources and bringing about pollution. Traditionally, we have tried to do this by fixing the problems with new technologies. These techno-fixes either aim to use natural resources more efficiently (doing “more with less”) or promise to clean up the pollution, such as carbon capture technologies that suck out CO2 from the atmosphere.

All these endeavors help in our collective effort to keep the planet safe and habitable for all. However, they are not enough. For one, efficiency gains in a process do not necessarily lead to a reduction in the total use of this resource, but redirect the ‘saved’ resource to different types of use. Another frequently cited argument is that economies get ‘cleaner’ as they grow because they use less materials and produce less harmful emissions (that is they ‘de-materialize’ and ‘decarbonize’). This argument is known as the decoupling of emissions and resource use from economic growth, which can appear in a ‘relative’ and an ‘absolute’ sense. We speak of absolute decoupling when the total amount of resource use in a region decreases, irrespective of the growth rate of that economy. Relative decoupling describes a decrease in the amount of resources used per unit GDP in a specific region. This means that relative decoupling can be observed even when the resource use of a region increases, given that the economy grows at an even faster rate. Relative decoupling was observed in many areas in the developed world through the 20th century. Instances of absolute decoupling, on the other hand, are rare. Moreover, studies have pointed out that decoupling rates are too slow to achieve the rapid absolute reductions in resource use and emissions we need to stay within the safe planetary boundaries.

Most global and regional sustainability problems are a direct or indirect consequence of the use of materials and the corresponding wastes and emissions. Material production is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and responsible for more than 90% of biodiversity loss and water stress. In addition, material use has been growing constantly at unsustainable rates, and will probably continue to do so in the years to come. Reducing the material throughput of our economy, in other words our material footprint, can help us avoid irreversible damage to the planet, and do that while providing a good life for all. Scientists have estimated that a decent living standard can be achieved with a total annual material use of 5-6 tons per person. This amount is enough to provide us with the necessary infrastructure and services we need to lead a good life, including shelter, nutrition, clothing, mobility, communication, and services such as education and healthcare. Currently in the EU (and in Belgium), we use resources at a rate of ~14 tons of material per person per year, using almost three times  our fair share of resources. A reduction of 65% in the material use would bring us closer to the 6 tons per person per year, a fair and sufficient amount to lead a good life in Belgium. 

This explainer is not necessarily endorsed by all coalition partners

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