Stockholm+50:
Unlockinga Better Future

An independent scientific reportfor the UN international meeting,‘Stockholm+50: a healthy planet
for the prosperity of all – ourresponsibility, our opportunity’

SEI & CEEW (2022). Stockholm+50: Unlocking
a Better Future. Stockholm Environment Institute.
DOI: 10.51414/sei2022.011
This publication may be reproduced in whole or in partand in any form for educational or non-profit purposes,
without special permission from the copyright holder(s)provided acknowledgement of the source is made. No
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Copyright © May 2022 by Stockholm Environment InstituteContents
About this report	

2

Acknowledgements	

3

Contributors	

4

Preface 	6Foreword 	

7

Key messages 	8

Summary for policymakers	

10

Recommendations for unlocking a better future	

18

1

A legacy of change	24

2

A watershed moment, then and now	

28

2.1

Taking stock of the past 50 years	

33

2.2 The world we live in	

35

2.3 Future generations	

49

3

50

The next 50 years: from urgency to agency	

3.1 Visions of a better future	

52

3.2 Growing momentum for change	54

3.3 Accelerating the pace of change	

58

4

64

Keys to unlock a better future	

4.1 Redefine the relationship between humans and nature	70

4.2 Ensure prosperity that lasts for all 	86

4.3 Invest in a better future 	

107

5

Improving conditions for change	

120

5.1

Policy coherence: ensure stronger and more consistent incentives for action

125

5.2 Solidarity: foster renewed multilateralism	

129

5.3 Accountability: ensure a culture of accountable promises 	

136

6Accelerating change	

142

References	

144

Appendix	160

About this report
Scientific research offers evidence and guidance on how to progress on
critical challenges, build better societies and protect our planet. This report
was written to provide a scientific basis for the UN international meeting‘Stockholm+50: a healthy planet for the prosperity of all – our responsibility,
our opportunity’, held in Stockholm on 2–3 June 2022. It is intended tostimulate an informed debate on why change towards a sustainable future
is not happening at pace with the challenges humans and the planet face,and guide leaders to actions they can take now, informed by relevant science.
This report is a collaboration between Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). During the past
year, researchers at SEI, CEEW and collaborating institutions have synthesised
recent scientific evidence and ideas to prepare recommendations for action,
guided by an advisory panel consisting of 27 experts in the field of sustainable
development science and policy.
This report has been independently prepared by SEI and CEEW, with funding
from the Swedish Ministry of the Environment. We note that our discussion
is carried out within explicitly normative frameworks, for example asexpressed in international law, UN documents, UN metrics such as the Human
Development Index (HDI), and other widely used metrics such as Transparency
International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
An associated report, Charting a Youth Vision for a Just and Sustainable Future,presents the key actions for reaching a sustainable future, as articulated byyoung people themselves.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Recommended citation
SEI & CEEW (2022). Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future. Stockholm
Environment Institute. DOI: 10.51414/sei2022.011

2

Acknowledgements
This report would not have been possible without the novel ideas and critical,
challenging, and wise guidance from the Advisory Panel. We thank you forso generously sharing your time and insights.
We are further deeply grateful to all contributing researchers who preparedbackground papers and participated in early discussions that helped shape
the content of this report. Your ideas and analysis carried this work forward.

Photo: SasinT Gallery / Moment / GettyImages

Acknowledgements

The reviewers of this report helped significantly to improve the quality
and consistency of the report. Finally, we thank the Swedish government
Stockholm+50 secretariat and the UNEP Stockholm+50 team for sharing
insights and ideas along the way.

3

Contributors
All listed in alphabetical order.
Lead authors
Arunabha Ghosh (CEEW), Eric Kemp-Benedict (SEI), Fiona Lambe (SEI),
Henrik Carlsen (SEI), Nina Weitz (SEI), Prayank Jain (CEEW), Åsa Persson (SEI)
EditorNaomi Lubick (SEI)

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Contributing researchers
Aaron Maltais (SEI), Abhishek Jain (CEEW), Andreas Ekvall (Royal Instituteof Technology, KTH), Anisha Nazareth (SEI US), Arjun Dutt (CEEW),
Carl Dalhammar (Lund University), Cleo Verkuijl (SEI Oxford), David Fornborg(Stockholm University), David Michel (Stockholm International Peace ResearchInstitute, SIPRI), Elena Dawkins (SEI Headquarters), Emily Ghosh (SEI US),
Gagan Sidhu (CEEW), Göran Finnveden (Royal Institute of Technology,
KTH), Hemant Mallya (CEEW), Ingrid Visseren-Hamakers (Radboud
University, Nijmegen), Jeff Sebo (New York University), Jonathan Green(SEI Headquarters), José Vega Araújo (SEI Latin America), Karina Barquet(SEI Headquarters), Lisa Dellmuth (Stockholm University), Mairon Bastos Lima
(SEI Headquarters), Maria José Hötzel (Federal University of Santa Catarina,
Florianópolis), Matteo Giusti (Urban Studio, Högskolan i Gävle), Mattias Lindahl(Linköping University, MISTRA Resource Efficient and Effective Solutions),
Miquel Muñoz Cabré (SEI Latin America), Måns Nilsson (SEI Headquarters),
Nandini Harihar (CEEW), Nitin Desai (The Energy and Resources Institute, TERI),
Olle Olsson (SEI Headquarters), Ploy Achakulwisut (SEI US), Sanjana Chhabra(CEEW), Shalu Agrawal (CEEW), Shuva Raha (CEEW), Simran Kalra (CEEW),
Therese Bennich (SEI)

4

Advisory panel members
Ajay Mathur (Director General, International Solar Alliance), Andrew Norton(Director, International Institute for Environment and Development),
Antonia Gawel (Head, Climate; World Economic Forum), Céline Charveriat(Executive Director, Institute for European Environmental Policy),Charles Mwangi (Research, Education and Outreach Lead, Kenya Space
Agency), Dominic Waughray (Special Advisor to CEO, World BusinessCouncil for Sustainable Development), Elliot Harris (UN Assistant
Secretary‑General for Economic Development, UN Department of Economic
and Social Affairs), Fatima Denton (Director, UN University Institute for Natural
Resources in Africa), George C. Varughese (SEI Associate), Janez Potočnik(Co‑Chair, International Resource Panel), Joanes Atela (Director, Climate
Resilient Economies Programme; African Centre for Technology Studies),
Johan Kuylenstierna (Stockholm University; Chair, Swedish Climate Policy
Council), Johan Rockström (Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research), Julio A. Berdegué (Assistant Director-General and Regional
Representative Latin America and the Caribbean, UN Food and Agriculture
Organization), Margaret Chitiga-Mabugu (Professor, University of Pretoria),
Melissa Leach (Director, Institute of Development Studies), Michael Lazarus

(Senior Scientist and Center Director, SEI US), Nicole Leotaud (Executive
Director, Caribbean Natural Resources Institute, CANARI), Niki Frantzeskaki(Professor, Swinburne University of Technology), Nitin Desai (Chair, TERI),
Oksana Mont (Professor, Lund University), Pushpam Kumar (Chief, Ecosystem
Services Economics Unit, UN Environment Programme), Sébastien Treyer(Executive Director, l’Institut du développement durable et des relations
internationals, IDDRI), Shardul Agrawala (Head of the Environment andEconomic Integration Division, OECD), Ulrika Modéer (Assistant SecretaryGeneral, UN Development Programme), Wang Yi (Vice President, Chinese
Academy of Sciences Institutes of Science and Development) andYasuo Takahashi (Executive Director, Institute for Global Environmental
Strategies, IGES)
Reviewers
We would like to thank Éliane Ubalijoro (Future Earth), Michael Lazarus (SEI),
Miriam Lang (Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar), Nicole Leotaud (CANARI),
Yasuo Takahasi (IGES), and Victor Galaz (Stockholm Resilience Centre,
Stockholm University) for reviewing parts or the whole of an earlier versionof this report, and the anonymous reviewers from SEI and the scientificcommunity of specialists in the many fields that touch on the issues discussed
in this report.
Project Leaders
Nina Weitz (SEI), Prayank Jain (CEEW)
Communications and media teamBrenda Ochola (SEI), Jenny Wickman (SEI), Mayank Munjal (CEEW),
Molly Burd (SEI), Riddhima Sethi (CEEW)
Layout and graphical content
designbysoapbox.com
Background papers layout and graphic design
Hayley Alter (Graphic Design), Mia Shu (SEI), Richard Clay (SEI consultant)Funders
This report has been independently produced with funding provided by
the Swedish Ministry of the Environment. It has also received funding fromthe Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) core
support to SEI, and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental
Research (MISTRA). The content of this report is the responsibility of theauthors and does not necessarily reflect the positions or opinions of thefunding organizations.

Contributors

Report steering committee
Nina Weitz (Research Fellow and Team Leader, SEI), Prayank Jain
(Special Assistant to the CEO, CEEW), Robert Watt (Communications Directorand Head of Strategic Policy Engagement, SEI), Somya Joshi (Head of
Division, SEI), Åsa Persson (Research Director and Deputy Director, SEI)

5

Preface
It is time to act.
In 1972 in Stockholm, the global community heralded a new era of environmental
cooperation on a global scale. Fifty years on from the 1972 Stockholm
Conference, we know more than ever about the challenges of unsustainable
development – but also about the solutions we must implement. In a wide rangeof sectors, we know that these solutions are both technically and economically
viable. But incentives, institutions and behaviours are sticky and resist change.
There is an action gap. The pace of change is still alarmingly slow while
the most vulnerable continue to suffer disproportionately. Time is running out
for safeguarding our living planet, and to meet socio-economic development
needs around the world. Halfway between the adoption of the Sustainable
Development Goals and their target year 2030, the Decade of Action needs
much more momentum.
This report is not just a call for change; it is a manifesto to enable change.
Now and over the longer term, actions can be taken for redefining therelationship between humans and nature; ensuring lasting prosperity forall; and investing in a better future. The report has targeted analysis of thebarriers to change, and how we can unlock progress by improving coherence,accountability, solidarity and a renewed multilateralism. But in order to act,
we must also listen. For the technical solutions to take hold, we must build
a culture of empathy with those who suffer the most but do not find their
voices represented enough. And the solutions for planet and people must
give agency to the voiceless.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The world is facing a deep security crisis, with mounting international tensions.
The pandemic has reversed progress in sustainable development. Moresevere planetary shocks will unfold with growing environmental stress. These
challenges are compounded now by a shifting landscape of global security
and geopolitics, which will worsen human insecurity.

6

It impossible to discern exactly how these effects will play out. Two things canbe said with certainty: The values and principles of the Stockholm Declaration,and the multilateral communities that have emerged around it over the last
50 years, will be more important than ever; and the policies and investments
required to forge resilient and just societies go hand in hand with peace.
Stockholm+50 is an opportunity to move beyond gridlocked international
negotiations. We know what to do, why and how. But for a renewed
multilateralism, we must imagine a different world – and contemplatethe consequences of not acting on time and collectively.

Måns Nilsson
Executive Director,
Stockholm Environment InstituteArunabha GhoshCEO, Council on Energy,
Environment and Water

Foreword
The environmental movement has travelled far since the UN Conference on the Human
Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, but we still face urgent challenges. Climatechange, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste – the triple planetary crisis –are threatening the future of peace, prosperity and equity envisioned in the 2030 Agenda.
The good news is that we know far more now than we did in 1972. Science has unfolded
the scale of the triple planetary crisis, and how it is hitting vulnerable communities thehardest. Science and the environmental movement have delivered an understanding of
the solutions. They have sparked a will to act, which has swept the world.
The Stockholm+50 conference will be a moment to reflect on this journey, which has
led us to understand that we must transform our societies and economies to protect Earthso that it may sustain us. But more importantly the conference will be a moment to find
new ways to deliver on this transformation.
This report, a vital contribution to Stockholm+50, lays out many of the ideas that we
can use to transform our world: recognizing the rights of nature, redefining prosperity
and moving beyond GDP, de-risking finance for clean energy, defining sustainable
lifestyles, carbon pricing and much more.
This report highlights that these shifts require all actors – including governments,
multilateral institutions, private sector entities and individuals. Its emphasis on reforming
the global governance landscape by addressing the issues of trust, solidarity andaccountability resonates strongly in today’s geopolitical landscape. Equally, it tells us
we cannot move forward without reforming the financial system and mustering political
will for bold action for a better future.
It is UNEP’s hope that all who attend Stockholm+50 consider the recommendations inthis report and use this moment to reflect on how they might be implemented as together
we strive for a more sustainable world.
In an already unequal world, Stockholm+50 is a chance to reshape national and global
interactions. It is a chance to deliver equity. It is a chance to amplify a global movement
for a more caring world, one that takes on the concerns of youth and vulnerable people.
It is a chance to reinvigorate multilateralism and turn commitment into action. It is, above
all, a chance for us to move together, in solidarity and collective action, to finally deliveron the principles our forebears laid out in the original Stockholm conference.

Inger Andersen
Secretary-General for the Stockholm+50 international meetingand Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme

Foreword

As we mark a half-century of action since the 1972 Stockholm Conference, we must
prepare to act now for the future, and to lay the groundwork for the kinds of systemicchanges we need for a healthy planet and a better world for all.

7

Key messages
The legacy we leave behind: Fifty years after Stockholm
1972, we live amid entwined crises, both planetary and human.
Humans are causing unprecedented change to our climate
and ecosystems, and those who contributed the least to theplanetary crisis are suffering its worst impacts. The planetarycrisis and the extreme inequality require transformative action
and addressing our economic systems as the core driver ofmany of these problems. The growing inequalities extend to
future generations and the quality of their lives, with accelerating
environmental change and risk of tipping points being breached.
The ‘action gap’ is significant. We do not have a gap in
policies and aspirations, rather in actions. Since 1972, onlyaround one‑tenth of the hundreds of global environment andsustainable development targets agreed by countries have beenachieved or seen significant progress; it is not enough. The
knowledge and the means of solving our problems are known
and available; implementation is missing.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

We are better equipped for change than ever. By harnessing
momentum for change – the growing public support, faster
uptake of clean technology, inclusive and innovative finance,
and the robust scientific evidence on positive co-benefits ofacting now – 2022 can be a new watershed moment for pursuitof our sustainable future on Earth.

8

Bold and science-based decision-making is needed toaccelerate the pace of change. Decision makers at every
level will need to simultaneously compress timescales
for decision‑making in this decade to be transformative,and extend time horizons to avoid lock-in, accommodate
time lags and reduce intergenerational discrimination.
We have keys to unlock a better future. Our synthesisof scientific research and new ideas points to three broad
shifts that require immediate actions now, to redefine ourrelationship with nature, ensure prosperity that lasts for all
and invest in a sustainable future. If these actions are initiatednow, they can seed transformative change.

Our relationship with nature needs redefining, from oneof extraction to one of care. Human-nature connectedness
should be strengthened in our social norms and value
systems, and in how we live our everyday lives, byintegrating nature in our cities; protecting animal welfare
and shifting to more plant‑based diets; increasing naturebased education for children and youth; and recognizing
and drawing on indigenous local knowledge.
It is only possible to ensure prosperity that lasts forall by completely rethinking our way of living, andby creating the enabling infrastructures and inspiring
new supportive social norms. Transformative change
can be unlocked by making sustainable lifestyles theoverwhelmingly preferred choice; scaling businessmodels that focus on services delivered, not on products
made; making supply chains better for both humans
and the environment; aligning national statistics withsustainability goals; and shaping our innovation systemafter sustainability criteria.

The conditions for change must improve. The institutions andgovernance system that solved the challenges of the past may
have contributed to creating the challenges of the present.
There are ample opportunities for leaders to tackle structuralbarriers that hold back effective action, by improving policy
coherence and ensuring strong and consistent incentives
for action; renewing multilateralism by rebuilding solidarity
for the common challenges we face; and by creating a cultureof accountable promises.
If we unlock transformative action now, we won’t needa Stockholm+100.

Key messages

We must invest in a better future, with the strongest
support of our governments. More private capital isavailable today than ever for sustainability investments,
yet funding gaps persist in low- and lower-middle income
countries. To invest in a better future, we must recognize
and enhance governments’ foundational role in innovation;
incentivize private finance to bring innovation to themarket and raise it to the needed scale; and reduce
the risks to sustainability while also raising the costsof unsustainability.

9Summary forpolicymakers

Looking back at the past 50 years, the world has changed in many ways – but
not in the direction called for at the UN Conference on the Human Environment,
held in Stockholm in June 1972.
Today we commemorate that conference at the UN international meeting‘Stockholm+50: a healthy planet for the prosperity of all – our responsibility,
our opportunity’. The context in which the Stockholm+50 international meetingtakes place is alarming: we face intertwined crises of the state of our planet
and extreme inequality among people and societies. The Covid-19 pandemic
continues to slow or reverse progress. And geopolitical shifts highlight ourinterconnectedness and vulnerabilities more than ever.

The future, 50 years ago
At the 1972 gathering in Stockholm, heads of state committed to taking
responsibility for protecting and promoting human and environmental healthand well-being.
Today, we can see that the track record to deliver on the ambitions ofhalf a century ago has been poor. Our assessment of the framework forenvironmental action conceived in 1972 shows that, while knowledge, goals
and agreements have only increased, international supporting measures –financing, technical cooperation and organizations with strong mandates –remain too weak to deliver on the goals and lead to actions in accordancewith our knowledge. So far, only about one-tenth of global environmental
and sustainable development targets have been achieved, and outcomes
and impacts for a healthier planet remain insufficient.

Unsustainable production and consumption patterns put a healthy planetand sustainable development at risk. The use of natural resources has morethan tripled from 1970, and continues to grow. The use of these resources andtheir benefits is unevenly distributed across countries and regions. The poorest
half of the global population owns barely 2% of the total global wealth, while
the richest 10% owns 76% of all wealth. Compared to 1972, overdevelopment
and affluence, rather than underdevelopment and scarcity, are the drivers of
unsustainable resource use. Currently, no country is delivering what its citizens
need without transgressing the biophysical planetary boundaries.
The inequity among people and places in both causing deterioration andsuffering from its impacts is high. The poorest half of the global population
contributed 10% of emissions; the richest 10% of the global population emitted
more than half of the total carbon emissions during 1990–2015. Meanwhile

Summary for policymakers

Humans are causing unprecedented change to the global environment
and are risking major and irreversible changes in our lifetimes. Climate change
has already caused widespread adverse impacts to nature and people, andlimiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach without immediate, rapid
and large-scale reduction of emissions. Biodiversity and ecosystems are
deteriorating worldwide, and goals for conserving and sustainably using naturecannot be met by current trajectories.

11

climate disaster–related death tolls of potentially exposed populations during
2000 – 2017 indicate 16 deaths per million for high-income groups, compared
to 60 per million for low-income groups. The social and economic costs ofinaction are predominantly borne by the poorest andmost vulnerable in society, including Indigenous andlocal communities, particularly in developing countries.

The coming
decade is crucial
for a sustainable
and just future.

High-income countries must drastically reduce
their footprints, especially in light of their cumulative
footprints over time, to avoid closing development
pathways for low-income countries and future
generations. A person born today may live ina ‘4°C world’, several degrees warmer than today, in which 16% of species
would be at risk of extinction, and their exposure to heatwaves during their
lifetimes may be up to seven times that of a person born in 1960.
Today, our modes of consumption, production and finance are leading
to environmental changes that undermine hard-won development gains.
But a ‘low-carbon life’ can and should be a good life – and one that is easily
accessible to all. The coming decade is crucial to redirecting our trajectory
toward a sustainable and just future.

From urgency to agency
The framework for environmental action conceived in 1972 has delivered
political and scientific activity, but the outcomes remain insufficient.
The world has already agreed on a vision for sustainable development andcommon future – Agenda 2030. This vision still needs to come to fruition.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

There is growing momentum for change. Public opinion reflects the senseof urgency and indicates willingness to change lifestyles. Youth worldwide
are both exercising and demanding more agency to fight climate change,
environmental degradation and inequity. Key technological development
and uptake have occurred faster than anticipated, and evidence builds ofthe many wins and co-benefits from taking climate and sustainability action
at a policy level.

12

We need to compress timescales for decision-making and implementation of
key investments and infrastructure, without compromising values of democratic
legitimacy and inclusiveness. Simultaneously, timescales must be extended
in decision-making to avoid intergenerational discrimination and committing
ourselves to unsustainable infrastructure, and to enable bold, long‑term
transformation.
We have the means to act; we need incentives that favour actions overcommitments. We are better equipped than ever to make 2022 a newwatershed moment for pursuit of our sustainable future on Earth. If we unlock
change now to enable delivery on a compelling post-2030 vision, we won’t
need a Stockholm+100.

Keys to unlock a better futureWith Stockholm+50, we must unlock change that is substantial and systemic.
A sustainable world should provide a good quality of life that is broadly sharedand can be maintained indefinitely into the future.
Based on a synthesis of scientific evidence and ideas, we identify concrete
actions under three broad shifts that would take us to a more sustainable
development. If they are initiated now, they can accelerate change, large
and small, for the long term.

Redefine the relationship between humans and nature
The past 50 years – and even the past 5 years – have seen huge losses
and degradation of nature globally. Humans have altered 75% of the planet’s
land surface, impacted 66% of the ocean area, and destroyed (directly or
indirectly) 85% of wetlands. Many societies value nature as an instrument,
something to be used for resources; that perspective has driven the ecologicaldecline of the past half-century and beyond. An instrumental valuation often
underpins policies and economic structures that in turn shape behaviour andsocial norms at the individual level.
Repairing the relationship between people and nature will require redressing
this imbalance, by placing more emphasis on the intrinsic and relational valueof nature. Such a shift would be transformative, requiring deep changes
across societies, economies and communities: how we live in our cities, how
we produce food, how and what we learn, and the knowledge and rights that
inform our choices.
Calls to action• Protect animal welfare by mainstreaming it in sustainable development
governance – Animal welfare matters morally, but many of the ways in which
we currently interact with animals also limit our ability to achieve sustainable
development goals and impact the environment. Stronger protection of animal
welfare will help build human-nature connectedness, and can also directly
or indirectly benefit many other societal goals.
• Expand and invest in nature-based education – Through education policy
and school curricula that connect children with nature, education authorities
and teachers could contribute to a long-term, catalytic effect on repairing our
relationship with nature. Inspiration can be taken from Indigenous communities’
nature-based education.

Summary for policymakers• Integrate nature in cities and urban areas – Local governments can promote
human-nature connectedness through green architecture, infrastructure
and access to nature in the towns and cities where most people live and work,
as a way of both seeding transformative change through shaping values andproviding immediate climate, biodiversity and health benefits.

13• Recognize Indigenous local knowledge and the Rights of Nature – Greater
recognition of indigenous local knowledge can make nature conservation more
effective and support indigenous rights. Assigning legal rights to nature canbe a way of limiting extraction of resources but can also lead to recognitionof nature’s intrinsic values and changed behaviour over time.

Ensure prosperity that lasts for all
The amount of natural resources extracted by humans globally each year
has tripled since 1970. High-income countries have consumed most of theseresources, with carbon dioxide consumption footprints that are more than
13 times the level of low-income countries. Ensuring lasting prosperity for all
and bringing emission and resource footprints within ecological limits requires
a complete rethink of our ways of living, and a shift in social norms and values
that drive human behaviour. It requires redefining prosperity at all levels insociety and economy.
Calls to action• Make a sustainable lifestyle the easy choice – We are now at a point where
efficiency-oriented options and nudging measures for making lifestyles moresustainable are insufficient; systemic and transformative measures are needed.
These should actively create enabling infrastructures, reconfigure systems
and amplify social norms around sufficiency, as well as new global governanceinitiatives to address equity in these transitions. In order to change lifestyles,
governments must consider alternatives ways to price consumption-relatedresource footprints.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future• Purchase function, not product – Material throughput can be substantially lower
if households, businesses, and government agencies switch from purchasing
products to acquiring functions of products. Supportive regulatory frameworks
and changed social norms on ownership and reuse could have a transformative
effect on scaling such business models and reducing material throughput.

14• Make supply chains better for both humans and the environment andensure that integrated supply chains bridge the technology and economic
gap between developed and developing economies. Sustainable patterns
of production should include prospects for new jobs and skills, scope for
additional investment, higher interdependency in co-creating and sharing
prosperity, social safety nets for the vulnerable, and environmental integrity.
• Align national statistics with sustainability goals – It is time to move beyond
GDP as the single metric and adopt indicators that help measure progress
towards the vision of sustainable development, such as indicators on inclusive
wealth and indicators recognizing the caring economy. Global governanceand convergence on alternative metrics are needed to reduce the risk forfirst‑movers.
• Change the selection environment for innovation – The upstream selection
environment for innovation has a cumulative impact on technologicaldevelopment. Common sustainability standards and principles should
be applied to guide innovation, international organizations should work
to harmonize these and publicly funded innovation should adhere to these.

Invest in a better future
To ensure prosperity for all and redefine our relationship with nature, investingin a better future is necessary. Today, we have the paradoxical situation ofa massive amount of capital ready for sustainability investments, yet persistentfunding gaps in low-income countries.
The funding gap for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) globally has been
estimated at USD 2.5 trillion by the OECD, while UNCTAD estimates that thevalue of sustainability-themed investment products in global capital markets
increased by more than 80% from 2019 to 2020. Action is needed not only tomobilize capital for sustainability, but to ensure sufficient levels at lower costs,
supporting allocation to places and sectors in need, and transitioning out of
unsustainable practices and capital goods.
Calls to action• Recognize and enhance public funding of innovation and co-development fortechnology – Mission-driven public investment can contribute to sustainabilityoriented innovation systems. These efforts are promising for both high-income
and low-income countries. To bridge the technology gap between rich andpoor countries we need a new paradigm of ‘co-development of technology’,
particularly in critical areas of clean energy, health, and sustainable agriculture.
This requires jointly designed research and development programmes, poolingof resources, co-owned and shared intellectual property, local adaptation,and equitable voice in the governance of emerging technologies.

• Raise adequate private finance – We need to address scale, regulation,balance and risk for emerging markets to access investments for sustainableinfrastructure. Creating multi-risk, multi-country hedging platforms can lower
the cost of capital and crowd in more private and institutional investment intodeveloping countries and emerging economies.
• Reduce risks to sustainability, enhance risks of unsustainability – One
key to increasing the scale of private finance for a sustainability transition
is to alter the perceived riskiness of investments. This includes both reducing
the perceived risk of sustainable investments and raising the perceived riskof unsustainable investments, for example through allocation mandates

Summary for policymakers• Incentivize active engagement in private finance – Private finance has acritical role in bringing innovation to market, and investors should engage more
actively to ensure sustainable finance becomes the norm. At a global scale,private investors are increasingly interested in monitoring the environmental,social and governance (ESG) performance of their investments, but throughshareholder initiatives or direct engagement with the firms in which they
invest they have much more power to transform sectors or industries.

15

on lending portfolios. Many low-income countries cannot de-risk financially
underserved sectors and technologies. To overcome this barrier, risks canbe pooled across countries and then de-risked through a common fund.

Improving conditions for change
Progress in these action areas are steps on our path to sustainability thatwould activate and accelerate the three shifts we urgently need now andhopefully lead to systemic changes. At the same time, we also need to address
the systems and infrastructures we have inherited, in processes that will
unfold more slowly. The governance context in which we understand thesebarriers has changed since 1972. Our world today has shifted even more
toward multi-level, polycentric governance, where we have a complex setof actors, institutions, and sources of agency.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Decision makers and policymakers, at all levels, should dismantle barriersof political incoherence, weak multilateralism, limited accountability, andunreformed international finance, which prevent our acceleration towards
sustainable and equitable societies.

16

Photo: sellmore / Moment / GettyImages

Calls to action• The structural barriers of policy incoherence, weak multilateralism andlack of accountability must be decisively tackled to enable effective action
on redefining humans’ relationship with nature, ensuring lasting prosperity for
all, and investing in a better future.
• With more actors and stakeholders participating in global governance today,
many more routes are available to taking action. However, conflicts of interestand uneven power relationships must also be recognized.
• Governments and international organizations must make their policy mixes
coherent and consistent towards sustainability goals, in order to increase
incentives for action, by adopting new practices and tools for more
integrated and systemic policymaking.
• The gap in trust and solidarity between countries acts as a barrier to newagreements, to raising ambition and to accelerated national implementation.
Opportunities exist to renew multilateralism, to more effectively tackle
environment and development crises and to rebuild solidarity: developing
multilateral responses to chronic risks, replacing technology transfer
with a new paradigm of ‘co-development of technology’, and setting norms
for the global financial system.
• Countries, companies and citizens have to be held accountable for theiractions and their inaction. We need new imaginative mechanisms fornurturing constructive accountability, which incentivizes and leads tobold action and change, rather than threatens and leads to pre-emptive
action and reduced ambition.

Accelerating change
We hold keys that can unlock opportunities for change. Setting small and large
processes in motion today can allow us to progress on the goals that we havecommitted to in the past 50 years, since the first UN meeting to bring together
humans and the environment.

A point has been reached in history when we must shape ouractions throughout the world with a more prudent care for theirenvironmental consequences. Through ignorance or indifference
we can do massive and irreversible harm to the earthly environment
on which our life and well-being depend. Conversely, through fuller
knowledge and wiser action, we can achieve for ourselves andour posterity a better life in an environment more in keeping withhuman needs and hopes.

Summary for policymakers

For a new watershed moment in 2022, we repeat the same call made in the1972 UN Stockholm Declaration:

17

Recommendations
for unlocking
a better future

Redefine the relationshipbetween humans and nature
Integrate nature in cities and urban areas• Local governments and architects should apply biophilic design principles
in new and retrofitted urban architecture and housing policy, to enablehuman‑nature connectedness as well as provide direct climate, biodiversity,and health benefits.
• Local planners should ‘green’ urban infrastructure such as water treatment,
for example by learning from biomimicry and smallholder practices.
• Access to nature in urban areas should be promoted through empowered
local communities and national accessibility standards and higher economic
valuation of green space.

Expand and invest in nature-based education• Education authorities and Indigenous communities should collaborate
on weaving in Indigenous principles of environmental education into modern
educational systems.
• To build a deep relationship with nature, education authorities and teachers
should not just focus on ecological knowledge but also include practical skills,
learning about local environmental issues and taking ownership, throughhands-on engagement in community projects.
• UN organizations, such as UNESCO and UNEP, should start a global campaign
to promote development of more diverse educational materials, and include
practical skills, drawing more on cases from the Global South.

Recognize Indigenous local knowledge and the Rights of Nature• National policies related to nature conservation should more strongly include

Recommendations for unlocking a better future

Protect animal welfare by mainstreaming it in sustainable
development governance• Governments should elevate the importance of animal welfare forsustainable development, and sustainable development for animal welfare,in international instruments.
• Support policies that benefit humans and non-human animals alike, particularly
policies that use informational, financial and regulatory measures to benefit
animals more and harm them less. Animal welfare impact assessments canplay a valuable role here. Governments could phase down public subsidies foranimal products and harmful agriculture, and increase support for plant‑based
food production, in a way that avoids regressive effects on low-income
households. Governments should require or encourage voluntary action on
disclosure of animal welfare, health and environmental risks by food companies
to investors.
• Researchers, experts and policymakers should expand the interpretation of
the One Health framework to recognize animal health and welfare as an end
in itself, and not just instrumental to human health outcomes.

19the role of traditional and Indigenous knowledge, in line with international
agreements.
• National legislative and judicial bodies should consider whether establishing
Rights of Nature will help protect nature in specific contexts, based oncomprehensive consultation with stakeholders and analysis of what capacities
and resources would be needed for effective enforcement.
• The Human Right to clean, safe and sustainable environment shouldincorporate a Rights of Nature rationale, whereby human responsibility
and interests for the protection of Nature as a legal entity with personhood
are clearly articulated.

Ensure prosperity that lasts for all

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Make a sustainable lifestyle the easy choice• Transformative change requires a long-term vision, but it can be enabledthrough near-term actions: local and national governments should identify
the barriers in infrastructure that prevent individuals from shifting to moresustainable lifestyles and begin to remove them, combined with more effective
and ambitious mixes of policies that edit out unsustainable choices, in orderto accelerate change.
• The use of local policy labs and learn-by-doing experiments for sustainable
lifestyles should be scaled up, where the individual is an active co-creatorand network influencer.
• A regular UN forum on sustainable lifestyles should be established, to enableinternational peer learning and elevate action on SDG12. A collective global
exercise to co-develop pathways for sustainable lifestyles and parametersthat can measure progress should be convened.

20

Purchase function, not product• Businesses should shift to offering functions and services rather than products
as much as possible.
• Government should adapt legal frameworks to remove bias against businessmodels that switch from selling products to functions.
• Governments should help create and expand markets for use- andresult‑oriented product service systems through public procurement.
• Government and businesses should pioneer more neutral language aroundconsumption and reuse, to enable new social norms to develop around thestatus of ownership and new products.

Make supply chains better for both humans and the environment• The UN Global Compact and its members should consider increasing
the level of ambition of the environment-related Ten Principles, to more actively
demote unsustainable options and practices.
• National governments and international organizations should consider morebinding due diligence requirements and greater harmonization, but with aimof bridging not widening the technology divide• Relevant international organizations, supported by member states, business,trade unions and youth organizations, should consider co-developing more
knowledge and best practices for maximizing synergies between green jobs,
decent work and youth employment.

Align national statistics with sustainability goals• Global leaders must collectively recognize the need to redefine prosperity
through alternative indicators, to generate buy-in and not deter ‘first movers’.
• Governments should mainstream the narrative of redefined prosperity withincountries through consultative approaches, including with subnational
government.
• National statistics offices should more widely adopt consumption-based
accounting and life-cycle accounting, and national governments should set
goals and strategies for reducing footprints, with support for low-capacity
institutions from relevant UN bodies.

•

•

•

•

Change the selection environment for innovation
Businesses should adopt voluntary sustainability standards and principles
so that they become market-leading and influence innovation and productdevelopment.
Governments should develop binding standards and classification schemes
when voluntary standards are not aligning with sustainability goals or they
are not sufficiently influential.
International organizations should seek to harmonize standards, with special
concern to entry requirements for low- and middle-income countries, sothat they can access new markets for sustainable products and align theirinnovation systems to ambitious selection environments.
Publicly funded innovation should demand adherence to standards.

Recognize and enhance public funding of innovationand co-development of technology• Increase public research and development funding to missions co-definedwith stakeholders (industry, civil society, local communities affected,
academia) to achieve sustainability goals.
• Target international finance to low- and middle-income countries to develop
and implement green industrial strategies, as well as their co-defined andnationally owned missions and innovation systems, especially countries facedwith a phase-down of fossil fuel production.
• Replace ineffective technology transfer mechanisms with a new paradigmof ‘technology co-development’.

Incentivize active engagement in private finance• Financial actors and investors should engage more in active approaches
to investing to support rapid action on climate change, especially withhigh‑emitting sectors.

Recommendations for unlocking a better future

Invest in a better future21• Governments should provide enabling conditions for viability of sustainable
investment at early stages of commercialization or start-up.
Raise adequate private finance• Multilateral climate finance institutions should substantially enhance grant
finance, to support capitalization of catalytic instruments that help makeavailable domestic credit to sustainable investments in developing countries.
• Governments should coordinate to harmonize financial regulation frameworks(e.g. taxonomies, disclosure standards) in developing countries withinternational frameworks. to remove barriers to mobilising and accessing
finance internationally.

Reduce risks to sustainability and raise the costs of unsustainability• Governments should reduce investor risk by providing a stable Governments
should reduce investor risk by providing a stable policy environment withlong‑term goals set in key areas of sustainability. International agreements
are an effective way of setting shared long-term, binding goals.
• Governments and international financial institutions should consider jointde‑risking initiatives to meet the sustainability investment needs in low-income
countries and emerging markets, where domestic credit to the private sector
is insufficient.
• Educate investors on novel and emerging sustainability technologies
and solutions, to enable accurate assessments of risk.
• Regulators should consider mandates for minimum allocation of lending
portfolios to sustainable assets, in order to enhance the perceived riskof unsustainable investment portfolios.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Improve conditions for change

22

Ensure stronger and more consistent incentives for action• Incoherent policies with a bearing on sustainability goals must be better
mapped, analysed and addressed, by many societal actors, to unlock
effective action.
• National governments and international organizations should only use
integrated and systemic approaches to policymaking. They should use tools
for systematically analysing SDG interlinkages (synergies and trade-offs),
apply wider system boundaries and extended timescales to account for future
generations, and use frameworks for sequencing policy interventions to trigger
positive tipping points.
• National governments and international organizations should set and enforce
higher standards for transparency and public participation in the procedures forpolicymaking, to enable multiple perspectives on the resolution of goal conflicts
and pursuit of synergies. This includes perspectives of future generations.

Foster renewed multilateralism• International organizations, in collaboration with national governments, should
develop new ways of communicating about procedure and performance tobuild trust with citizens, and engage specifically with sceptics.

•

•

•

•

Ensure a culture of accountable promises
Multilateral agreements and processes (UNFCCC, CBD, etc.) should strengthen
systematic tracking of action and progress on multi-stakeholder pledges.
Tracking should be simultaneously conducted by secretariats and byindependent third parties, drawing both on official data submitted throughnational reporting and other data sources.
Develop proxy indicators of progress to measure the pace of transformation,
if and when the target is far in the future and ultimate indicators will take time
to show progress.
Convene a UN Climate Accountability Summit at the UN General Assembly orat COP meetings or other major meetings, start with an accountability forum
to give a dedicated and high-status platform for follow-up and review of
performance to date, before announcement of new pledges and commitments.
Set criteria where high achievers – in terms of demonstrating effective
action or demonstrating high ambition in relation to starting point – are givena platform to inspire and incentivize accelerated action and implementation.
Build a community of practice within (and across) environmental domains
around tracking progress and convene diverse actors who can build theknowledge bank, e.g. national statistics offices, academia, civil society
and philanthropic organizations. Research and philanthropic funders should
invest more in datasets and evaluation methodologies to enable accountability
mechanisms to be effectively used.

Photo: Jordan Siemens / DigitalVision / GettyImages

Recommendations for unlocking a better future• New multilateral initiatives and mechanisms should be developed for dealing
with chronic global risks and especially for protecting the vulnerable who lacksocial safety nets.
• A new paradigm of ‘technology co-development’ should replace ineffective
technology transfer mechanisms; Stockholm+50 should provide a first UN
platform for exploring it.
• Multilateral institutions should use their norm-setting power to makesustainability a customary practice for private finance and international
harmonization efforts of financial regulations, and standards for sustainablefinance should be inclusive of developing countries.
• High-income countries should deliver on climate finance goals as an essential
means of rebuilding trust.

23

1

A legacyof change

Alone in space, alone in its life-supporting systems, poweredby inconceivable energies, mediating them to us through themost delicate adjustments, wayward, unlikely, unpredictable, but
nourishing, enlivening, and enriching in the largest degree – is thisnot a precious home for all of us earthlings? Is it not worth our
love? Does it not deserve all the inventiveness and courage andgenerosity of which we are capable to preserve it from degradationand destruction and, by doing so, to secure our own survival?
– Ward & Dubos, 1972, p. 220

With intellectual curiosity and an emotional call, a 152-member committee
presented their Only One Earth report to the 1972 Stockholm UN Conference
on the Human Environment. In this spirit, we seek to present up-to-datescientific evidence and compelling, actionable ideas to the UN international
meeting, ‘Stockholm+50: a healthy planet for the prosperity of all – ourresponsibility, our opportunity’.
Fifty years ago, the UN Conference on the Human Environment called formember states to accept responsibility for the stewardship of Earth and for
defining what should be done to keep our planet suitable for human life –
immediately and for future generations (UN, 1973). This watershed moment
linked economic growth, environmental degradation and human well-being inall parts of the world (UN, 1973). Since then, the world has changed in many
ways – but not in a direction called for at the conference.
In June 2022, member states and stakeholders will gather again in Stockholm
to commemorate the 50 years since the UN Conference on the Human
Environment. The Stockholm+50 meeting will open discussions on the urgent
need for actions to achieve a healthy planet and prosperity of all. On thetable will be many questions, focused on how the environmental dimension ofsustainable development can accelerate the implementation of commitmentsin the context of the Decade of Action and achieve a sustainable and inclusive
recovery from Covid-19.

We set the scene by revisiting the 1972 Stockholm Declaration; it takes stockof progress in implementing the framework for environmental action thatwas presented then, which can be pinpointed as the start of international
cooperation of environment and development (Chapter 2). The following
overview of the state of the planet and of human development 50 years later
recognizes the intertwined crises of the urgency of our planetary state andA legacy of change

The aim of this report is to synthesize science relevant to the Stockholm+50
meeting, based on background papers commissioned from SEI and CEEW
researchers, the scientific community and our partners, as well as keystonereports from relevant organizations and community actors in this space. It aims
to provide new thinking on how we can build a sustainable future, by asking
how we can reset the relationship between humans and nature, how we canachieve lasting prosperity for all, and how to invest in a better future.

25

extreme inequality. This overview highlights the impact on life prospects for
future generations, as well as children and youth today; such impacts motivate
the need to move from a state of urgency to one of agency and action.
Chapter 3 looks to the future, based on the present: our common vision fora sustainable future, expressed in Agenda 2030, needs to come alive. How can
we increase the pace of change towards sustainability? Momentum for change
is growing, in terms of public support, technological co-development, evidence
for co-benefits of climate action, and the agency of youth. The discussion
concludes with how considering timescales in decision-making can increase thepace of change, including speeding up socially robust decisions, but extending
the time horizon in planning.
Chapter 4 proposes actions that can be taken now, to point us in the directionof the changes we want to see happen at longer timescales. One report cannot
present all the actions needed for achieving a better future; this report focuseson areas relevant to Stockholm+50 themes and where we see opportunities
for systemic change that could be seeded today. The report spotlights policy
actions in three areas: redefining our relationship with nature, achieving lasting
prosperity for all, and investing in a better future.
Chapter 5 brings us back to the question of why we are still here, debating how
to become sustainable. We address some of the overarching barriers posedby our political systems for effective cooperation within and between countries:
policy incoherence and missing incentives to act, weak multilateralism, and lackof accountability.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

We conclude this report with the reminder that we hold the keys to unlocking
opportunities for change. If we can set processes in motion today, with steps
that are both small and large, we would make progress on the goals that were
established 50 years ago, at the first UN meeting to bring together humans andthe environment. We won’t need Stockholm+100 if we act now.

26

A legacy of change

Photo: Yutaka Nagata / UN Photo27

2

A watershed
moment, thenand now

Highlights
The 1972 Stockholm Conference established a framework foraction and set a global agenda for humans and the environment.
Fifty years later, we need a new watershed moment to achieve
the vision.
Reflecting on the last 50 years, many targets have been set
for global environment protection and sustainable development;
the problem is less of a policy and aspiration gap and moreof an action gap.
International supporting measures – financing, organization,technical cooperation – remain too weak to translate what
we know into effective outcomes for the health of the planet.
Today, in 2022, we live amid entwined crises – planetaryand human. The planetary crisis, where humans are causing
unprecedented change to our climate and ecosystems, calls
for transformative action and addressing our economic systems
as the core driver. Preparedness for tipping points in the Earthsystem and emerging environmental issues is needed.

No country today is delivering to its citizens what they needfor a good life without transgressing biophysical planetary
boundaries or having an excessive ecological footprint.
High-income countries and high-emitting individuals must
dramatically reduce their footprint, to avoid closing development
pathways for low-income countries.
Children are already more vulnerable to environmental change
and we see growing inequalities in life prospects between
current and future generations, unless change is accelerated.

A watershed moment, then and now

Despite major advances in human development, extreme income
and wealth inequality means that prosperity is not for all. Those
who contributed the least to the planetary crisis, will suffer mostfrom its impact on societies.

29

It is clear that the environmental crisis which is confronting theworld will profoundly alter the future destiny of our planet. No
one among us, whatever our status, strength or circumstance,
can remain unaffected. The process of change challenges presentinternational policies. Will the growing awareness of ‘one Earth’and ‘one environment’ guide us to the concept of ‘one humanity’?
Will there be a more equitable sharing of environmental costs andgreater international interest in the accelerated progress of the lessdeveloped world? Or will it remain confined to a narrow concern,
based on exclusive self-sufficiency?
– Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, Statement in Plenary
Session, 14 June 1972

The 1972 Stockholm Declaration and Action Plan established a comprehensive
set of principles and recommendations for managing the environment. It alsolaid the foundation for today’s global sustainable development governanceby linking economic development, environmental degradation and humanwell‑being in all parts of the world (UN, 1973).
Developed in the shadow of a global nuclear threat, it articulated theinterdependence of sustainable development and peace (Background paper,
BP, Michel). In tune with the pre-conference scientific report (Ward & Dubos,
1972), the Stockholm Declaration made a strong commitment to harness
science and technology for the public good, in developed and developing
economies alike.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The 1972 Stockholm Conference was a watershed moment, connecting
environment and development. It was also a watershed moment in recognizing
the environmental impacts of both under- and overdevelopment, andestablishing international cooperation on the environment, through institutions,agreements and action plans. A shared narrative of ‘Only One Earth’ echoes
today, and the conference paved the way for broad stakeholder participationin multilateral processes.

30

Yet the tension between human and economic development andsafeguarding the environment has persisted for the past half-century.
In the lead-up to the 1972 Stockholm Conference, developing countries did
not believe that it was their responsibility to resolve issues of environmental
pollution and resource scarcity. The developed world bore sole responsibility.
The year before the conference, the UN report Development and Environment,
known as the Founex Report, helped to bridge the divide between developed
and developing countries for the purposes of the 1972 Stockholm Conference(Haq & Jolly, 2008, p. 82). The report suggested a concept of environmentallysound, people-centred development.
Later, when the UN decided to convene a conference in Rio in 1992
to commemorate the 1972 Stockholm Conference, developing countries
demanded that it be called the UN Conference on Environment andDevelopment; subsequently other major conferences also tried to articulate
this balance (Bodansky, 2010, p. 33, emphasis in original). For five decades,
the effort has been to ensure that sustainable human development did notmean that the goal was to ‘sustain human deprivation’ (Ponzio & Ghosh, 2016).
The subsequent Cocoyoc Declaration in Mexico in 1974 represented oneof the earliest attempts by the UN to connect environmental protection andredistribution of global economic and social resources (UNEP/UNCTAD, 1975):
We recognize the threats to both the ‘inner limits’ of basic humanneeds and the ‘outer limits’ of the planet’s physical resources. But
we also believe that a new sense of respect for fundamental humanrights and for the preservation of our planet is growing up behind
the angry divisions and confrontations of our day.
The principles of this statement continue to be reflected in current researchon sustainability and the approaches we take in this report (see the Doughnut,
from Raworth, 2017); and calculations on sustainability within ‘planetary
boundaries’ (Fanning et al., 2020; O’Neill et al., 2018).
Reflecting on the 1972 Stockholm Declaration 50 years later, it is apparent how
the insights back then are still relevant today – on the ‘unprecedented scale’of human transformation of the environment, on the need to reconcile humandevelopment aspirations with protection of the planet, and on the need tofundamentally address equity in this endeavour. Today, the scale is larger. As
this report will show, so far, our development pathways have not aligned withthe principles established in 1972. While making positive change at the margins,
outcomes have not been fair and equitable, and we have lost sight of protecting
the planet. At the same time, there are more opportunities and momentum forchange than before – technological, financial, and social, among them.

A watershed moment, then and now

This calls for a new watershed moment at Stockholm+50, for sustainable
development, for global governance and for unlocking a better future forhumanity and Earth.

31

Figure 2.1

Sustainability milestones 1972 – 2022
Meeting/conference

Agreements

UN Conference on the
Human Environment

Organizations

The Earth Summit, UN Conference
on Environment and Development(UNCED)

Habitat, UN Conferenceon Human Settlements

Rio+20,UN Conferenceon Sustainable
Development
COP 15, Convention on
Biological Diversity

World Summit
on Sustainable
Development

Convention on International Tradein Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora enters into force

Stockholm+50,
UN International Meeting

UN resolution to end plastic pollution adopted
The Human Rights Council’s Resolution 48/13
recognizes the right to a clean, healthy andsustainable environment as a human right

The Basel Convention on
Management of Hazardous
Waste enters into force

Agenda 21 is agreed

Reports

The 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development andassociated SDGs are adopted
Nagoya Protocol
enters into force

Adoption of the Strategic
Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020
and Aichi Biodiversity Targets

UN Millennium Development
Goals are agreed
The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety
to the Convention on Biological Diversity
enters into force

United Nations Declarationon the Rights of Indigenous
people (UNDRIP) is adopted

Convention on Biological
Diversity enters into force
UNECE Convention
on Long-range
Transboundary Air
Pollution enters into force

The Montreal Protocol
on Substances that Deplete
Ozone Layer is adopted

The Kyoto Protocol
enters into force

Ecuador is the first country
in the world to recognize
the Rights of Nature in
its national constitution

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The UN Convention
on the Law of the Sea
enters into force

32

UNEP is establishedIntergovernmental Panelon Climate Change(IPCC) is established

The Intergovernmental
Science-Policy Platform
on Biodiversity andEcosystem Services(IPBES) is established

The Limits to GrowthFindings of the Millennium
is published
Ecosystem Assessment presented
Global 2000 report
The Economics of climate
The Brundtland reportchange: The Stern Review
IPCC AR1

1972

1977

1982

1987

IPCC AR4 Dasgupta review
IPCC AR5

1997

2002

IPCC AR6

Our Common Agenda

UNEP GEO1

1992

Paris
Agreement
adopted

2007

IPBES First
Global Assessment

2012

2017

2022

2.1 Taking stock of the past
50 years
As a watershed moment, the 1972 Stockholm Conference successfully
helped set global agendas, stimulate integrative thinking and legitimize
global governance (BP Michel). Because of that and subsequent meetings,
today we have institutional frameworks for environmental governance at bothinternational, national and subnational levels (see Figure 2.1). This moment
also unfolded in a geopolitical context that included Cold War and ongoing
decolonization (Linnér & Selin, 2021; Mobjörk & Lövbrand, 2021).
International and local efforts have successfully reduced – if not completely
eliminated – many environmental problems. At the global level, countries
successfully cooperated on reducing stratospheric ozone depletion. Concerted
efforts have mitigated acid rain, removed lead from gasoline, and expanded
access to safe drinking water. Air, water and chemical pollution from point
sources, such as industrial facilities, has been tackled in many places,
improving human and environmental health.
Yet at the global level, the international community has not managed to meetthe many environmental and sustainable development targets it has set foritself. Looking at major sets of global goals since 1972,
Figure 2.2 shows that measurable targets have beenachieved only to a very modest extent (see Appendix
and also Box 2.1). There is a significant ‘action gap’
between intention and results.

One-tenth oftargets show
significant
progress or canbe considered
achieved.

What this overall picture suggests is that at the global level, the action gap
stems less from a policy gap, i.e. a lack of targets, policies and strategies,
and more from an implementation gap, i.e. lack of effective implementationof existing targets. The too-slow rate of progress calls for accelerationin action and implementation, not just setting new targets.
Generating real action requires supporting measures, including financing,technical cooperation and organizations with strong mandates. Suchsupporting measures were recognized as a cornerstone in 1972 for effective
environmental action; our assessment of key indicators shows that, on thewhole, international supporting measures remain too weak to deliver on the

A watershed moment, then and now

Although comparison across goals of different nature
is difficult, it is still indicative that typically only onetenth of targets show significant progress or can beconsidered achieved. In the case of the Millennium
Development Goals, only one of four targets under
MDG7 on environmental sustainability was achieved.
For the environment-related targets for the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) – for which there is still time to make progress before 2030 – there arenegative trends for material footprints, sustainable fish stocks, forested areaand endangered species (UNEP, 2021e).

33

Figure 2.2
Achievement of global environment and sustainable development targets
Global environmental goals(pre-2012)
320 goals, 34 of which assessed

Millennium Development Goals(2000 – 2015)
8 goals, with 18 targets

Aichi targets(2011 – 2020)
20 targets, with 60 elements

Environmental dimension of SDG(2015 – 2030*)
92 indicators for SDG targets0%* Target year is 2030

20%

40%

60%

80%

Achieved/significant progressSome progress

No progress or negative trend

Insufficient data

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Source: Based on data from (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2020); UNEP
(2012b, 2021e); United Nations (2015). For methodological detail, see Appendix.

34

100%

goals (Box 2.1; Figure 2.3). The framework for environmental action conceived
in 1972 has delivered many outputs, in terms of political and scientific activity,
but outcomes and impacts for a healthier planet remain insufficient.

BOX 2.1

Assessing implementation of the 1972 Stockholm framework
for environmental action
The 1972 Stockholm Conference resulted in a comprehensive package:a declaration with 26 principles and an Action Plan with no less than
109 recommendations. An overarching ‘Framework for Environmental Action’was introduced, with three key elements: environmental assessment,
environmental management, and international supporting measures (United
Nations, 1973, p. 6).
Today, 50 years later, we can assess its implementation, as a basis for more
specific efforts and actions ahead (see Figure 2.3; additional information in
Appendix). Overall, knowledge has been generated, goals have been set andagreements have been made, but the supporting measures are too weak todeliver on the goals and lead to actions in accordance with our knowledge.

Looking back gives greater urgency to closing the action gap between targets
and results in 2022. By failing to provide strong supporting measures, inequity
persists in the pursuit of sustainable development. Turning to the present, theframework established in 1972 needs to be transformed so that it responds tothe challenges and urgency of today, and reflects the implementation lessons
learned from the past 50 years.

2.2 The world we live in

Meanwhile, many people lead better lives today than their parents expected
for them. We live longer, with access to more – more clean water, material
goods, food and healthcare, among other needs and wants.
However, many people do not. Billions of people still live without clean waterand sanitation, and millions of households are still cooking with polluting
traditional biomass or the dirtiest fossil fuels. The Covid-19 pandemic has
reversed past progress, throwing millions more people into extreme poverty
and hunger, as well as conditions where health, education, and other basic
needs are lacking (see Box 2.2).

A watershed moment, then and now

The planet has changed dramatically over the past half-century, due to humanimpact. In 1972, the climate crisis had yet to come to the fore. Biodiversity wasricher. Now we understand more about how our planet and its systems function
as we sit at the edge of tipping these systems beyond their current form.

35

Figure 2.3

Assessing the 1972 Stockholm environmental action framework
Framework for environmental action set out in the1972 Stockholm Action Plan for the Human Environment
Environmental assessment

Environmental management

Evaluation and review
Research
Monitoring
Information exchange

Goal settings and planning
International consultation
and agreements

Supporting measures
Education and training
Public information
Organization
FinancingTechnical co-operation

36

Environmental
management
Supporting
measures

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Environmental
assessment

An indication of the framework over time
Evaluation and review

Several intergovernmental
scientific assessment processes(e.g. IPCC, IPBES, GEO, GSDR)
and regular scientific reports(e.g. Global Chemical Outlook,
Global Biodiversity Outlook)

Research

Bibliometric search,
research funding

Monitoring

Significant data gaps
on environmental SDG indicators

Information exchange

Numerous conferences,
digital platforms,
popular communication

Goal setting

Over 300 international environmental
goals and objectives agreed by 2010and several of 17 SDGs and 169 targets
address environment and development

International agreements

Over 1300 MEAs

Education and training

Poor capacity

Public information

Poor data

Organization

More organization but limited mandate

Financing

Large financing gaps

Technical cooperation

Poor technical capacity

Source: see Appendix.

noprogress

some
progresssignificant
progressCovid-19 and the sustainability agenda
The world as a whole is far from escaping the virus. According to WHO’s
Coronavirus Dashboard (https://covid19.who.int/), at the end of March 2022,
over half of the world’s population was fully vaccinated. But those figures
were 72% and 73% for upper-middle and high‑income countries, 48% for lower
middle-income countries, and only 12% in low‑income countries. Moreover,
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita further correlates to the variationin vaccination rates between countries (Basak et al., 2022). While high-income
countries might see signs of recovery (Cuerpo, 2022), that is not the casefor lower-income countries (Dinh, 2022), particularly those that were alreadyhighly vulnerable (Rajah & Dayant, 2022).
The world as a whole is even farther from recovering from the pandemic.
Even before Covid-19-related fiscal recovery funds began to flow, calls had
been made for a ‘green and inclusive’ recovery. The OECD (2020b) highlighted
the opportunities opened by a green recovery for jobs and income, as wellas growth; Shawoo and Verkuijl (2020) pointed out how Nationally Determined
Contributions (NDCs) to climate mitigation and long-term low-emission
development strategies (LT-LEDS) can help ‘build back better’ througha just transition; Krebel and colleagues (2020) argued for ‘a recovery plan
for a greener, fairer future’; and the UN Department of Economic and Social
Affairs (UN DESA, 2020) identified risks, challenges, and opportunities for‘recovering better’ by using the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as
the compass. Funding is more than sufficient, with recovery funds ‘dwarfing’
the finance needed for clean energy (Andrijevic et al., 2020). There is no
shortage of policy instruments, either, with high potential for both economic
stimulus and climate impact (Hepburn et al., 2020).
Yet the calls have largely gone unheard. Le Quéré and co-authors (2021)
reported that most Covid-19 recovery plans contradict climate commitments,
while Shawoo and Verkuijl (2020) noted that the opportunities they had
identified for NDCs and LT-LEDS had yet to be reflected in climate pledges.
The 2021 Production Gap Report (SEI et al., 2021) showed that Covid-19
recovery commitments from the G20 nations mainly supported fossil energy
sources; only 6% of total stimulus spending was allocated to areas that cut
emissions, and 3% targeted activities that are likely to increase global emissions(Nahm et al., 2022). While the commitments vary considerably from one country
to another, the current trends are not encouraging.
Moreover, the response to the pandemic has been highly unequal (see BP
Ghosh & Raha), with high-income countries ‘hoarding’ vaccines, leading to whatsome have called ‘vaccine apartheid’ (Gupta, 2022). Yamin (2022) argues that
this is not only immoral, it is self-defeating: equitable distribution of the vaccine
would more effectively limit the emergence and spread of new variants.
The response to the Covid-19 pandemic – which is very obviously a global
challenge requiring coordinated action, where the science is well-understood –is sobering. The scale of the sustainability challenge is much larger, lessimmediate, and more uncertain, yet the need for coordinated action is justas great – if not greater. Yet our experience with Covid-19 need not be a signof things to come. It can be a wake-up call.

A watershed moment, then and now

BOX 2.237

Figure 2.4
Environmental indicators, 1972 – 2022
Global annual freshwater use(trillion cubic metres)

Annual carbon dioxide
emissions (ktCO2-eq)
50,000,000

440,000,000

3.5

30,000,000

Source: World Development Indicators database.

20
22

2
20
1

2
20
0

92
19

19

19
72

20
22

20
1

20
0

19

19

19
72

2

2
2

0
92

2.5

82

10,000,000

82

320,000,000

Source: Global International
Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGB).

Ecological footprints by land type (number of Earths)
CarbonCroplandFishing grounds
Forest products
Grazing land

Built-up land
2
1.5
1
0.5

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Source: Footprint Network, 2022 National Footprint and Biocapacity

38

22
20

12
20

02
20

92
19

82
19

19
72

0

Looking at the scientific evidence, we live amid entwined crises – planetaryand human. The evidence shows just how much our human well-being relieson the planetary systems that we are changing. The natural systems that
support life on Earth have been breached, and the human systems remain
plagued by inequalities.

The state of the planet
Fifty years after the 1972 Stockholm Conference, the human population has
doubled, the global economy has grown nearly 4-fold and global trade hasgrown 10-fold, together driving up the demand for energy and materials(IPBES, 2019b). And the warnings that our planet is in crisis continue to beclear, as reflected in trends on a number of environmental indicators (seeFigure 2.4). Recent research on chemical pollution showed that we have now
crossed the fifth of the nine ‘planetary boundaries’ that define the biophysicallimits of Earth’s major systems (Persson et al., 2022).
Taken together, the evidence base in recent international scientificassessments sends consistent and clear messages (see Box 2.3; for moretrends and data, see (Independent Group of Scientists appointed by the
Secretary-General, 2019; IPBES, 2019b; IPCC, 2021, 2022a; IRP, 2019; UNEP,
2012a, 2021d):• humans are causing unprecedented change;• the inequity among people and places in both causing deterioration andsuffering impacts is high;• action must be urgent and transformative; and• we increasingly must address our economic system (consumption, production
and finance) as the core driver.

Photo: Basia Asztabska / Moment / GettyImages

A watershed moment, then and now

2.2.1

39

Box 2.3

Key messages from recent international scientific assessments

•
•

•
•
•

•

•

Climate change – IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Groups I (2021),
II (2022) and III (2022)
The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole
are unprecedented over centuries to thousands of years.
Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are
irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean,ice sheets and global sea level.
Unless there are immediate, rapid, and large-scale reductions in greenhousegas emissions, limiting warming to 1.5°C will be beyond reach (IPCC, 2021).
‘The climate we experience in the future depends on our decisions now’
(IPCC, 2021).
Climate change has already caused widespread adverse impacts to natureand people, beyond natural climate variability, and across sectors and regions
the most vulnerable people and systems are observed to be disproportionately
affected.
Approximately three billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable
to climate change, and current unsustainable development patterns are
increasing exposure of ecosystems and people to climate hazards.
Increased evidence of climate action and options available are now in every
sector that can at least halve emissions by 2030; 1.5°C is attainable onlywith net-zero emissions (IPCC, 2022b).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Biodiversity and ecosystems – IPBES Global Assessment, 2019
• Nature and its vital contributions to people, which together embody biodiversity
and ecosystem functions and services, are deteriorating worldwide.
• Since 1970, trends in agricultural production, fish harvest, bioenergy production
and harvest of materials have increased, but 14 of the 18 categories ofcontributions of nature that were assessed, mostly regulating and non-material
contributions, have declined.
• Goals for conserving and sustainably using nature and achieving sustainability
cannot be met by current trajectories, and goals for 2030 and beyond may only
be achieved through transformative changes across economic, social, politicaland technological factors.

40

Natural resources – IRP Global Resources Outlook, 2019
• The use of natural resources has more than tripled from 1970 and continues
to grow.
• The use of natural resources and the related benefits and environmental
impacts are unevenly distributed across countries and regions.
• In the absence of urgent and concerted action, rapid growth and inefficientuse of natural resources will continue to create unsustainable pressures on
the environment.
Global environment – Sixth Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-6), 2019
• Unsustainable production and consumption patterns put at risk the healthyplanet needed to attain sustainable development.
• The world is not on track to achieve the environmental dimension of the SDGs
or other internationally agreed environmental goals by 2030; nor is it on track todeliver long-term sustainability by 2050.

• The social and economic costs of inaction often exceed the costs of action
and are inequitably distributed, often being borne by the poorest and mostvulnerable in society, including Indigenous and local communities, particularly
in developing countries.
• Transformative change that will enable us to achieve the SDGs and otherinternationally agreed targets includes a tripling of the current decarbonization
rate as we head towards 2050, a 50% increase in food production and theadoption of healthy and sustainable diets across all global regions.
Sustainable development – UN Global Sustainable Development Report, 2019
• The world is not on track for achieving most of the 169 targets that comprise
the Goals.
• Adding to the concern is the fact that recent trends along several dimensions
with cross-cutting impacts across the entire 2030 Agenda are not even moving
in the right direction. Four in particular fall into that category: rising inequalities,
climate change, biodiversity loss and increasing amounts of waste fromhuman activity that are overwhelming capacities to process them.
• Recent assessments show that, under current trends, the world’s social andnatural biophysical systems cannot support the aspirations for universal
human well-being embedded in the SDGs.

•••

A watershed moment, then and now•

Synthesis report – UNEP Making Peace with Nature, 2021 (a synthesisof latest IPCC, IPBES and GEO assessments)
Environmental changes are undermining hard-won development gains
by causing economic costs and millions of premature deaths annually.
The well-being of today’s youth and future generations depends on an urgent
and clear break with current trends of environmental decline.
The economic, financial and productive systems can and should betransformed to lead and power the shift to sustainability. Society needs toinclude natural capital in decision-making, eliminate environmentally harmful
subsidies and invest in the transition to a sustainable future.
The coming decade is crucial.

41

Figure 2.5

Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system
The map shows potential tipping elements that could be triggered thiscentury and would change within this millennium. Permafrost and tundra
loss, climate change-induced ozone hole and changes in Antarctic bottom
water formation are particularly uncertain as tipping elements. More recent
research on tipping cascades include elements of coral reef destruction,
thermohaline circulation slowdown, Jet stream stagnation, Sahel drying,
Alpine glacier melt and East Antarctic Ice Sheet instability, and indicate
the temperature at which elements risk tipping as well as linkages
between them (Steffen et al., 2018).
Atlantic deep-water
formation

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Boreal forest
transformation

42

Greenland ice
sheet melt

El NiñoSouthern Oscillation
frequency disruption

West
Antarctic
ice sheetinstability

Amazon rainforest
transformation
0

1

Climatic change
induced ozone hole2

5

Boreal forest
transformation

West African
monsoon shift

Indian monsoon
chaotic multistability

20

50

100

No dataPopulation density, 2022 [persons per square kilometer of land area]
Source: Adapted from Steffen et al. (2018)

Permafrost
and tundra loss

Antarctic bottom
water formation changes

Saharagreening
10

Arctic sea ice loss

200

500

Today we also are confronted with tipping points in the Earth system we were
unaware of in 1972 – some of which might be triggered in our lifetimes and are
irreversible, including permafrost loss, ice sheet disintegration, and rainforest
dieback (Lenton et al., 2008; Steffen et al., 2018; see Figure 2.5).

Photo: PhotoStock-Israel / Photodisc / GettyImages

A watershed moment, then and now

Given what we know about these pressures, we can also anticipate new andemerging environmental issues in the next 50 years that will require global
environmental governance. These range from issues manifested locally, suchas maladaptation to environmental change and environmental displacement,
to issues interfering with our global commons, such as climate geoengineering,seabed mining and resource extraction, and resource extraction from space,to environmental risks of new technologies, such as synthetic biology,
nanomaterials and artificial intelligence (Morin & Richard, 2021; Simon et al.,2021; UNEP, 2017a, 2019).

43

Figure 2.6
Human development indicators, 1972 – 2022
Poverty headcount ratio at $1.90
a day (2011 PPP) (% of population)

Life expectancy at birth,
total (years)

50%

80

40%

70

30%

60

20%

50

10%

Figure 2.7
Global income and wealth inequality

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

100%

44

80%
60%
40%
20%

IncomeBottom 50%

Middle 40%

Source: Adapted from Chancel et al. (2021).

WealthTop 10%

22
20

12
20

02
20

Source: World Bank (https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators).

0%

20
22

20
1

2

2
20
0

92
19

20

20

20

19

19

82

0
19

60%

19
72

4,000

22

70%

12

8,000

02

80%

92

12,000

82

90%

92

GDP per capita(constant 2015 US$)

Literacy rate, adult total(% of people ages 15 and above)

19
72

19

82
19

19
72

20
22

2
20
1

2
20
0

92
19

82

40
19

19
72

0%

2.2.2The state of human development
Over the past 50 years, people and societies have improved social andeconomic well-being (Figure 2.6; UNDP, 2020). For example, for human health,gains have been made for maternal health, life expectancy, and combatting
HIV/AIDS. Extreme poverty has more than halved and education is accessible
to many more people.
Yet human development has been uneven. While global inequality between
countries is declining, inequality within countries is increasing (Figure 2.7). The
poorest half of the global population owns barely 2% of the total global wealth.
In contrast, the richest 10% of the global population owns 76% of all wealth(Chancel et al., 2021). Compared to 1972, overdevelopment and affluencerather than underdevelopment and scarcity is a driver of unsustainable
resource use (IRP, 2019).
The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a spike in inequality within countries
across the world. The wealth of the 10 richest men in the world doubled in
2020, while the incomes of 99% of humanity are worse because of Covid-19(Ahmed et al., 2022).
The pandemic further laid bare inequality (see Guerrero et al., 2020; Rogers etal., 2020; The Lancet, 2020). Both wealthier individuals and wealthier countries
had access to vaccines, healthcare and basic needs, and low-income countries
and individuals did not.

The wealth ofgovernments
has important
implications
for statecapacities totackle inequality.

This trend has been magnified by the Covid-19 crisis,
during which governments borrowed the equivalentof 10 – 20% of GDP, essentially from the private sector.
The wealth of governments has important implications
for state capacities to tackle inequality in the future,
as well as the role of private stakeholders in addressing
key challenges of the 21st century such as climatechange (Chancel et al., 2021; see section 3.2 below).

Inequality connects with the planetary crisis both as a driver and impact.
Between 1999 and 2018, extreme weather events caused about halfa million deaths worldwide (Mohanty 2020). Growing climate and healthstresses are raising the chances of such high-impact events occurring more
frequently – and often overlapping. The domino effects of associated events
can overwhelm the responsive capacities of communities, governments andmultilateral organizations (BP Ghosh & Raha).

A watershed moment, then and now

As nations and some of their citizens have become richer, governments havebecome poorer. The gap between the net wealth of governments and of theprivate sector has increased over the past 40 years.
The share of wealth held by public actors is close
to zero or negative in rich countries, meaning thatthe totality of wealth is in private hands (Chancel
et al., 2021).

45

The gravest impacts have been borne by the poorest countries and mostvulnerable communities. Climate disaster-related death tolls of potentially
exposed populations during 2000–2017 indicate 16 deaths per million forhigh‑income groups, compared to 60 per million for low-income groups.
Climate-related disaster GDP losses by income groups, recorded from 1998
to 2017, also illustrate this stark disparity, ranging from more than 0.4% for
high-income groups on a GDP base of USD 1.43 trillion, to nearly 1.8% for
low‑income groups on a GDP base of USD 21 billion (CRED & UNISDR, 2018).
As early as the mid-1990s, 90% of deaths caused by air pollution were indeveloping countries, mostly due to indoor air quality in rural areas. Soil
degradation also impacts the poor, as nearly a third of the world’s population
depends on subsistence farming. Between 2000 and 2019, China and India
accounted for about 70% of all disaster-affected people (Eckstein et al., 2021).
Just one super-cyclone, Amphan, displaced about
2.5 million people each in India and Bangladesh in
May 2020 (WMO, 2021) – while the region was alreadystruggling with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Climate and otherenvironmental
risks disproportionately affectthe poorest
countries and thepoorest people.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The degree of vulnerability of people to loss anddamage from climate hazards and other environmental
risks often depends on their livelihood, gender,
age, ethnicity and race, but also government
capacities. Climate and other environmental risks
disproportionately affect the poorest countries andthe poorest people, whether in low- or high-income
countries, who are more exposed and more vulnerable
to such impacts (BP Nazareth & Ghosh). In sucheconomies, a large part of the population is engaged in biodiversity‑related
work that may be the most affected by climate change, notably,
the agricultural, forestry, and fisheries sectors (UN DESA, 2016).

46

Inequality in incomes is also reflected in the unequal resource use andemissions. For instance, the richest 10% of the global population were
responsible for emitting more than half of the total carbon emissions during
1990 – 2015 (BP Agarwal & Kalra; BP Dalhammar et al.; Kartha et al., 2020;
BP Nazareth & Ghosh). New research on individuals’ emissions shows thatthe difference in carbon footprint ranges from almost 55 metric tons of carbon
dioxide (tCO2) per year for the top 10% emitters in the US to less than 1 tCO2
for the top 10% emitters in countries such as Uganda and Ethiopia, and it isless than 0.2 tCO2 for the bottom 10% emitters in most sub-Saharan countries(Bruckner et al., 2022). The increase in global carbon emissions associatedwith lifting more than one billion people out of poverty, in line with targets
under SDG1, would amount to only 1.6 – 2.1% or less (Bruckner et al., 2022).

2.2.3

Intertwined crises
Higher economic development in the past 50 years has meant larger
ecological footprints, a pattern that has proven hard to break. Countries
with a higher Human Development Index (HDI) typically have higher ecologicalfootprints (Figure 2.8) due to higher consumption of resources to sustain theirlifestyles (Global Footprint Network, n.d.-b). If the global population were toemulate current lifestyles prevalent in the Global North, we would need three
to five Earths to sustain such consumption habits, which we clearly do not have
(BP Agrawal & Kalra; Global Footprint Network, n.d.-a).
Currently, no country is delivering what its citizens need without transgressing
the biophysical planetary boundaries (O’Neill et al., 2018; see Figure 2.9).
Staying within the planetary boundaries can still lead to negative repercussions
at local and regional levels, e.g. water scarcity and air pollution.
High-income countries must drastically reduce their footprints, especiallyin light of their cumulative footprints over time (Hickel, 2020), to avoid closing
development pathways for low-income countries. The choices available

Figure 2.8<1.7

1.7 – 3.4

3.4 – 5.1

5.1 – 6.7

6.7>

No data

Ecological Footprint per person: A nation's total ecological footprint divided by its
total population. An ecological footprint of 1.7 corresponds to the available biocapacity
per person on our planet.
Source: Adapted from Global Footprint Network, York University, and Footprint Data Foundation (2021). Global
Ecological Footprint data. Available at https://data.footprintnetwork.org (Global Footprint Network, n.d.-b).

A watershed moment, then and now

Ecological footprint per person47

to people to reduce their footprint are constrained by existing systems
of production and distribution; they are ‘locked in’ to the infrastructureand systems around them (see Section 4.2). Structural changes to thesesystems are needed: material shifts in the access to planetary resources,
technological shifts that offer alternative modes of production with lower
resource footprints, and behavioural shifts in what people want and value.

Figure 2.9
Social achievements, biophysical transgressions:country performance 1992 – 2015
Low overshootHigh overshootGermany

10

NorwayAustria

Switzerland

SwedenBelgium
Australia
Hungary

Estonia
Uruguay

Costa Rica

6

Kazakhstan
Argentina
UkraineMexicoChina

4Mauritius

GreeceThailand2

JordanBrazilEcuadorIndonesia

Côte d’Ivoire

Tunisia

PanamaBulgaria

1

2

Colombia

Armenia

IranSouth Africa

Morocco3

Kyrgyzstan

Paraguay

Bolivia

Mongolia

Botswana

4

Number of biophysical boundaries transgressed

Source: Adapted from Fanning et al. (2022).

Peru

TurkeyIndia
Cameroon
Honduras
Nepal
Ghana
Niger Nicaragua
Nigeria
RwandaUgandaMalawiMali
Pakistan
Laos
Tanzania
Bangladesh
Philippines
SenegalAngola0 Kenya
GuineaGambia Central African Republic Lesotho

0

RussiaLatviaAlbania
Sri Lanka

Chile

5

6

High shortfall

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

UK

Italy
Croatia

Egypt

48

USA
FranceCanadaSpain IrelandSouth Korea

MiddleNumber of social thresholds achieved8

Low shortfall

Netherlands2.3 Future generations
Those of us who were the once-distant ‘future generations’ in 1972 now havechildren and perhaps even grandchildren. What was once the future material
consequences of planetary pressures are becoming increasingly clear andcloser – and in some cases, reality (World Weather Attribution, n.d.).
The 1972 Stockholm Declaration committed to safeguarding the planet’s
natural resources for future generations (Principle 2), establishing the principleof equity not just between people and nations but
between generations. Fifty years later, we see growing
inequalities in life prospects between generations –effectively a form of intergenerational discrimination.

A ‘low-carbon life’
can and should bea good life.

Scientific evidence shows that children andyoung generations already bear a disproportionate
disease burden of climate change (Helldén et al.,2021; UNICEF, 2015; Watts et al., 2019). Extreme weather and climatechange – induced disasters have direct effects on children, such as higher
vulnerability to vector-borne diseases and greater dangers from undernutrition,and indirect effects, such as loss of education and risk of human trafficking.
The fossil‑fuel combustion that drives longer-term climate impacts makes
children more vulnerable to respiratory diseases, and leads to heat stressthat can even affect education and mental health of adolescents (Perera, 2017;
Watts et al., 2019). Climate change can further exacerbate inequalities in life
prospects for children born in wealthy versus poor families (UNICEF, 2015).

However, if governments implement the International Energy Agency (IEA)‘Net‑Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario’, future generations would use farless carbon than someone born in the 1950s, for example, who on average
has a lifetime carbon dioxide footprint of 350 tCO2 – of which 286 tCO2 hasalready been emitted. With the net-zero scenario, someone born in the 2020s
would have a lifetime footprint of 34 tCO2 (IEA, 2022). Senior citizens, bornin the 1950s and before, have driven up greenhouse gas emissions in thepast decade, as wealthy societies have aged and changed their expenditurepatterns (Zheng et al., 2022).
A ‘low-carbon life’ can and should be a good life. Without transforming oursystems to reach that good life more quickly, we are rapidly limiting options
for future generations.

A watershed moment, then and now

Scenarios for future climate change indicate what young and future generations
face. A person born today may live in a ‘4° world’, on average 4°C warmer thanpre-industrial levels: 16% of species would be at risk of extinction, comparedwith 5% at 2°C warming (IPBES, 2019a, p. 37). A person born in 2020 may be up
to seven times as much exposed to heat waves during their lifetime, comparedwith a person born in 1960 (Thiery et al., 2021). At current rates, the available
ecological space will be smaller in the future, which will decrease the carbon
budget for all – less forested area, for example, means less carbon dioxidesequestered, with further impacts on climate.

49

3

The next 50 years:
from urgency
to agency

Highlights
The world has already agreed on a common vision forsustainable development – Agenda 2030. Stockholm+50 canbe the moment to make it come to fruition, by relating it toour everyday lives around the world and by considering more
systematically the synergies and trade-offs between SDGs,
while making the policy and planning to achieve them.
Momentum for change has increased rapidly in many respects –public opinion appears to show that people recognize theurgency and indicate their willingness to change lifestyles;
development and uptake of some technologies have been fasterthan anticipated, and better policy evidence shows the manywins and co-benefits from taking climate and sustainability
action. Youth worldwide are both exercising and demanding
more agency.

We are better equipped than ever to make 2022 a newwatershed moment for pursuit of our sustainable future on Earth.
We are also as troubled as ever in our dealings with each other.
We must move from acknowledging urgency to taking actions
now that enable a better future for all.

There are broad vistas for the enhancement of environmental
quality and the creation of a good life. What is needed is anenthusiastic but calm state of mind and intense but orderly work.
– 1972 Stockholm Declaration, Preamble

The next 50 years: from urgency to agency

Harnessing this momentum, we need to find ways to compress
timescales for decision-making and roll-out of key investments
and infrastructure without compromising values of democratic
legitimacy and stakeholder consultation. Simultaneously,
timescales must be extended in the preparation for decisionmaking to avoid ‘lock-in’ in unsustainable infrastructure, avoid
intergenerational discrimination, and make bold long-term plans.

51

In many ways, we have grown used to hearing dire reports on the stateof the planet and the urgency of action, and it can have a numbing effect.
In this chapter, we turn our eyes forward.
The scientific evidence presented in the previous chapter is irrefutable, but
the key issue at Stockholm+50 is how to move from urgency to agency. We
look at how to build on momentum for change, in order to increase the pace ofchange. We also consider who has agency, so that actors and institutions fulfil
their potential in both harnessing opportunity and taking responsibility.

3.1 Visions of a better future
What does a sustainable future look like? What should societies transform
into? In both science and policy, actors increasingly use futures studies
techniques – visioning, scenarios, modelling, foresight – to prepare for change
and to shape change. A successful vision can capture the imagination ofa broader community of stakeholders, and such visions have become importantin sustainability science for developing transition pathways (UNEP, 2019;
IPBES, 2019b).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The Stockholm+50 international meeting is nearly halfway into the decadeof action for Agenda 2030, and it is timely to remind ourselves of the common
vision already endorsed by all UN member states as part of the 2015 UN
Resolution ‘Transforming our world’ (Articles 7 to 9 in the UN Resolution
A/RES70/1; UNGA, 2015):

52

We envisage a world free of poverty, hunger, disease and want,where all life can thrive. We envisage a world free of fear andviolence. A world with universal literacy. A world with equitableand universal access to quality education at all levels, tohealth care and social protection, where physical, mental andsocial well‑being are assured. A world where we reaffirm ourcommitments regarding the human right to safe drinking waterand sanitation and where there is improved hygiene; and where
food is sufficient, safe, affordable and nutritious. A world where
human habitats are safe, resilient and sustainable and where there
is universal access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy.
We envisage a world of universal respect for human rights
and human dignity, the rule of law, justice, equality andnon‑discrimination; of respect for race, ethnicity and cultural
diversity; and of equal opportunity permitting the full realizationof human potential and contributing to shared prosperity. A world
which invests in its children and in which every child grows
up free from violence and exploitation. A world in which every
woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and all legal, socialand economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed.
A just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world inwhich the needs of the most vulnerable are met.

We envisage a world in which every country enjoys sustained,
inclusive and sustainable economic growth and decent work forall. A world in which consumption and production patterns anduse of all natural resources – from air to land, from rivers, lakes
and aquifers to oceans and seas – are sustainable. One in which
democracy, good governance and the rule of law, as well as anenabling environment at the national and international levels, areessential for sustainable development, including sustained andinclusive economic growth, social development, environmental
protection and the eradication of poverty and hunger. One
in which development and the application of technology are
climate‑sensitive, respect biodiversity and are resilient. One inwhich humanity lives in harmony with nature and in which wildlife
and other living species are protected.
Stockholm+50 can be a moment to make this vision come alive. This means
making it relatable to everyday lives (see BP Dalhammar et al.; BP Lindahl& Dalhammar; BP Mallya & Raha). More and more innovative efforts, suchas initiatives drawing on the arts and humanities, show and imagine throughstorytelling what an everyday life would look like in 2030 or 2050 – suchas museums of the future, climate fiction literature,art exhibitions and television series (Milkoreit, 2016;
Oomen et al., 2021). Local stakeholders can ‘co-create’
exploratory scenarios to develop ‘transformation
pathways’ (Bennett et al., 2016). ‘Social labs’ allow
individuals to experiment with sustainable lifestyles(Sitra, 2021). These efforts are inspirational, butcurrently small-scale.
The SDGs vision can also come alive through better
integration into national and local policy and planning,
especially by considering trade-offs and synergies
when pursuing the SDG vision in a systematic way.
Achieving the vision as laid out above includes
harnessing synergies, but also acknowledging critical trade-offs. Recent
research has led to a number of methods, tools and frameworks for considering
trade-offs and synergies (see e.g. Nilsson et al., 2016; Nilsson & Weitz, 2019;
Pham-Truffert et al., 2020; Pradhan et al., 2017). There is great potential inmore policy uptake of these tools and approaches, as an aid to planning forthe future (Allen et al., 2021).
Finally, Stockholm+50 can be a moment for starting a conversation on how
to imagine a science-based, participatory and compelling post-2030 visionand narrative on sustainable development, while not diverting attention fromthe current action gap and commitment to a Decade of Action.

The next 50 years: from urgency to agency

A just, equitable,
tolerant, open andsocially inclusive
world in which
the needs of themost vulnerable
are met.

53

3.2 Growing momentum
for change
Looking ahead, evidence suggests that in some areas momentum is growing
for actions that can ultimately lead to transformative changes for sustainable
development. That evidence includes public opinion and financial commitments,
as well as advances in new technologies. These are important improvementsin the conditions for accelerating the pace of change, but such actions require
effective and appropriate support.
Last year alone, three global surveys showed a growing concern for theenvironment, a demand for action and a willingness of people to change
lifestyles – in particular in the views expressed by young people. Recent
survey results of 910 young people show they experience increasing climate
anxiety, as well as have an increasing will to act, according to the SEI-CEEW
youth report (Aggarwal et al., 2022); 57% of survey respondents felt young
people are inadequately represented in global climate governance, andexpressed the desire to be included in governance fairly and equitably.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Other examples include the UNDP’s People’s Climate Vote, which had 1.2 million
respondents in 50 countries; 64% said that climate change was an emergency,
and of those, a majority of respondents called for an urgent response (UNDP& University of Oxford, 2021; Figure 3.1). A Pew Research Center survey ofpeople in 17 high-income economies found that 80% of respondents werewilling to make ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ changes about how they live and work to help
reduce the effects of climate change (Pew Research Center, 2021). And asurvey by the Global Commons Alliance showed that a majority of people inG20 countries are concerned about the global commons at large and willing to
do more to protect and restore nature in the future (Global Commons Alliance,
2021; see also (Edelman, 2022).

54

Of course, public opinion and individual motivation to change lifestyles
fluctuate. However, behavioural research has found that the principle ofsustainability is only one driver of sustainable lifestyle action, alongside othermotives (e.g. thrift, well-being, stimulation), that can be tapped into more
systematically (Sitra, 2021).
We are doing more than anticipated, in accelerating the development anduptake of technology that will impact our carbon-based economies. Solarpanels and batteries have become competitive much earlier than anticipated;uptake of these renewable energy technologies and others typically is not
linear but takes an s-shaped curve. A number of key climate technologies
are expected to reach mass market by 2030, a development strongly
shaped by the Paris Agreement. The international agreement sets a clear
and long‑term goal for adopting low-carbon technologies (Systemiq, 2020).
A generation of potentially disruptive digital technologies has emerged, suchas online platforms and mobile application that enable mass collaborationand the use of remote sensing and distributed ledgers to increase transparency

Figure 3.1
Perceived urgency of response to climate change
100%

80%

60%

59%

40%

20%

20%

10%

11%

The world is alreadydoing enoughDo nothing0%
Do everythingnecessary, urgently

Act slowly while
we learn more
about what to do

Source: Adapted from UNDP & University of Oxford (2021).

and accountability. If used and governed appropriately,
they could unleash agency and resources foraccelerating sustainable development, but alsocome with significant risks (Sustainability in the Digital
Age, 2020).

However, technology’s potential is not as clear in all
sectors or for all environmental issues; these can also
give rise to new environmental impacts to manage,
such as e-waste and unsustainable extraction of newminerals, as well as ‘rebound effects’, where more
efficient products lead to increasing volumes of consumption elsewhere andpartly offset the benefit of the improvements (BP Dalhammar et al.). While
we are doing more, technological advances have not led to structural changes.
Technological innovation and deployment capacity, including the digital divide,
is also unevenly spread across the globe.
However, the ‘green race’ that started with the Paris Agreement has captured
political and policy attention (Figure 3.2). That could create positive feedback
loops through complementary public, private and investor action (BP Dutt et al.;BP Ghosh et al.; see Chapter 4).

The next 50 years: from urgency to agency

Growing
concern for theenvironment,
demand foraction, willingness
to change.

55

20
50

20
45

20
40

20
35

20
30

Possible future

20
25

20

20
20

20
15

20
10

20
05

20
00

19
95

19
90

Historical progress

22

Figure 3.2
Maturity of low-carbon solutions by sector: progress since 1990,
projected progress after 2022

Electricity

Light road transport
Building heating
Trucking
Agriculture

Land use change
Aviation
Shipping
Fugitive emissions
Steel
CementChemicals and plastics

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Other

56

Concept

Solution development

Niche market

Mass market

Late market

Market tipping point(cost and critical mass tipping points)

The height of the bars is sized by each sector's emissions impact in 2019 – 2020. Market tipping point
triggers an S-curve scale-up in share of new sales.
Source: Adapted from Systemiq (2020).

Better scientific evidence is available, on both costs of inaction andco‑benefits of taking action. As shown above (Box 2.1), we have morescientific evidence and knowledge than ever, even though significant gaps
persist in data and in scientific knowledge produced by and on the Global
South. In particular, we have a better understanding of co-benefits andsynergies from taking action – health, gender, fiscal,
etc. – which will yield better and more cost‑effective
solutions and outcomes and is promising for
implementation of the interlinked SDGs (see e.g.
FAO, 2021; Global Commission on the Economy
and Climate, 2014; WHO, 2021).

Agents of change
should capitalizeon these andother sourcesof momentum.

For example, the Global Methane Assessment
found that currently available measures to reduce
methane – some even at negative cost – could reduce
human‑caused methane emissions by up to 45%
and thus avoid nearly 0.3C of global warming by 2040, while simultaneously
preventing 255 000 premature deaths, 73 billion hours of lost labour fromextreme heat and 26 million tonnes of crop losses globally (UNEP & CCAC,
2021). This means the evidence basis for designing smart solutions is better
than ever before, and the challenge really lies in bridging science, policy
and practice to close the action gap more quickly and decisively.
Agents of change – governments, international organizations, companies,
civil society organizations – should capitalize on these and other sourcesof momentum. For example, show with concrete examples when ambitious
environmental policy is responding to an articulated demand from the public;
remove conservative bias when assessing speed of new technology uptake;and put the scientific evidence to direct use by embedding researchers morein governments, especially where there is low government capacity.

A special momentum for change comes from youth. There are 1.2 billion young
people (15- to 24-year-olds) today, representing 16% of the global population.
The youth population globally is expected to peak at 1.3 billion in 2065, withthe largest percentage increase in the least developed countries, at 62% by
2050 (UN DESA, 2019). This means that the largest increases will take placein parts of the world that are highly vulnerable to climate change.
As the consequences of the planetary crisis for their life prospects are
becoming clearer (see section 2.4), youth are exercising agency today bymobilizing globally, making their voices heard, engaging in political processes,
and taking legal action – despite rarely having influential formal roles. Many
young climate activists today go beyond tackling climate change and the needto reduce emissions to also acknowledge and address climate justice andbeyond: the wider systemic issues interlinked with climate change, including
poverty, inequality, racism, sexism and marginalization and exclusion (Specia& Castle, 2021).

The next 50 years: from urgency to agency

Agency of youth

57

The companion report to this report, written by youth, for youth – Chartinga Youth Vision for a Just and Sustainable Future – reinforces how essential
it is that their concerns and recommendations are expressed, sharedand considered, through innovation in decision-making processes andinstitutions (Aggarwal et al., 2022). In the survey of more than 900 young
people conducted as part of the report, frustration is voiced: 65% think theirgovernment is doing too little on climate change. Another concern is that
53% of respondents feel anxious about climate change.
On the positive side, changing individual behaviour for sustainability isrelatively less challenging for young people on account of limited lock-ins
and increased awareness of the risk of the status quo to their future. Youthare keen to contribute to a better planet and share a responsibility by adopting
various changes, including reducing waste and using recycled products,
voicing their opinion and engaging with peers on environment-related matters,
using public transport more frequently, changing dietary habits and others(Aggarwal et al., 2022).
Today’s youth are thus exercising their agency, but within the constraints ofcurrent institutions that do not allow them to have voice. Youth are also now
shaping their future agency as adults over the course of their lives: as citizens
and voters; as workers and employees; as consumers; as entrepreneurs andinvestors; and as influencers in their social networks. Leaders today must
recognize the voice of young people as powerful actors who can bolster
inclusivity, solidarity and accountability (Aggarwal et al., 2022).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

3.3 Accelerating the paceof change

58

In 2022, we have arguably arrived at a more broad-based sharedunderstanding of the planetary crisis and acceptance of the need for change –at least in principle. The groundswell of climate action commitments froma broad range of actors is testament to this (Hale, 2016;
Kuramochi et al., 2020).

Is change
happening fastenough, and at
the scale needed?

In the climate, biodiversity and SDG processes, thediscourse from many actors is shifting from simply
calling for action to calling for accelerated action,
as well as protecting progress made and preventing
backsliding on ambition as new societal priorities andcrises inevitably occur (e.g. a global pandemic, debt
crisis, energy price crisis, war). The overarching policy question becomes, ‘Ischange happening fast enough, and at the scale needed?’ (Boehm et al., 2021).
This is a complex question. A wealth of scholarly research has sought
to understand societal transformation (e.g. the abolition of slavery, theintroduction of contraceptive pills, the internet), through socio-technical

The next 50 years: from urgency to agency

Photo: Halfpoint / iStock / Getty Images Plus

59transitions (e.g. Geels & Schot, 2007; Loorbach et al., 2017; Markard et al.,2020), transformational adaptation (O’Brien, 2012; Pelling, 2010; Scoones et al.,2015), social-ecological systems and resilience (Folke et al., 2010; Walker et al.,
2004; Westley et al., 2011), and governance (Linnér & Wibeck, 2019; Patterson
et al., 2017). Insights from this research have been picked up in policymaking,for example for stimulating dynamic effects in the energy sector (EEIST, 2021).
Markard et al. (2020) identified challenges in accelerating transformation,
including policy implications for all levels – from individuals to governance towhole-system changes. These challenges are substantial, with few quick fixes.
Fluctuating levels of public trust in institutions and society generally remaina major background challenge to accelerating transformation (Edelman, 2022).
And transformation can be incomplete, surprising or beyond control.
More explicit timescales can lead to more practical and concrete waysof thinking about transformative change – for policymakers in particular.
They must find ways to both compress and extend the timescales atwhich they operate, plan and make decisions. In Figure 3.3, we sketch out
rough timescales that currently shape how we take action on sustainable
development – or fail to take action, as the case may be.
A major challenge is balancing short-term interest with long-term goals
and trends (Hovi et al., 2009). Both in politics and business, strong incentives
lead leaders to focus on short-term gains, typicallywith a 1- to 5-year perspective. This is a problem forseveral reasons.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Policy decisions
made today will
impact global
climate andecosystems
for the next
10 000 years.

60

First, intergenerational equity and life prospectsof future generations are systematically put at risk(see above). A time perspective for ‘future generations’implies anything from tomorrow to the infinite future,and standard timeframes need to be discussed to be
useful in decision-making. With longer life expectancy(depending on the country and level of wealth) and anageing society globally (UN DESA, 2019), prospects for
adult and young generations today are also put at risk.

Second, decisions taken today can have long‑term lock-in effects. Throughbig investments in infrastructure, societies can become locked into using that
infrastructure, despite it being counterproductive to achieving policy goals,
such as decarbonization. Life expectancy of infrastructure and implications forlock-in periods have been well assessed in the energy sector, for example fordams, coal-fired power plants or roads (Erickson et al., 2015); other sectorsthat need to adjust in order to achieve sustainability goals could do the same.
While life expectancy of infrastructure is normally measured in decades(e.g. 50 years), policy decisions made today will also have profound impact
on the global climate and ecosystems for the next 10 millennia, considering
projected impacts of anthropogenic climate change (Clark et al., 2016).
Third, some decisions on policy measures and actions today may not ‘pay off’until years or decades later, and may not therefore be prioritized by leadersFigure 3.3

Timescales that influence the pace of change
years

0

5

10

15

20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80

0

5

10

15

20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80

What timescales shape
our perspective and planning?
Intergenerational equity perspective
Life expectancy at birth for a person
born in 1972, world averageLife expectancy at birth for a person
born in 2022, world averageLife expectancy at birth for a person
born in 2072, world average

Incentive for short-term gains:
Time perspective in decision-making
Typical term in office for government
and members of parliamentMedian tenure for a large company
CEO (2500 largest companies)

Average life expectancy
of select infrastructure types

Paved roads
Transmission lines
Energy generating plants and substations
Water treatment plants
and pumping stations

How fast can change happen?
Duration of decision-making
processes

From introduction of bill in parliament
to commencement, South Africa
Ordinary legislative procedure, EU

Average preparation and processing
time for environmental permits
Processing of an environmental impact
assessment in Sweden
Average preparation timeof an environmental impact
statement in the US

Divestment out of fossil fuels
Emission information disclosure
Decentralized energy production
Carbon-neutral cities
Removal of fossil fuel subsidies
Climate education and engagement
Changing norms: Recognition of theimmorality of using fossil fuels

How fast has change
happened historically?
International action on global
environmental issues
Climate change
Stratospheric ozone depletion
Electric vehicles

years
Sources: see Appendix.

The next 50 years: from urgency to agency

Estimated time needed for triggering‘social tipping intervention’ effect61

who wish to demonstrate results in the short term or during their tenure.
Research on ‘social tipping points’ has investigated timelags in achieving
change. Analysing decarbonization to achieve the Paris Agreement goals,
Otto et al. (2020) identified small interventions with big effects, so-calledtipping effects. Based on an expert survey, the researchers identified six‘social tipping interventions’ and estimated the time needed to trigger thetipping of certain behaviours, ranging from a few hours
to 40 years. Smith et al. (2020) pointed out in responsethat many tipping points are initiated by social
movements rather than policy.

Leaders should
work on multiple
timescales
simultaneously.

A number of things can be done to extend thetimescale in decision-making and planning. Leaders
can use their time in office by making themselves
accountable to future outcomes, by seeking broader
agreements with peers and stakeholders that canoutlast their tenure. Including youth in decision‑making and appointing
ombudsmen for the future can ensure voices that represent long-term interests
are heard (González-Ricoy & Gosseries, 2016). Discount rates could be reducedor dropped (Gollier & Hammitt, 2014). To avoid lock-in, policymakers planners
and investors should anticipate policy change, expand the timeframe andsystem boundaries when assessing new investments and support ‘deliberate
decline’ of unsustainable infrastructure (Erickson et al., 2015; Rosenbloom& Rinscheid, 2020).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Leaders should work on multiple timescales simultaneously. They can take
immediate action for short-term results, seed longer-term change through early
action, and encourage anticipatory action by target groups, by setting longerterm targets and direction in credible ways (Persson & Rockström, 2011). An
example is the IEA’s Net Zero by 2050 roadmap, which sends the unambiguous
message to immediately stop investing in new fossil fuel supplies.

62

A complementary approach is to think more systematically about sequencingof policies. For example, with decarbonization, the pattern most states follow
starts with adopting green industrial policy, then moving to introducing carbon
pricing schemes, and finally a stage of ratcheting up the policy mix (Meckling
et al., 2017). This can serve to buy time, but mainly to gradually build up social
acceptance for the next even more ambitious step.
The other side of the coin is that to respond to the scientific calls for urgencyof action, timescales simultaneously need to be compressed for deciding
and rolling out new policies, infrastructure, technologies and social innovations.
Even when the actions that need to be taken are known and the targets andgoals are identified, achieving change on a decadal timescale is challenging,
given that robust and legitimate decision-making takes time.
By robust decision-making, we mean decisions that accommodate for deep
uncertainty (Lempert et al., 2010) but also build in options for flexibility andavoidance of lock-in. By legitimate decisions, we mean decisions that are
taken in line with both democratic legitimacy (i.e. meeting norms of legal
certainty, absence of corruption, democratic accountability) and social

legitimacy (i.e. the public perceives decisions to be legitimate and has trustin the process).
The duration of a legislative process at the national level depends a lot on
institutional and political context. Generally, it can take one to three years
in preparation – designing a proposal, reviewing alternatives, and performinga regulatory impact assessment and stakeholder consultation (see Figure 3.3).
A legislative proposal then needs to be approved in parliament, which takes
additional time.
Similarly, for a business that wants to invest and establish a new production
facility, the permitting process can take years. Environmental impact
assessment and the permitting process for new installations can take years.
At the international level, the process of negotiating an environmental
agreement and implementing it with demonstrable effect have, in the casesof climate change and stratospheric ozone, taken decades. For the Montreal
Protocol, after scientific ‘warnings’ in 1974, the ‘ozone hole’ was first detectedin the early 1980s; the convention was not adopted until 1987 and in effectuntil 1989 – and that is extremely fast (Velders et al., 2007).
We can start to accelerate change, at both international and national levels,with discussions at Stockholm+50. The trade-offs are not trivial between
legitimate and fast decision-making, and between short-term gains andlong‑term goals. Targeted cultivation of ideas could assist – for example, digital
tools for crowdsourcing and consulting, innovative public communication, andtemporary extra resources for bureaucracies. While compressing timescales
can seem daunting in times when public trust in institutions and social trustin general is low in many contexts (BP Dellmuth & Fornborg; Edelman, 2022),
research shows that perceived fairness of a process can substitute for limited
information on actual or potential outcomes of a decision (Bos, 2001; Lind
et al., 1993).

The next 50 years: from urgency to agency

Given the timescales for change, and their variability and differing contexts, we
propose concrete actions under three shifts to be initiated now, for acceleratingchanges large and small in the long run, in the next chapter.

63

4

Keys to unlock
a better future

Highlights
Our relationship with nature needs to shift from appropriationand extraction towards protection and care. Human-natureconnectedness should be strengthened in social norms
and value systems, and in physical terms in how we live
our everyday lives.
Nature should be radically more integrated in cities and urban
areas, through green architecture and housing policy, green
infrastructure, and standards for access to nature in urban
areas set by local government and community engagement.
Improved animal welfare protection is needed not only for
ethical reasons and connecting humans to nature, but to achieve
multiple sustainable development goals. Transitioning out ofintensive livestock industry and towards more plant-based dietsis a critical means to this end and should be pursued in a just andsustainable way.
A catalytic and long-term effect on repairing our
relationship with nature can be achieved through increased
nature‑based education for children and youth, inspired by
Indigenous communities’ practices and supported througha global campaign.

Ensuring lasting prosperity for all and bringing emission andresource footprints within ecological limits requires a complete
rethinking of our way of living, and a shift in social norms
and values that drive human behaviour. It requires redefining
prosperity at all levels in society and economy.
Choosing a sustainable lifestyle must be the overwhelmingly
easy choice for individuals and communities, throughenabling infrastructures and supporting social norms, andthe unsustainable must be the very difficult choice. This will

Keys to unlock a better future

Enforcing norms on including Indigenous local knowledge
in decision-making and assigning legal rights to nature canhelp directly limit unsustainable extraction of resources anddeterioration of nature value, but can also lead to recognitionof nature’s intrinsic values and changed behaviour over time.

65require major investments and bold decisions, as well as making
unsustainable choices very difficult through regulation andfiscal policy.
Purchasing functions to fulfil our material needs insteadof products would be more resource-efficient. Supportive
regulatory frameworks and changed social norms on ownershipand reuse could have a transformative effect on scaling suchbusiness models and reducing material flows.
The world economy is entangled through global supply chains;high interdependency governs how prosperity is created andshared along this chain, as well as how lasting that prosperity
is in light of environmental and social impacts locally and globally.
Existing governance initiatives provide a basis, but there is scope
to increase environmental ambition and make frameworks morebinding.
National accounts are a highly influential arena in which toredefine prosperity. It is time to move beyond GDP as the primary
metric and adopt indicators that help measure progress towards
the vision of sustainable development, in a collective way tolower risks for first-movers.
Common sustainability standards and principles for products andservices (and eventually functions) should be applied to help toshape the upstream selection environment for innovation, which
has a cumulative impact on technological development.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The sustainability transition will need substantial investment.
Today, we have the paradoxical situation of a massive amount of
capital ready for sustainability investments, yet persistent funding
gaps in low-income countries.

66

Government funding and mission-driven public investment
have unique roles in sustainability-oriented innovation systems.
To bridge the technology gap between rich and poor countries,
it is time for a shift from ‘technology transfer’ to a paradigmof ‘co-development of technology’.
Private finance then has a critical role in bringing innovation
to market. Private investors should engage more in
active approaches to investing to support rapid action
on climate change.

To raise private finance to the needed scale for sustainability
investments in the developing world, there is a need for publicfinance to de-risk and play a catalytic role.
As important as de-risking sustainable investment may be, it isequally important to raise the perceived riskiness – and therefore
the cost of capital – of unsustainable investment, for example
through mandates for minimum allocation of lending portfolios.

The human environment will always change, development willcontinue. There will be growth. This cannot and should not be
avoided. The decisive question is in which direction we will develop,
by what means we will grow, which qualities we want to achieve,
and what values we wish to guide our future.

Photo: Afriandi / Moment / GettyImages

Keys to unlock a better future– Prime Minister Olof Palme (Sweden), Statement in Plenary
Meeting, 6 June 1972 (Swedish Delegation to the UN Conference
on the Human Environment, 1972)

67

The pace of change needs to accelerate to unlock a better future. Not only
should it be faster: it also should deliver just, socially and economicallysustainable and democratically legitimate outcomes. A sustainable world
should provide a good quality of life that is universally shared and can be
maintained indefinitely into the future.
There is no reason such a world cannot exist (Millward-Hopkins et al., 2020;
Vogel et al., 2021). But we are far from it at present, as Chapter 2 showed. To
get there, we must navigate substantial systemic changes. We must determine
what bold actions can be taken to trigger systemic andtransformative change; immediate actions for the shortterm but also planting seeds for long‑term change.

Bold actions
can be taken
to trigger
systemic andtransformativechange.

We must recognize that societies are embedded
within the biosphere, and that our global and national
economies represent just a fraction of all social
interactions (Figure 4.1). Economies cannot exist
without societies, and all social and economic activities
can be sustained only within a healthy and resilient
biosphere (Folke et al., 2011b; Rockström et al., 2009).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

One report cannot comprehensively present all the actions needed fortransformative change. Such change is difficult to anticipate and govern.
We focus here on three shifts and associated areas for action: redefining
the relationship between humans and nature, ensuring prosperity thatlasts for all, and investing in a better future. The rationale for choosing
these is threefold:

68• We propose actions under each shift that can be or need to be taken now,that are known to be important for sustainability in the longer term and thatcan promote systemic change.
• We focus on some key opportunities that are less evident in the current policy
debate and that are not necessarily part of existing policy agendas withininternational processes (e.g. climate, biodiversity, chemicals) and sectoral
domains (e.g. energy system, food system). In this way, we seek to complement
the many emerging sectoral roadmaps for actions to 2030 or 2050.
• We focus on areas where we have contributions to make to the conversation
at Stockholm+50.
If achieved, these shifts and actions imply systemic change and hold large
potential for improving sustainability. They contribute to transformativechange, but they will not be sufficient. We present here a synthesis of research
published in the peer-reviewed literature on these topics and new ideas, basedon the background papers for this report.
Some of the key actions discussed here have been around as ideas for a longtime, but they remain to be fully operationalized and implemented – a reflectionof the action gap of the past, discussed above. In Chapter 5 we discuss key
barriers that stand in the way of change.

Figure 4.1

Actions to unlock a sustainable future
Redefine the relationship between humans and nature
Ensure prosperity that lasts for all
Invest in a better future

Selection environment
for innovation

Reducing risks
to sustainability

Rights of nature

National accounting;beyond GDP

Nature-based education

Green and decent jobs

Indigenous local
knowledge and values

Supply chain governance

Just transition
Function not products

Innovation systems

Circular economy
Sustainable lifestyles
Animal welfare

Co-developmentof technology

Nature in urban areas

Sustainable finance

Economies

Societies

Biosphere

Keys to unlock a better future

Valuing nature694.1 Redefine the relationshipbetween humans and nature
The past 50 years – and even the past 5 years – have seen huge losses anddegradation of nature1 globally. As the latest IPBES report starkly puts it,‘nature across most of the globe has now been significantly altered by humandrivers, with the great majority of indicators of ecosystems and biodiversity
showing rapid decline’ (IPBES, 2019a).
Humans have altered 75% of the planet’s land surface, impacted 66% of theocean area, and destroyed (directly or indirectly) 85% of wetlands. From 2010 to2015 alone, 32 million hectares (ha) of forest were lost (Díaz et al., 2019; IPBES,
2019a). Society’s disconnection from nature has been acknowledged as a root
cause of the current ecological decline (Folke et al., 2011b). At the same time,
half of the world’s GDP is dependent on nature, and investment in ecosystem
restoration can generate up to 30 times the return (UNEP, 2021b).
For many people today, especially in urban settings or in the wealthiest
economies, the current relationship with nature is failing, with multiple
negative repercussions for health, environment and overall sustainability(IPBES, 2019b; Pascual et al., 2017). Humans have always relied on nature in
an instrumental sense, for survival and a good qualityof life, whether through the consumption of natural
resources, recreational use or cultural value we getfrom nature (Díaz et al., 2015), as well as in a relational
sense, in how people derive meaning and purpose
from being connected to nature (Chan et al., 2018;
Mattijssen et al., 2020; Stålhammar & Thorén, 2019).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Humans havealways reliedon naturefor survival
and meaning.

70

From an ethical and philosophical standpoint, natureis also intrinsically valuable; ecosystems have value
in themselves, independently of their usefulness
to humans (Callicott, 1989). The current ecological decline is widely
acknowledged to be linked to an imbalance in how many societies value
nature. Societies’ instrumental valuation often underpins policies and economic
structures, which in turn shape behaviour and social norms at the individuallevel (Folke et al., 2011a; Pascual et al., 2017; Richardson et al., 2020).
The commodification of nature by states and markets demonstrates how
an instrumental value of nature can become institutionalized. More than
550 programmes around the world now pay for ecosystems services,
covering the domains of forest, water, biodiversity and land-use carbon;

1

Following the definition used by the 2019 IPBES report’s summary for policymakers, the word nature
as used here ‘refers to the natural world with an emphasis on biodiversity’ (IPBES, 2019a, p. 51).
Within the context of science, it includes categories such as biodiversity, ecosystems (both structureand functioning), evolution, the biosphere, humankind’s shared evolutionary heritage, and biocultural
diversity. Within the context of other knowledge systems, it includes categories such as Mother Earthand systems of life, and it is often viewed as including humans, not as a separate entity.

together, these account for annual payments of over USD 36 billion (Salzman
et al., 2018). The state also commodifies nature by creating property regimes,
physical infrastructure and scientific knowledge that frames the environment
as consumable products (Parenti, 2015).
Underpinning these programmes is a strong presumption that monetaryvaluation can and should be used to calculate the contributions of nature
to human welfare (e.g., Dasgupta, 2021), which formalizes a particular notionof ‘value’ that is not universally held (Farber et al., 2002; Gibbs, 2010). Thisarguably leads to a transactional framing of nature in policy evaluation that isreflected in increasing commodification (Gómez-Baggethun et al., 2010).
Although there is debate on the role of nature commodification in conservation
efforts, the metaphor of nature as a stock that provides a flow of services
has become the dominant way of viewing ecosystems (Norgaard, 2010).
Approaches to conservation that are based on payment for ecosystem services
are often misaligned with the perspectives of Indigenous communities and failto incorporate Indigenous knowledge and practice (Smith et al., 2019).
Most of the biodiversity on Earth is located in the territories of Indigenous
peoples – around half a billion people who collectively manage about a quarterof the world’s land (Garnett et al., 2018). Indigenous land management
practices have often been shown to result in higher native and rare species
richness (Arcese et al., 2014; Peres, 1994; Redford & Stearman, 1993) and lessdeforestation and land degradation than non-Indigenous practices (Ceddia
et al., 2015; Nolte et al., 2013).

Indigenous
knowledge
is essential forsustainability
and human-natureconnectedness.

Another important locus for reshaping the relationshipbetween people and nature is urban areas. Humanwell-being diminishes as we become physicallydistanced from natural spaces needed for health andwell-being, inspiration, relaxation or sense of belonging(IPBES, 2019a; Riechers et al., 2021a). A recent studyof more than 1000 cities in 31 European countries
found that up to 43 000 premature deaths could be prevented each year if
these cities were to achieve the World Health Organization recommendations
regarding residential proximity to green space – nearly a third of the European
population lives below that recommendation (Barboza et al., 2021).
As urbanization continues globally, the majority of humans will haveless direct contact with ‘natural ecosystems’ and the perception ofKeys to unlock a better future

Despite this, governmental and non-governmental initiatives tend to overlook
the diverse views and needs of Indigenous populations (Brondizio & Tourneau,2016) and the enormous potential of Indigenous-led governance for scaling
up socially just conservation efforts (Artelle et al., 2019). Indigenous local
knowledge about the landscape is holistic andaccumulated over centuries, making it essential for
promoting sustainable environmental management andstrengthening human/nature connectedness (BurgosAyala et al., 2020).

71

Photo: Federico Rostagno / iStock / Getty Images Plus / GettyImages

connectedness to nature. Today, more than half the world’s population lives
in cities; current trajectories for population demographics imply that billions
more people will live in cities by 2100. The way in which urban areas areplanned and designed will have immense consequences for biodiversity, green
space access and human health in cities (Garrard et al., 2018; UN DESA, 2016).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Urban planning will also impact resilience to climate risks: Nearly all of the
10 cities projected to become megacities between 2018 and 2030 are located indeveloping countries; 60% of cities with 500 000 or more inhabitants face highrisk to exposure to natural disasters including cyclones, floods and droughts,
according to UN DESA. Nature-based solutions could help cities to adapt toclimate change, while delivering benefits to health and biodiversity (BP Barquet& Green).

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Repairing the relationship between people and nature will require redressing
a core imbalance in how individuals and societies value nature, so that
more emphasis is placed on the intrinsic and relational value of nature thanis currently the case (Diver et al., 2019a). It would be transformative (Díazet al., 2019; Riechers et al., 2021c), requiring deep changes across societies,
economies and communities. One pathway to this rectified relationship could
be measuring human-nature connectedness.
This concept has been highlighted as a potentially powerful approach
to finding interventions that address sustainability challenges (Ives et al.,2018; Riechers, Loos, et al., 2021). Strengthening the connection could
simultaneously benefit human well-being (Nisbet et al., 2008; Shanahan et al.,2016). People with higher levels of connectedness make choices and engage
in behaviours that are more ‘pro-environment’. These include using publictransportation, mindful use of energy, recycling, environmentally friendly
shopping behaviour and acceptance of climate change and energy policies(BP Giusti et al.).
Several studies suggest human-nature connectedness can be increased
through carefully designed interventions to prompt engagement with nature(Richardson et al., 2020). Given this evidence, increasing such connectedness
has been proposed as an important ‘leverage point’ for deep transformativechange towards a sustainable future (Riechers et al., 2021b). One proposed
set of ‘Nature Connectedness Pathways’ includes experiencing nature throughthe senses, being emotionally connected to nature, appreciating the beauty ofnature, recognising how nature brings meaning to one’s life, and actively caring
for nature (Richardson et al., 2020; Riechers et al., 2021c).
These principles can be adopted in urban design, education and elsewhere,
to encourage a cultural reset on how we see nature – and how we then‘use’ or interact with nature (BP Agrawal & Kalra, BP Giusti et al.). While thisframework may seem to be more appropriate for high-income settings, theapplications could be useful in low-income settings, as well as the basis
for designing liveable urban spaces where residents have equitable accessto ecosystems, no matter their level of wealth.

Areas for action
Drawing on the concept of Nature Connectedness Pathways, we identify
four areas for action that can help to connect individuals, communities andsocieties to the natural spaces around them and repair the broken relationshipbetween humans and nature. They address our connection to nature in how welive, how we produce food, how and what we learn, and knowledge and rightsthat inform our choices.

Integrate nature in cities and urban areas
Nature can contribute to thriving cities: urban ecosystems bring social, culturaland community benefits and well-being (Pineda-Pinto et al., 2022). ‘Green’
architecture, infrastructure and access to nature in towns and cities can help
repair our relationship with nature and mitigate the ‘extinction of experience’(Shanahan et al., 2016; Soga et al., 2015). Local and national governments
can provide policies to encourage more of all three, as a way of both seedingtransformative change through shaping values and providing immediateclimate, biodiversity and health benefits.

Keys to unlock a better future

1 Integrate nature in cities and urban areas
2 Protect animal welfare by mainstreaming it in sustainable
development governance3 Expand and invest in nature-based education
4 Recognize Indigenous local knowledge and the Rights of Nature73‘Systemic solutions to the urban environment that are inspired by nature,use nature, strengthen and/or are supported by nature’ are considered
nature‑based solutions (Frantzeskaki et al., 2019); these are increasingly
promoted to address societal challenges of climate change, natural disasters,
human health and well-being, and economic and social development (CohenShacham et al., 2016; BP Barquet & Green). As such,nature-based solutions are increasingly framed interms of multi-functional climate adaptation. The recent
Covid-19-related lockdowns spurred research into
the mental and physical health benefits of urban green
space (BP Barquet & Green).

Urban planningshould bring
opportunities toconnect with andcare for nature
into the everyday
environment.

Greening architecture and housing policy: Biophilic
design is an example of a nature-based solution thatconnects people and nature within built environments
and communities, requiring sustained engagementwith green spaces and promoting attachment andresponsibility for local ecosystems and people(Beatley, 2011; Heerwagen et al., 2013). Using Biophilic
design principles at a building, neighbourhood and city scale may encourageconnection to nature, improve our health and well-being, and make action feel
more meaningful (Andreucci et al., 2021).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Biophilic design principles in architecture and interior design include efforts tobring the outside indoors: green or living walls and skylights; mimicking natural
patterns and forms; and planting abundant greenery, e.g. rooftop gardens andatriums (Heerwagen et al., 2013). Housing policy should stipulate that all new
developments include spaces for an active relationship with nature; urban
planning should bring opportunities to connect with and care for nature into
the everyday environment through the creation of spaces for these activities(Richardson, 2020).

74

Biophilic design is increasingly used in urban development around the world
as an approach to make cities more liveable, by reducing heat island effects
and air pollution and providing residents with access to green space. The cityof Singapore is a pioneer in biophilic urbanism, with extensive use of green
walls, rooftop gardens and green walkways connecting parkland throughout
the city (Newman, 2014).
Greening urban infrastructure: Biomimicry as a practice learns from andmimics the strategies found in nature. For example, water treatment andsewerage that mimics wetlands and stream or river flows have been adopted
in South African settlements (Hermanus & Campbell, 2017), with implications
for use in higher income neighbourhoods as well. Harvesting nutrients fromhuman waste – a practice used in smallholder farming in Uganda (Andersson,2015), Burkina Faso (Dickin et al., 2018) and Pakistan (Nawab et al., 2006) also
could be the future for both rural and urban communities globally. Research
is now under way in Brazil (Chrispim et al., 2017), Bolivia (Liera et al., 2022),
Ethiopia (Tucho & Okoth, 2020), Haiti (Moya et al., 2019), South Africa (Mkhize
et al., 2017), and the Netherlands (Stehouwer et al., 2022), among other places,
to develop ways to scale up such initiatives for application in cities.

Access to nature in urban areas: A range of nature accessibility standards
can be set, to ensure natural sites and areas are within easy reach of people’s
homes. For example, in the UK, the Accessible Natural Greenspace Standard
imposes a hierarchy of accessibility to natural spaces (e.g. 2 ha within
300 metres, 20 ha within 2 kilometres). As well as improving physical accessto natural areas, the standard aims to enhance ‘naturalness’ and biodiversityof these spaces, for example through the creation of meadows and wildflower
planting, and to improve nature connectivity by encouraging communities
to use their natural spaces for social, educational and cultural events (English
Nature, 2003).

Photo: Andy Andrews / The Image Bank / GettyImages

Keys to unlock a better future

Spending time in urban green spaces can mitigate the stressful impacts ofcity living, even for residents of informal settlements (Cinderby et al., 2021).
However, guaranteeing accessibility to nature in urban areas is often notstraightforward. First, city and community planning processes often failto prioritize space for nature that would allow for everyday nature experiences.
Using land for community gardening or public parks has less economic value
in our current economic and societal systems than for a shopping centre
or high‑end residential development (de Sousa Silva et al., 2018; Kronenberg
et al., 2020).

75

Second, where governance is weak, property rights and valuation of nature
is even trickier, heightening inequality (Mahendra et al., 2021). Where city
development plans are absent or not enforced, private actors tend to drive
development, leaving poorer parts of the population disconnected from key
services – including green space (Mahendra et al., 2021).
As a way forward, proactive and meaningful community engagement
is essential to ensure local buy-in and agency in urban planning. Adopting
a social equity lens early on and iteratively throughout the planning of a policy
or project can ensure that equity outcomes are well integrated and budgetedfor (Mahendra et al., 2021).
Involving a broad range of stakeholders in urban planning processes,
including community-based civil society organizations, can help to ensure thatgrassroots support for mutually agreed city plans survives beyond electoral
terms (Mahendra et al., 2021). In the informal settlement of Mukuru, Nairobi,a civil society organization managed to create space for residents to participate
in a planning process for their neighbourhood, including environment andnatural resources. They engaged directly with residents, rather than local
elites, and made strategic use of political opportunities, including an upcoming
national election, to put pressure on the local government (Horn, 2021).
Recommendations for integrating nature in cities and urban areas:• Local governments and architects should apply biophilic design principles
in new and retrofitted urban architecture and housing policy, to enablehuman-nature connectedness as well as provide direct climate, biodiversity
and health benefits.
• Local planners should green urban infrastructure such as water treatment,
for example by learning from biomimicry and smallholder practices.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future• Access to nature in urban areas should be promoted through local or national
accessibility standards and higher economic valuation of green space.
Especially where reformed valuation is not possible or governance is weak,community engagement should be supported as a way of ensuring local
agency, long-term perspectives and accountability in urban planning.

76

Protect animal welfare through governancefor sustainable development
Protection of animal welfare will help build human-nature connectedness.
It can also directly or indirectly benefit many other societal goals, suchas disease prevention, healthier diets, reduced water and land pressures,and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
Consensus has grown over the years in scientific and philosophicalcommunities that non-human animals feel and experience more than humans
give them credit (Dawkins, 2008; Webb et al., 2019), and that animal welfare
matters morally (Peggs, 2018; Regan, 1987; Singer, 1995). In many countries,this understanding has received some policy and legislative recognition, forinstance through anti-cruelty laws and animal welfare acts (Shaffner, 2010).
The importance of respectful treatment of other sentient beings is recognizedacross many cultures and religions and in ethical guidance for scientificpractice (UNGA 2020). Indeed, the 1987 Brundtland Report recognized that‘sustainable development does not only involve a
moral obligation to future generations but also to otherliving beings’ (Brundtland & Brundtland Commission,1987). This year, UNEA-5 adopted a historic resolution
to produce a first report on the animal welfareenvironment-sustainable development nexus.

Sustainable
development
involves amoral obligation
to other living
beings.

Many of the ways in which we currently interact
with animals limit our ability to achieve sustainable
development goals (BP Verkuijl et al.). For example,
while the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic remain
uncertain, the virus highlights the potential roles that
habitat destruction, industrial livestock farming, and the wildlife trade play
in infectious disease emergence (Roe et al., 2020; Wiebers & Feigin, 2020),
as well as the suffering that these practices cause to billions of individual
animals – wild and domesticated (BP Verkuijl et al.). While generalizing acrossall geographies and all cases is not possible, industrialized livestock production
as a system is most associated with greater disease burdens – both throughthe over-consumption of meat and arising human non-communicable diseases,
and through the use of antibiotics and more closely housed animals, which
can drive disease among livestock, as well as emergence of zoonoses andantimicrobial resistance. Industrialized systems also are geographically biased
towards consumption in wealthier regions, and often based in less wealthy
ones, contributing to greater per capita environmental pressures, and further
exacerbating inequalities.

This industry has attracted attention for its impacts on human health, as
breeding grounds for antibiotic resistance as well as human disease, after
outbreaks of West Nile Virus, Crutzfeld-Jakob and more.
This intersection of food safety, zoonotic disease and antibiotic resistance isthe focus of the One Health framework, developed by the One Health Initiative
for improving public health (www.onehealthinitiative.com; Lebov et al., 2017).
Conventional applications of the One Health framework focus on intensive
practices of the livestock industry, but only seek to improve biosecurity andpathogen monitoring (BP Verkuijl et al.).

Keys to unlock a better future

The way we interact with animals also impacts the environment. For example,
on top of its detrimental impacts on animal welfare, industrial animal agriculture
consumes much more land and water than plant-based alternatives, making
it a leading driver of deforestation in some regions (Pendrill et al., 2019). It
also produces much more waste pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions thanplant-based alternatives (Poore & Nemecek, 2018). According to one standard
estimate, this industry is responsible for approximately 14.5% of global
greenhouse gas emissions (FAO, 2013).

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Animal health should be regarded as a worthwhile end in itself under One
Health (Kamenshchikova et al., 2021). If we are serious about improving
conditions for animals at scale, we need to pursue a global transition awayfrom industrial animal husbandry and toward humane, healthful and sustainable
alternatives to this food system (Coghlan et al., 2021; Sebo, 2022).
Economic tools could be used to incentivize activities that support animal
welfare, and disincentivize activities that conflict with it (BP Verkuijl et al.).
Governments can phase down subsidies for practices that impose significant
costs on humans, animals and the environment. For instance, animal products
including poultry, pork, mutton and beef are among the top 10 food productsthat benefit the most from government support, which often goes to large
companies that practice intensive farming methods (FAO et al., 2021). More
broadly, subsidies for agriculture are a key underlying driver of global forest
loss (Kissinger, 2015). By phasing down subsidies for harmful practices,
governments can further reveal the true cost of these practices.
Governments can then increase subsidies for humane, healthy and sustainable
alternatives. For instance, on the supply side, governments can subsidize
plant‑based food production, and consider investing in research anddevelopment of plant-based or cell-based meat, dairy or eggs, as economies
such as Canada, China, Denmark, the EU, the Netherlands, Singapore andthe UK have started to do (UKRI, n.d.; Verkuijl &Green, 2021). On the demand side, governments
can subsidize purchase of plant-based foods for
low‑income individuals or otherwise introduce policies
to ensure access to healthy and sustainable meals(BP Verkuijl et al.).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Transitions should
not exacerbate
existing
inequalities orcreate new ones.

78

Governments can furthermore require corporations
to disclose welfare, health or environmental risks
associated with their practices to investors (BP Verkuijl
et al.). For example, the FAIRR Initiative is currently
working with investors to assess food companies according to risk factors suchas greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and biodiversity, water use andscarcity, waste and pollution, antibiotics, animal welfare, working conditions,and food safety (https://www.fairr.org). Improved information and transparency
in product labelling can help consumers and investors to make informed
choices, but they should not hold sole responsibility for making the rightchoices (Akenji et al., 2021; Ran et al., 2022).
In regions with high levels of animal protein production and consumption,
the benefits of a just transition may be considerable. According to one study,
a global shift towards plant-based diets could avoid 8.1 million human deaths,
reduce food-related emissions by 70%, and save USD 1.6 trillion in health andclimate change costs by 2050 (Springmann et al., 2020). In Latin America,a shift to higher-value fruit and vegetable production would result in 19 million
jobs gained, compared to 4 million lost (Sagat et al., 2020).
However, not all stakeholders will be affected equally. Lessons from transitionsin other sectors – specifically energy, and fossil fuel producing communities –point to the importance of ensuring meaningful, inclusive, participationof stakeholders who stand to be affected by a transition (SEI et al., 2019).
Affected stakeholders may include, for instance, workers, consumers,companies, communities, and regions (BP Verkuijl et al.).
It is important that transitions do not exacerbate existing inequalities or create
new ones, for instance by amplifying food or income insecurity for marginalized
communities (BP Verkuijl et al.). Governments can support transitions inmany ways, including compensation for lost incomes and jobs, investments
in regional economies and communities, investments in social safety nets, andfunding for education and retraining that prepare people for work in humane,healthful, sustainable sectors (BP Verkuijl et al.).
Recommendations to mainstream animal welfare in sustainable
development governance:• Governments should elevate the importance of animal welfare forsustainable development, and sustainable development for animal welfare,in international instruments.
• Support policies that benefit humans and non-human animals alike,particularly policies that use informational, financial and regulatory
measures to benefit animals more and harm them less. Animal welfare
impact assessments can play a valuable role here. Governments could
phase down public subsidies for animal products and harmful agriculture,and increase support for plant-based food production, in a way that avoids
regressive effects on low-income households. Governments should requireor encourage voluntary action on disclosure of animal welfare, health andenvironmental risks by food companies to investors.
• Researchers, experts and policymakers should expand the interpretationof the One Health framework to recognize animal health and welfare as
an end in itself, and not just instrumental to human health outcomes.

Expand and invest in nature-based education

Since its inception in 1977, a key goal of environmental education has been
‘to search for a new ethic based on respect for nature’ (UNESCO, 1978, p. 28).
However, classic environmental education favours curricula abundant inecological knowledge but ignores practical skills and social circumstances;
this is inadequate for building a deep relationship with nature (Hungerford
et al., 1980).
Examples of nature-based learning are many (see e.g. Box 4.2 on forest
schools). The most effective programs in environmental education are

Keys to unlock a better future

Education policy and school curricula can explicitly draw on natureconnectedness pathways thinking, through which education authorities andteachers could contribute to a long-term, catalytic effect on repairing our
relationship with nature (Richardson et al., 2020).

79characterized by occurring over an extended period of time, learning about
existing, local, and immediate environmental issues, practicing directly
deployable action skills, experiencing and taking ownership of environmental
problems, and participating together with role models
and mentors (Chawla & Cushing, 2007; BP Giusti
et al.). These pedagogical principles are at the coreof Indigenous concepts of education, where ecology,
community and spiritual life are seamlessly integrated(Cajete, 1994).

Weave Indigenous
principles ofenvironmental
education into
mainstream
educational
systems.

For North American Indigenous people, for example,
education in nature is life; everything from navigation
to application of medicinal properties of plants andanimals, to traditional techniques of agriculture isbased on an intimate understanding of the natural
world (Cajete, 1994). Similarly, in India the Indigenous
Gurukula system of education emphasized a holistic
and immersive approach to education and involved teaching in natural settings(Joshi & Gupta, 2017). And for more than 500 years, the Bishnoi religious
community in India have demonstrated an overlap of religious, personal andecological attitudes and are known to protect trees and animals, even at great
personal cost (Jain, 2016).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The idea that we are a part of the natural community is at the coreof Indigenous world views and is an idea that could be mainstreamedin modern pedagogy (Cajete, 1994). Where possible and appropriate,
Indigenous communities could be engaged in the co-development of naturebased curricula. It is also critical that Indigenous communities have accessto education that acknowledges their worldviews, ancestry, and culture,including language.

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As well as weaving Indigenous principles of environmental education intomodern educational systems, there is also a need to broaden curricula toreflect the diversity of locally driven approaches to sustainability in the Global
South. Across Africa, Latin America and Asia there are countless examplesof grassroots movements working to protect their local environments, butthese cases are often neglected in sustainability education (Nagendra, 2018).
For example, across India, agro-ecological initiatives such as the Deccan
Development Society in Medak district (Natarajan, 2005) and the Foundation
for Ecological Security in Anand (Nagendra & Ghate, 2019) work with farmers
to restore forests and common land, and to promote organic methods offarming and soil-friendly crops (Kothari, 2014). Such examples should could
be used by international organizations such as UNEP and UNESCO to develop
more globally inclusive educational materials and (Nagendra, 2018).

Photo: Zero Creatives / ImageSource / GettyImages

The growth of forest schools
Nature was humanity’s first classroom. Denmark’s first formal forest school
was started in the early 1950s by a woman named Ella Flautau. Ella’s children
and her neighbours’ children began gathering daily in a nearby forest, leading
the parents to form a group. Eventually, they established an initiative for‘walking kindergartens’, based on the Waldorf-Steiner approach to education,
where learning is child-led and play-based, with adults as facilitators, notteachers (The Forest School Foundation, 2020).
Similar forest schools, known as Naturbørnehavens, continued to pop up
throughout Denmark during the 1950s and the trend later spread to the restof Scandinavia. Today, preschool education conducted outdoors is a widely
accepted practice in the region. Inspired by the Scandinavian model, the forest
school movement emerged in the UK in the 1990s and has grown globally
since then, with bush kindys in Australia, Waldkindergarten in Germany andor Mori‑no‑ie in Japan.
The core elements of a forest kindergarten include all-weather nature immersion
time every day; child-led learning; inquiry-based teaching style; child-inspired,child-directed documentation of emergent curriculum; place‑based education;and small class sizes (Natural Start Alliance).

Keys to unlock a better future

Box 4.2

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Recommendations for expanding and investing in nature-based education:• Education authorities and Indigenous communities should collaborate
on weaving in Indigenous principles of environmental education into modern
educational systems.
• To build a deep relationship with nature, education authorities and teachers
should not just focus on ecological knowledge but also include practicalskills, learning about local environmental issues and taking ownership,
through hands-on engagement in community projects.
• UN organizations, such as UNESCO and UNEP, should start a global campaign
to promote development of more diverse educational materials, drawing
more on cases from the Global South.

Recognize Indigenous local knowledge and the Rights of Nature
Greater recognition of Indigenous local knowledge can redefine ourrelationship with nature, through more effective nature conservation, andmore just environmental governance. Assigning legal rights to nature canbe a way of limiting extraction of resources but can also lead to recognitionof nature’s intrinsic values and changed behaviour over time.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Indigenous knowledge is inextricably linked to Indigenous self-determination,rights and responsibilities, which includes respect for the obligations of all
beings of creation, not only human (Latulippe & Klenk, 2020). Acknowledging
Indigenous knowledge and values can lead to more effective, locally owned
and equitable conservation and development outcomes (Berkes, 2017; Berkes
et al., 2000). However, Indigenous knowledge is more than data; it is embodied
practice embedded within a worldview and inseparable from the socio-cultural,political, legal and other place-based relations and obligations that give rise
to holistic knowledge systems (Latulippe & Klenk, 2020; Parsons et al., 2017;
Rosengren, 2018).

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Despite recognition in international agreements of the importance of traditional
or Indigenous knowledge for conserving biological and cultural diversity,
few national policies explicitly include it (Brondizio & Tourneau, 2016). At the
subnational level, tools such as environmental risk assessment protocols
often do not account for this type of embodied knowledge, which means thatIndigenous concerns are excluded from decisions on the use of ecosystems
within their ancestral territories (Arsenault et al., 2019).
A typical example is the development of energy projects, which often encroachon Indigenous peoples’ rights and territories, in both developed and developing
countries; flawed consultation processes with Indigenous communities
are common (BP Muñoz Cabré & Vega Araújo). In Sápmi in Scandinavia,
for example, Indigenous communities are seeking the application of justiceprinciples to both mining and renewable energy wind farms, on issues suchas the legitimate representation of communities during consultation processes,
territorial fragmentation, and impacts including changes in reindeer behaviour

around mines and windfarms (Kløcker Larsen et al., 2022; BP Muñoz Cabré& Vega Araújo), with knock-on ecological impacts.
One mechanism for achieving Indigenous self-determination could be throughthe legal concept of Rights of Nature, which is closely aligned with Indigenous
world views (O’Donnell et al., 2020). Rights of Nature is a legal instrumentthat enables nature, such as ecosystems or species, to have inherent rights
and legally be entitled to the same protection as individuals and corporations(Lavides, 2018). It follows the rationale used to establish human rights: sincehuman rights are based on the philosophical belief that rights are derived fromhumanity’s own existence, then logically, so do inherent rights of the natural
world (Darpö, 2021).
Based on the idea of environmental personhood, the recognition of the Rights
of Nature concept can be seen as a radical approach to redefining humans’
relationship with nature, underpinning a growing global movement focusedon implementing the concept through legal processes. Legal tools are devised
depending on whose interests are protected, and adopting Rights of Nature
is a stepwise progression (Jain, 2021).
The Human Right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, recognizedby the UN Human Rights Council in 2021, is based on an anthropocentric
view of nature, where the primary concern is maximizing natural resources andprotecting humans from environmental pollution (Jain, 2021). Rights of Nature
can be viewed as the final step in this progression, where the focus shifts
from the interests of humans to the interests of nature,of which humans are a part (Jain, 2021). Pursuing
an integrated approach that incorporates rights-based
strategies for human beings and the environment could
be transformative (Earth Law Center et al., 2020).
Although the Rights of Nature are not yet recognized
everywhere, several ecosystems around the world
have been declared living entities by local or federal
courts, with many of them also granted personhood.
New Zealand recognized the Whanganui River and
Te Urewera National Park as a ‘legal person’ withaccompanying rights and obligations (Magallanes,2015). The Ecuadorian constitution also granted rights
to nature, due in part to beliefs held by Indigenous peoples regarding theway that human beings should interact with nature (see Box 4.3). Similarly,
the Rights of Nature are enshrined in the Bolivian constitution.

Keys to unlock a better future

The focus shifts
from the interestsof humans
to the interestsof nature, of
which humans
are a part.

83Box 4.3

The right of a river to run its course
In 2008, Ecuadorians amended their constitution, recognizing Pacha Mama
(Mother Earth) as a legal entity in Chapter 7, Rights of Nature (Republicof Ecuador, Constitution, 2008). The idea of el buen vivir, or good living, wasthe basis for part of the amendment, which states that people have the rightto benefit from environmental services and resources. The understanding of
nature itself as an independent entity or ‘subject’ is central to the Indigenous
worldview of the Andean region.
In 2011, the first case was tried in which the Rights of Nature concept wasapplied: the right of a river to its natural course. A lawsuit was filed in theprovince of Loja on behalf of the Vilcabamba River, the course of which
had been redirected under a state-led project to widen a road. Although one
possible argument was that the river served as a vital natural resource for the
local population for a healthy environment, because of the recent constitutional
reform, it was possible to claim that the river itself has the right to its own
natural course.
One of the main arguments in the judgement from the Penal Tribunal of Loja’s
Provincial Court, dated 30 March 2011, is the recognition of the Constitutional
Rights of Nature:
Our constitution of the republic, without precedent in the historyof humanity, recognizes nature as a subject of rights. Article 71
affirms that nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced oroccurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the
maintenance and regeneration of its lifecycles, structure, functions
and evolutionary processes (Republic of Ecuador, 2008).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The court ruled in favour of the river. The state was directed to repair thedamage that had been done during the initial stages of road construction, but
the company involved in the road construction did not comply with the court’s
ruling. The claimants could not afford to bring the case to court a second time.

84

Proponents of environmental constitutionalism argue that Rights of Nature
should be included in international law or national constitutions, to ensure
long-lasting value to the protection and conservation of nature (Darpö, 2021).
However, several barriers have prevented the Rights of Nature movement fromgaining broader traction.
As illustrated in the Ecuadorian case (Box 4.3), bringing cases to court
is expensive and often beyond the capacity of local communities ornon‑governmental organizations typically advocating on behalf of nature. Also,
merely observing that nature has rights will not provide the effective force oflaw; enforcement must be included. Although the Rights of Nature movement
appears to be gathering momentum, and may hold potential for protecting
Indigenous-held ecosystems, ensuring broader recognition of Indigenous
knowledge in legal and policy frameworks will maintain Indigenous communities’
long-term connection to their landscapes (Diver et al., 2019b; Tănăsescu, 2020).

We see evidence of acknowledgement of Indigenous ownership and historicalrights in New Zealand, Canada, and Australia, for example, and in international
agreements on Indigenous rights (UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples, 2007); in many places, this has yet to be translated to legal status,
in part because of lack of accountability (see Chapter 5).
Recommendations for recognizing Indigenous local knowledge and theRights of Nature:• National policies related to nature conservation should more strongly include
the role of traditional and Indigenous knowledge, in line with international
agreements.
• National legislative and judicial bodies should consider whether establishing
Rights of Nature will help protect nature in specific contexts, based oncomprehensive consultation with stakeholders and analysis of what
capacities and resources would be needed for effective enforcement.

Photo: UN Photo / Manuel Elías

Keys to unlock a better future• The Human Right to a clean, safe and sustainable environment shouldincorporate a Rights of Nature rationale, whereby human responsibility
and interests for the protection of Nature as a legal entity with personhood,
are clearly articulated.

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Taken together, the actions we propose here have the potential tofundamentally redefine our relationship with nature by shifting how
people and societies value the natural world: from valuing nature asa set of extractable resources to recognizing the intrinsic value of themore‑than‑human world (O’Connor & Kenter, 2019). Achieving this shift will
require us to overcome the undeniable tension at play between human-centred
models of ecosystem valuation – which only consider ecosystem functions
as useful for meeting human needs or desires – and the role of intrinsic andrelational values of nature (O’Connor & Kenter, 2019).
In the next section we explore the economic and policy implications of theseshifts for achieving a level of human prosperity that is aligned with the strong
sustainability model. Some of the tools we suggest below rely on these
inherently damaging systems and ways of thinking that are antithetical tothe¥long-term goal of redefining our relationship with nature. We acknowledge
this¥as a stepping stone to the future we want to achieve.

4.2 Ensure prosperity
that lasts for all

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

As shown in Chapter 2, the world is far from ensuring prosperity that lasts
and even farther from prosperity that lasts for all. Climate, biodiversity andthe natural world are under severe pressure; extreme inequalities continue
in who exerts the pressure on our planet’s systems as well as who suffers
the impacts (Chancel et al., 2021; UNEP, 2021d).

86

One major source of pressure is our material resource use, which also reflects
the inequality in growing prosperity. The annual global extraction of materials
has tripled since 1970; the rate of extraction has accelerated since 2000. The
consumption of these materials is unevenly distributed: high-income countries
have per capita material footprint consumption
levels that are 60% higher than upper-middle income
countries and more than 13 times the level of the lowincome countries. Under a historical trends scenario,
global resource use could more than double from 2015
to 2060 levels (IRP, 2019).

The way weuse resources
now requires
systemic change.

If material resources are a proxy for prosperity,
inequality and the pressure on both planet and people,
then the way we use them now indicates the urgency for systemic change.
The extent of the transition required to ensure lasting prosperity and to bringlifestyle footprints within ecological limits will require a complete rethinkingof our way of living, including a shift in social norms and values that drive
human behaviour (UNEP, 2017b).
Instead of a narrow focus on economic growth, a future of ‘lasting prosperity
for all’ should be seen as human, environmental and societal well‑being,
maintained for the long-term. This definition of prosperity could beconsistently applied at all levels: international, national, subnational, business,
societal and individual (BP Jain & Chhabra). It requires addressing the vastinequalities – between individuals and between countries – that characterize
the world today.
While the world is far from being able to supply lasting prosperity for all atpresent (O’Neill et al., 2018), societies and the economies embedded withinthem can provide material comfort within planetary boundaries – a safe andjust space for humanity (Raworth, 2017).
It is physically possible to meet our material needs with very low inputsof energy and materials, in such a way as to provide more than enough andconsistently for all (Millward-Hopkins et al., 2020). The key is to reduce the‘material intensity’ of meeting our needs, particularly
those that are not inherently material-intensive(Jackson & Marks, 1999). Yet many social, culturaland physical environments today do not support
low‑impact means of satisfying human needs.

The world asa whole appears
to have a greater
focus on wealth,status and image.

The world as a whole appears to have a greater focus
on wealth, status and image than on the transcendent‘larger-than-self aims’ of caring for the environment,
for example, or each other (BP Agrawal & Kala; Kasser
et al., 2020; BP Mallya & Raha]. As higher-income
populations continue to increase their consumption and resource footprint,
they also raise the benchmarks for aspirational lifestyles in less wealthy
countries. Globalization and enhanced interconnectedness through accessto internet and social media platforms has heightened the risks of emulationof prolific and resource-intensive lifestyles at global scale (BP Agrawal & Kala).

The promise of ‘zero-carbon’ has not been fully realized (Berry et al., 2014),
and standards are still lacking (Kennedy & Sgouridis, 2011). Moreover, people
who live in low-carbon housing – that is, housing constructed or refurbishedusing low-carbon solutions across the full life-cycle (UNEP, 2021a, p. 16) – arestill embedded within a society offering mostly high carbon–emitting activities.
Thus, residents of low-carbon housing may not be living truly low-carbon
lifestyles (Walker et al., 2015). Local and individual efforts require larger scale
support and transformation.
Substantial barriers remain to redefining prosperity (BP Jain & Chhabra), andeven more so, to enabling more equitable prosperity (BP Nazareth & Ghosh).
These range from barriers at the international level, for example with economic
size acting as a source of power, to the business level, where companies seek
to broaden their markets and remain profitable, to the individual level, where

Keys to unlock a better future

Promising examples exist of individuals and communities adopting
lower‑carbon lifestyles, for a multitude of reasons, not only because ofconcern about climate change (Howell, 2013; Sitra, 2021). Efforts aroundthe world are under way to implement zero-carbon communities, such as theBeddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED: Chance, 2009) and the Zero
Carbon Communities initiative in Australia (Beyond Zero Emissions, n.d.).

87

material wealth is often associated with success. As for national-level metrics,
geopolitics and power relations between nations are strongly influenced – if not
wholly determined – by economic size, while governments rely on monetizedeconomic output for revenue. At the individual level, many individuals
throughout the world associate material wealth with success, a belief that isstrongly reinforced by social norms (and leads to a disconnect with nature, as
noted above; section 4.1). Businesses seek to broaden their markets and mustremain profitable.
Another challenge is that people’s material needs are rooted in biology,
but are not absolute, and can change, in both more and less sustainabledirections. For example, for most of human history, 6 square metres ofliving space per person in a dwelling was typical and considered sufficient(Brown, 1987). In high-income countries today, that would be considered
extraordinarily small.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The implication is that while a certain amount of living space will suffice,sufficiency is a flexible notion – with rising income, households tend to spendsome of it on expanding their living space (Kemp-Benedict, 2013). And as living

88

Photo: SeppFriedhuber / iStock / Getty Images Plus / GettyImages

space expands, people readjust their criteria of sufficiency (Foye, 2017, p. 431;
BP Lindahl & Dalhammar). The adjustment can go in the opposite direction
as well (Cohen, 2021), although it pushes against norms. Some individuals feel
intense personal satisfaction with a smaller space – yet distress from social
disapproval, as illustrated by the experience with ‘micro-flats’ in some countries(Lau & Wei, 2018; Preece et al., 2021; Vachon, 2018).
Meanwhile, it is much easier for people with property to adopt low-carbon
housing options or invest in climate adaptation measures (BP Barquet & Green).
And the distribution of property within countries has been strongly shapedby historical inequalities (Aladangady & Forde, 2021). Addressing material
footprints and other markers of prosperity raises pressing questions ofinequality and historical responsibility.
Between countries, the goal of achieving lasting prosperity for all is built
into international agreements. Principle 3 of the Rio Declaration (UNGA,
1992) ensures a right to development that meets theneeds of both present and future generations, in an
equitable way. Principle 7 asks member states to‘conserve, protect and restore the health and integrityof the Earth’s ecosystem’, while noting that states havecommon but differentiated responsibilities.

States should‘conserve,
protect andrestore the healthand integrityof the Earth’s
ecosystem’, with
common but
differentiatedresponsibilities.

While we do not have principles for common but differentiated responsibility
at the level of individuals, the extreme inequalities in climate footprints
are becoming increasingly clear (see Chapter 2; BP Agrawal and Kalra;
BP Dalhammar et al.; BP Nazareth & Ghosh). The Paris Agreement targets
appear to be out of reach unless we tackle the emissions of the rich
(Newell et al., 2022).
From the dominant narratives of consumption driven by rising affluence,
consumerism, product marketing and access to credit (Ahlström et al.,2020), the world must move to a sustainable future where sustainability andconsuming less is considered aspirational (BP Agrawal & Kala). Such transitions
require transformation of systems, including social norms and values(UNEP, 2017b).

Keys to unlock a better future

These principles are part of international law, andagreeing to them was a significant achievement
for international environmental and development
cooperation. In practice, however, the results havebeen disappointing (BP Mallya & Raha). Climate
negotiations are the most prominent arena for the
principle of common but differentiated responsibilities,
and high‑income countries – which have the greatest
historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions
and experience the least impacts – have yet to takeresponsibility, even the step of providing financial
investments to support the poor and marginalized communities and countries
that bear the brunt of climate impacts (Althor et al., 2016; David-Chavez &Gavin, 2018; UNFCCC, 2021a, 2021b; BP Nazareth & Ghosh).

89

Areas for action
Ensuring prosperity that lasts for all requires changing metrics and realigning
powerful norms, incentives and drivers at all levels of society. It also requires
recognising common but differentiated responsibilities for high-income
countries and individuals. While individuals, communities and others cantake actions, transformative and systemic change depends on providing
enabling infrastructures, supportive legal frameworks and new social norms.
We highlight here five interlinked areas of action, which start at the level ofindividual and community lifestyles, move to business models and supply
chains, and to the national level for statistics and support for innovation,
influenced by all of these levels.

1
2
3
4
5

Make a sustainable lifestyle the easy choice
Purchase function, not productMake supply chains better for both humans and the environment
Align national statistics with sustainability goals
Change the selection environment for innovation

Make a sustainable lifestyle the easy choice

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Making sustainable lifestyles the overwhelmingly easy choice forindividuals and communities is necessary for ensuring lasting prosperity
and substantially reducing footprints of high-income people and nations.
This requires innovative and bold policies that actively create enabling
infrastructures, reconfigure systems and amplify social norms aroundsufficiency, as well as new global governance initiatives to address equity
in these transitions.

90

The impact on the planet from individual lifestyles and overconsumption,and in particular the richest individuals, is highly inequitable (Chapter 2).
New research directly connects global targets to individual footprints;
for example a ‘1.5°C lifestyle’ in keeping with the Paris Agreement targets
on climate‑changing emissions would mean average per capita footprintsof 2.5 tCO2 by 2030 and 0.7 tCO2 by 2050, compared with today’s per capita
footprints of high-income countries, which are often over 10 tCO2 (Akenji etal., 2021). Per capita footprints can also be measured for land, water, nitrogenand chemicals (see e.g. https://www.prince-project.se/), also showing a clear
pattern of inequality across high- and low-income countries.
In some contexts, individual changes in lifestyles can lead to substantial
reductions in carbon footprints, by approximately 25% in Europe (Moranet al., 2020). Reducing footprints to the level indicated as necessary by scientificevidence inevitably entails changes in lifestyles, together with supporting
infrastructure; dedicated policies must be part of the mix. Other motivations andvalues than sustainability can drive more sustainable lifestyle choices (e.g. thrift,
well-being, small pleasures of life) and synergies between individual or policy
goals are possible (Sitra, 2021).

The policy toolbox for sustainable lifestyles is growing fast (see BP Agrawal& Kalra; BP Dalhammar et al.; BP Lindahl & Dalhammar; BP Olsson & Dawkins).
Current policy measures can be broadly grouped into measures for individuals,
markets and societies:• nudging individuals into sustainable actions (e.g. ‘ecolabelling’, reinforcing
norms through ‘good examples’, modifying physical environments);• enabling markets to make sustainable choices available, convenientand affordable (e.g. market incentives to subsidize or tax behaviours andproducts, regulations that remove products through standards and bans);• and redefining social norms to make sustainability aspirational (e.g. promoting
new social identities such as minimalism or vegetarianism, leveraging collective
action to shift social norms; BP Agrawal & Kalra).

The latter type of measure – redefining social norms – shows that lifestyles
are not just individual pursuits but collective practices, such as the Raahgiri
Day in New Delhi to motivate people away from use of personal cars. Another
typology is provided by Akenji et al. (2021), who proposed a hierarchy ofoptions: starting with efficiency improvements, moving to modal shifts towards
more sustainable options, to absolute reductions in high-impact consumption.
A strongly emerging common theme in the background papers to this report
and the scientific research on which they draw is that we are now at a point
where efficiency-oriented options and nudging measures are insufficient.
To achieve the scale of behaviour change needed, more systemic andtransformative measures are needed, more oriented toward the enabling
infrastructure for lifestyle choices and the broadersocial norms underpinning our behaviour and toward
absolute reductions in high-impact consumption.
Absolute decoupling has not taken place due
to so‑called rebound effects, problem shifting andlimited potential of recycling (BP Dalhammar et al.).

Moving forward, the sustainable choice needs to be
not just the default choice, but the easy choice for anindividual to make (Akenji et al., 2021). The substantial
structural changes in economies and societies required
is highly likely to threaten powerful established interests that have both the
motivation and the means to resist them (Geels, 2014). At the same time,
substantial and uncertain change is threatening for people in more precarious
situations. While much of the literature on ‘everyday resistance’ in the context
of sustainability focuses on small-scale sustainability initiatives (Leach& Scoones, 2015; Sovacool & Brisbois, 2019), it can go the other direction
as well (Sovacool et al., 2022).
There is no easy way to address the powerful structures that drive societies
along unsustainable paths. However, there are some broad strategies that
can help. One is to go beyond merely encouraging sustainable activities

Keys to unlock a better future

Efficiencyoriented options
and nudging
measures are
insufficient.

91

at the margin, e.g., through nudges (Thaler & Sunstein, 2009). Nudges canindeed be effective and appear to be a useful policy tool. However, they
influence modest choices within specific contexts (Lehner et al., 2016). They
are about small changes within existing systems of production and provision,
whereas this report focuses on substantial systemic change. More alarmingly,
because they demand little of people, acceptance of nudges can crowdout acceptance of more challenging options with greater potential impact(Hagmann et al., 2019).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Rather than a default, where a sustainable and unsustainable option sit side
by side and the purchaser is gently encouraged to choose the sustainable one,choosing unsustainable options should be very difficult. Substantial systemicchange requires actively promoting sustainable options and actively demoting
unsustainable ones (Box 4.4).

92

Photo: Donyanedomam / iStock Editorial / Getty Images PlusEnabling infrastructure: why fossil-fuelled private cars are still theeasy choice
To take an influential example, use of fossil-fuelled private cars is supported
as the default option because of a wide range of supporting infrastructure andinstitutions (BP Olsson & Dawkins). The enabling infrastructure and institutions
include fuelling stations, trained mechanics, regulations, manufacturers,
suppliers, dealerships, marketing messages and so on that are geared towards
the petrol-powered car. Fossil fuel extraction remains actively promoted andoften subsidized (SEI et al., 2021).
In comparison, finding alternatives is more challenging, at least at present,
due to fewer charging points for electric vehicles, limited public transportation
services, fewer specialized service stations and less-readily available parts,
among other conditions. All of these exist within an emerging regulatoryenvironment that contributes to uncertainty.
Transitioning to low-carbon transportation requires system reconfiguration(Geels, 2018). The clues to a future system configuration lie in innovations
that currently live in ‘niches’. Some might replace existing mobility components,
such as electric motors replacing internal combustion engines. Intermediatetechnologies might lead to a blended approach, such as biofuels andhybrid electric vehicles. Yet other innovations may change opportunities,
such as smart cards to improve public transport or facilitate trips that use
multiple modes.
Finally, innovations lying outside of transport per se, such as working from
home, changing ownership patterns, or living in more compact cities, would
likely drive broader changes in institutions and infrastructure that would
impact upon car ownership and use. These influences offer opportunities forpolicy. Experiments with shared cars are one example of changes to ownership
patterns, an example of ‘purchase function, not product’ discussed below.
Some countries are introducing bans and moratoria on fossil fuel explorationand extraction (SEI et al., 2021, Chapter 6), which could arguably acceleratea transition away from fossil-fuel use, including for transport. Other policies
include expansion of charging infrastructure, incentives for purchasing electricvehicles or retiring fossil-fuelled vehicles, and disincentives or outright bans
(Plötz et al., 2019) for fossil-fuelled vehicles.
Cultural and institutional adoption of these practices can be one action towarda sustainable future, in both low- and high-income settings, and would satisfy
some material desires while potentially smoothing out inequalities of access –but they are not the main endpoint. Given the intertwined nature of social,economic and ecological systems – and problems – more needs to be done.
Densification of urban housing and infrastructure, walkable cities and so forth,
all contribute to fewer vehicles on the road and facilitate closer interactions
with natural settings.

Keys to unlock a better future

Box 4.4

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Examples of making unsustainable choices difficult, costly or even impossible,
in the context of decarbonization include the banning of short haul flights,
stopping airport expansion and freezing road building projects. Clearly, there
are risks and barriers with such measures. They can be seen as violating
individual rights and they can pose risks to local
cultures and economies dependent on the product orinfrastructure that is demoted or banned (BP Agrawal& Kalra). For this reason, trust-building and inclusive
and just processes are important to ensure acceptance.

Policies previously
seen as radical
or unthinkablebecome seenas acceptable,sensible oreven popular.

At the same time as more transformative policies
are needed, we may be approaching a tipping pointin public acceptance for sustainable consumption
policy, at least in some places. Signs are emerging
of more radical policies in some places, such as end
dates for selling fossil-fuelled cars, cities banning
diesel vehicles, cities curbing tourism levels, andorganizations reducing working time for theiremployees (BP Dalhammar et al.). This suggests that the so-called Overton
window may be shifting; i.e. policies previously seen as radical or unthinkablebecome seen as acceptable, sensible or even popular.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

New ideas and concepts in research can be more socialised and tested inpolicy experiments, such as operationalising ‘sustainability corridors’, notionsof ‘sufficiency’, and mapping out ‘provisioning systems’ (BP Dalhammar et al.;BP Olsson & Dawkins). The focus on individual consumption when discussing
lifestyles could be broadened to also consider other roles of an individual, suchas member of organizations, employee, and influencer in their social network(Nielsen et al., 2021).

94

In view of the grave footprint inequalities and principles of equity, high-income
countries and individuals must take the lead on these types of transformative
shifts. To ensure a truly global response, however, global governanceis needed. A first step could be a collective global exercise to co-develop
pathways for sustainable lifestyles and parameters that can measure it, led
by a UN global commission (BP Agrawal & Kalra). Another idea is to developa Global Budget of Resources and set up a Conference of Parties on Utilizationof Resources under the UN (BP Mallya & Raha). High-income countries
should support the enabling infrastructure for sustainable lifestyles that also
meet development aspirations in low-income countries through increased
investment support (see section 4.3).
Recommendations to make a sustainable lifestyle the easy choice:• Transformative change requires a long-term vision, but it can be enabledthrough near-term actions: local and national governments should identify
the barriers in infrastructure that prevent individuals from shifting tomore sustainable lifestyles and begin to remove them, combined withmore effective and ambitious mixes of policies that edit choices, in orderto accelerate change.

• The use of local policy labs and learn-by-doing experiments for sustainable
lifestyles should be scaled up, where the individual is an active co-creatorand network influencer.
• A regular UN forum on sustainable lifestyles should be established, to enableinternational peer learning and elevate action on SDG12. A collective global
exercise to co-develop pathways for sustainable lifestyles and parametersthat can measure it should be convened.

Purchase function, not product
Purchasing functions to fulfil our material needs instead of products would
be more resource-efficient; this should be a key element of the reset neededfor everything from individual lifestyle choices to business models, to ensure
lasting prosperity. Supportive regulatory frameworks and changed social
norms on ownership and reuse could have a transformative effect on scaling
such business models and reducing material flows.
Function – rather than product – is a core idea of circular economy. This switch
could help plug the ‘circularity gap’: less than 9% of total material input to theglobal economy is estimated to consist of ‘cycled’ materials – not recycled,
per se, but reused, repaired and otherwise cycled back into the economy(Circle Economy, 2021).
Material throughput can be substantially lower if households, businesses andgovernment agencies switch from purchasing products to acquiring functionsof products – instead of buying a lamp, purchasing lighting. This practice isalso referred to as ‘Product‑Service Systems’, which can be product‑oriented(i.e. a product with additional services such as maintenance), use-oriented(e.g. leasing or renting), or result-oriented (no predetermined product isinvolved; Bocken et al., 2016; Tukker, 2015).

Function-oriented
contracts
could resolve
some of thetrickier problems
for a sustainableeconomy.

In this framing of ‘function-oriented contracts’,‘consumers’ become ‘users’: their use of the service
is not the end of the line for the product (BP Lindahl& Dahlhammar). Such contracts are available tosome extent already in the mobility and consumables
sectors through equipment rental, carsharing pools,
launderettes and online streaming services, as wellas public services such as lending libraries. If they
became the norm rather than the exception, functionoriented contracts could resolve some of the trickier
problems for a sustainable economy.

Keys to unlock a better future

Such contracts to purchase functions can have substantial environmental andeconomic benefits (Lindahl et al., 2014), in part because the service-oriented
contracts include reuse, repair and remanufacture of equipment, which createsenvironmentally positive incentives. A faulty machine – say, a water pump –can be removed and fixed by a service provider that would also be responsible
for all the materials in that product, as part of a service – providing water.

95

One problem is ‘expenditure mistakes’ – buying a product that the purchaser
soon decides is not what they want. By purchasing for function, the user
can simply end a contract or ask a provider to find a new way to provide
their function. The user avoids needless costs. The material goods aretaken away by the provider and readied for use by someone else. This
innovation lowers the stakes for making poor expenditure choices – andenables a higher standard of living that contributes to better quality of life
(Brown, 1994).
A second problem is obsolescence. Style and performance improvements
can make a perfectly functional piece of equipment undesirable, as illustrated
by the short turnover time for mobile phones in most high-income countries.
The owner of that equipment may buy a replacement before the end of its
useful life. However, under a function-oriented contract, the equipment might
be replaced by the service provider and remanufactured to capture recent
improvements (BP Lindahl & Dahlhammar).
The goal, at the design stage, would be to facilitate remanufacturing: makeproducts that are easy to disassemble, reuse or repair. This practice would
require both cultural and regulatory shifts, but would reduce the volume
of solid waste and life-cycle emissions. One dimension of the cultural shiftneeded to make reuse more acceptable and popular is the language weuse. Words like ‘old’, ‘waste’ and ‘second‑handproducts’ are generally seen as less attractive than‘new’, ‘resources’ and ‘products’. It could have atransformative effect to develop more neutral language(see Figure 4.2). Powerful social norms that privilege
ownership over rental and borrowing, and new things
as more desirable, need to be disrupted. Behaviouralbarriers must also be overcome; people want to haveeasy accessibility and control over the things theyuse (Tukker, 2015).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Following function
over productcould transform
global value
chains to benefit
today’s lowincome countries.

96

Regulatory shifts are needed to remove barriers formore reuse or repair, whether by users or function
providers. Examples include waste and producer
responsibility legislation that promotes recycling over reuse; chemicallegislation that blocks repair and remanufacture if a remanufactured productdoes not comply with rules on dangerous or toxic substances; and intellectual
property rights that prevent repair in order to preserve competitive advantage.
Following function over product could transform global value chains, including
supply chains, in ways that would benefit today’s low-income countries.
The current pattern follows raw materials produced in low-income countries,
used to create finished products in high-income countries, which then become
waste that is sent back to low-income countries. This flow could be replacedby value chains dominated by remanufacturing and reuse, locally and abroad(BP Lindahl & Dahlhammar). In that case, remanufacturing would increase
working knowledge of the products within low-income countries, and the value
added to the remanufactured products would provide income and employment.

Figure 4.2

Economic terms

Neutral language

Consumers

Users

ConsumeUse

Ownership

Access

Waste

Resources

Second-handproducts

Products

Reuse

Use

Keys to unlock a better future

A more neutral language around consumption

97While intuitive in principle, ‘product-service systems’ do not by default leadto lower resource throughput and absolute decoupling; a number of conditions
must apply (Kjaer et al., 2019). Relying on circular economy approaches
alone carries the risk of rebound effects, where saved resources lead tomore resources used; hence, measures are needed that are oriented towards
sufficiency and lifestyles more broadly (see above).
Recommendations to shift to purchasing functions, not products:• Businesses should shift to offering functions rather than products as muchas possible.
• Government should adapt legal frameworks to remove bias against businessmodels that switch from selling products to functions.
• Governments should help create and expand markets for use- andresult‑oriented product service systems through public procurement.
• Government and businesses should pioneer more neutral language aroundconsumption and reuse, to enable new social norms to develop around thestatus of ownership and new products.

Make supply chains better for both humans and the environment

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The world economy is entangled through global supply chains, and sincethe 1972 Stockholm Conference, they have increasingly driven the world
economy. High interdependency governs how prosperity is createdand shared along this chain, as well as how lasting that prosperity is inlight of environmental and social impacts locally and globally. Transparency
and sharing verifiable information are crucial (Dasgupta, 2021) to ensuring
decent new jobs and skills, co-creation and sharing of prosperity and benefits,social safety and security, and care for the vulnerable. Existing governanceinitiatives provide a basis, but there is scope to increase environmental
ambition and make frameworks more binding.

98

A key issue for businesses and governments when contributing to prosperity
and equity, as opposed to the company bottom line only, is how todemand, incentivize and support sustainability along the supply chain. This
responsibility becomes extra important when raw materials are supplied fromdeveloping regions, which may lack strong enforcement of local legislation on
environment, human rights and decent work. The uneven distribution of power,
capacity and agency throughout supply chains calls on those in power tocreate the capacity needed for transformation.
Between 1995 and 2007, pure domestic production as a share of global GDP
declined from around 85% to below 80%. Meanwhile the contribution of global
value chains to global GDP rose as a share of the total (World Bank Group etal., 2017, p. 43). These patterns sharply reversed during the 2007 – 2008 financial
crisis, and only partly recovered thereafter. Nevertheless, the overall trend has
been towards an expansion of global value chains in the global economy.

To date, supply chain governance has mostly been voluntary (BP Engström)
and targeted at mapping and analysing sustainability impacts along the
supply/value chain (see e.g. UNEP, 2021c). One influential set of guiding
principles is the ‘Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact’ (seeTable 4.1; UNGC, 2022). Organized under the four categories of human rights,
labour, environment and anti-corruption, they explicitly entwine human andenvironmental development and, if followed, would support both green anddecent jobs (see Box 4.5). As the European Commission’s recent Trade Policy
Review points out: ‘The green transition needs to go together with social
equity. A serious decent work deficit persists in global supply chains in many
parts of the world, from serious violations of freedom of association to poor
working conditions’ (EC, 2021, p. 2).

Table 4.1. The Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact are related to ‘corporate
sustainability’ and applicable to supply chain governance (UNGC, 2022).

Human Rights
Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationallyproclaimed human rights; andPrinciple 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.

LabourPrinciple 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective
recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;
Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; andPrinciple 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

Environment
Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental
challenges;

Principle 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly
technologies.

Anti-Corruption
Principle 10: Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including
extortion and bribery.

Keys to unlock a better future

Principle 8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and99

BOX 4.5

Green jobs and decent work: maximizing synergies
In the context of the climate transition (SDG13), the potential of new, green
jobs has come to the fore, as a co-benefit or even a primary reason to makelarge public investments in renewable energy, low-carbon mobility, energy
efficiency and climate resilience. The International Labour Organization(ILO) has estimated that 24 million new jobs will result from the climatetransition and shifting to a circular economy, and that 1.2 billion current
jobs (e.g. in agriculture) depend on a healthy environment (ILO, 2018; seealso BP Muñoz‑Cabré & Vega-Araújo). Equally, a transition to a ‘bioeconomy’can facilitate new small-scale entrepreneurship (Kuckertz et al., 2020).
At the same time, the decent work agenda (SDG8) was deeply affectedby the Covid-19 pandemic, with failing or absent social safety nets andincreasing unemployment, including among 2 billion people worldwide
in informal employment and especially among youth (UN, 2021). Educationand skills development (SDG4) were similarly disrupted with potentiallylong‑term effects.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The interlinkages between these agendas and possible synergies should
be more systematically explored. Evidence, good examples and needson the following questions should be synthesized (see BP Engström):

100• Are public job creation programmes targeting climate goals and maximizing
SDG synergies?
• How can new green job creation programmes target marginalized workers,
the informal sector and unemployed youth? Are new green jobs promoting
occupational health and safety and decent work?
• How are just transitions designed for workers and communities in fossil fuelindustries and other industries that need low-carbon transition?
• How will climate and environmental change impact labour productivity
and worker safety?
• Are education curricula equipping young people with the right skills to prepare
for a sustainability transition?
• How will the ‘future of work’ agenda (e.g. automation, artificial intelligence,
gig workers, remote workers) affect green job opportunities?
• How can workers and employees help drive the sustainability transition,
at workplaces and through trade unions?
The economic recovery after the pandemic and the need to accelerate towards
Agenda 2030 together make Stockholm+50 a timely moment to make a stepchange on greening jobs, with a particular focus on youth and developing
economies. Building on the Global Deal and existing initiatives on green
jobs (e.g. Green Growth Knowledge Platform, ILO Green Jobs Programme),a new initiative to co-develop knowledge, good practice guidelines andpilot programmes should invite governments, business, trade unions andyouth groups.

The Ten Principles are a widely referenced benchmark. Nevertheless,they could be improved. Notably, there is no recommendation to discourage
unsustainable practices under the ‘environment’ category. In contrast to humanrights, labour and anti-corruption, where the principles urge businesses toexplicitly avoid bad actions, the environmental principles only recommend
encouraging good actions. This is unlikely to drive change at the needed
scale – as noted earlier, a sustainability transition requires actively promoting
sustainable options and actively demoting unsustainable ones.
Furthermore, as voluntary principles, adoption of the Ten Principles or any
other guidelines depends on whether companies believe they can help alleviate
reputational risk, or whether their clients or investors require a high standardof social and environmental due diligence (Smit et al., 2020, p. 16).
A recent study carried out for the European Commission found thata majority of survey respondents, including business representatives,supported mandatory due diligence requirements. Mandatory requirements
assist business in many ways, including coherence and legal certainty.
The existence of a common and non-negotiable standard helps responsible
businesses to also be competitive, and gives them leverage in discussions
with supply-chain partners and investors (Smit et al., 2020, p. 17).
One important finding from the study is that industry organizations – that is,groups that represent many businesses – were less supportive of a mandatory
standard than were individual business respondents. The gap is striking,and concerning, because industry organizations represent businesses
to policymakers.

Due diligencemust cover thefull range ofenvironmental
and social
impacts, as wellas raise ambition.

A key barrier to mandatory national regulations isthat they must not violate World Trade Organization
rules. In response, a variety of voluntary, mandatory
and hybrid regulatory systems is emerging, mainly
driven by initiatives in high‑income countries, withdecidedly mixed results for lower-income countries(Partzsch, 2020). Another key challenge for many
multinational corporations is to ensure compliancewith standards beyond the first-tier suppliers, in the wider supply network(Villena & Gioia, 2020). This is why global approaches are useful, to set moregeneral formal or informal standards. Other key tools to promote global supply
chains that are better for humans and the environment include regulations
for corporate sustainability governance and reporting, public procurement,

Keys to unlock a better future

Mandatory due diligence laws have been in place in the US and individual
European countries for conflict minerals. More recently, the EU introduced
a requirement for all member countries. Other requirements are in place fortimber, and others are being proposed for human rights and environmental
issues (BP Engström). To promote intended
outcomes, due diligence must cover the full range
of environmental and social impacts, as well as raise
ambition; to be effective, transparency and traceability
are a prerequisite (e.g. Trase, n.d.).

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disclosure of financial risks, and tools for better traceability, such as digital
passports (BP Engström).
Recommendations to make supply chains better for both humans
and the environment:• The UN Global Compact and its members should consider increasing thelevel of ambition of the environment-related Ten Principles, to more actively
demote unsustainable options and practices.
• National governments and international organizations should consider morebinding due diligence requirements and greater harmonization.
• Relevant international organizations, supported by member states, business,trade unions and youth organizations, should consider co-developing more
knowledge and best practices for maximizing synergies between green jobs,
decent work and youth employment.

Align national statistics with sustainability goals
National accounts are a highly influential arena in which to redefine
prosperity. It is time to move beyond GDP as the primary metric and adopt
indicators that help measure progress towards the vision of sustainable
development, in a collective way to lower risks for first-movers.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

National metrics and statistics inform policymaking and policy analysis.
They are far from the only inputs to decision-making, but the choice of corestatistical indicators is an influential signal of what matters to policy, andefforts to improve key indicators can direct policy interventions in particular
directions. National statistics can thus act as policy levers, so they must
be chosen well. The shortcomings of GDP havebeen well known for a long time (Raworth, 2017;
BP Jain & Chhabra).

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New metrics canbe developed
and can become
hugely influential
on policy.

The perverse nature of current statistics is wellillustrated by their neglect of the caring economy– the unpaid work that underpins the functioning of
our societies, countries, cities, and families and thus
creates a public good. As the Covid-19 pandemic has
made clear, this is essential work (Guerrero et al., 2020;
The Lancet, 2020). National economic accounts – thesource of data for calculating GDP – almost exclusively record transactions
where money changes hands. There are a few exceptions, and what is included
and what remains excluded is highly revealing of policy preferences. For
example, the implicit rental value of owned homes may be counted as earned
income (Mazzucato, 2018, p. 93), while intangible assets, such as intellectual
property, have begun to be accounted for as well (Haskel & Westlake, 2018).
In contrast, unpaid caring work remains outside the accounts.

As a prominent example of an alternative metric, the Human Development
Index (HDI), introduced in UNDP’s first Human Development Report (HDR) in
1990 (UNDP, 1990), illustrates how indicators can shape policy. The authors’
goal was explicitly pragmatic. Noting that the statistics available in 1990
were highly constrained and that too many statistics could be bewildering,
the authors of the HDI focused on three key areas of human development –longevity, knowledge and decent living standards – and chose three broad
indicators – life expectancy at birth, literacy and GDP per capita. Since
that time, subsequent HDRs have addressed a range of issues, continually
expanding the scope of inquiry and the structure of the HDI (UNDP, 2019).
This example shows that new metrics can be developed and can become
hugely influential on policy.
In a sustainable world, and in contrast to current practice, the high-levelindicators that guide policy and that are used to compare countries should
also include essential but currently unrecorded or undervalued life-supporting
activities (Eisler, 2007, Chapter 10). There are many ideas, such as the measureof Inclusive Wealth that aggregates all capital assets and is regularly tracked
by UNEP (UNEP, 2018).

Photo: Hugh Sitton / Stone / GettyImages

Keys to unlock a better future

A wide range of alternatives to GDP are now being implemented withincountries to guide policy (BP Jain & Chhabra). In Australia, Measuring
Australia’s Progress (MAP) was targeted to the general public througha dashboard. In Germany, a set of nine so-called W3 indicators wereintroduced to complement GDP. They cover three dimensions: ecology,
economy, and well-being. In Bhutan, the Gross National Happiness Index isused as an input to policymaking, and was used as a basis for a sustainability

103scenario (Kamei et al., 2021). Environmental accounts were introduced
as a set of satellite accounts to the UN System of National Accounts (SNA)in 1993 (UNSD, 2007). They provide an internationally recognized andstandardized way to incorporate environmental resource use and emissions.
To the extent that they are taken seriously in policy formation, alternatives
to GDP and other key statistical indicators can help drive policies toward
human well-being and environmental sustainability (BPJain & Chhabra).
However, there are significant barriers to reorienting societies from measuring‘growth’, via GDP, to ‘prosperity’, via alternative metrics. A nation’s influence
in international affairs is seen as dependent on economic heft. Government
revenues depend on GDP, in that either taxes can be raised or the numberof taxed transactions.
Recommendations to align national statistics with sustainability goals:• Global leaders must collectively recognize the need to redefine prosperity
through alternative indicators, to generate buy-in and not deter ‘first movers’.
• Governments should mainstream the narrative of redefined prosperity withincountries through consultative approaches, including with subnational
government.
• National statistics offices should more widely adopt consumption-based
accounting and life-cycle accounting, and national governments should set
goals and strategies for reducing footprints, with support for low-capacity
institutions from relevant UN bodies.

Change the selection environment for innovation

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Common sustainability standards and principles for products and services(and eventually functions) should be applied to help to shape the upstream
selection environment for innovation, which has a cumulative impact ontechnological development.

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If the recommendations above were positively encouraged through policy
initiatives – to make a sustainable lifestyle the easy choice, purchase a function
rather than a product, make supply chains better for both humans andnature, and align national statistics with sustainability goals – then inventors,
innovators and entrepreneurs would take them into account when carryingout research, development and design. Such considerations at these stages
are crucial because early decisions constrain later decisions. The activity
in a product’s lifecycle with the greatest impact on products’ environmental
impact is design (BP Lindahl & Dahlhammar).
Design activities, in turn, are guided by institutions, norms, standards, andprinciples that live outside of any one firm and that inform firms’ and individual
inventors’ activities. These shape the ‘selection environment’ for innovation,
which in turn influences what potential innovations are further developed.
Those become the starting point for subsequent innovation, so the selection
environment acts in a cumulative fashion (Dosi & Nelson, 2018). To takeone example, opposition to GMOs in food strongly impacted the selection
environment and subsequent development of biotechnology-based sectors(Saviotti, 2005, pp. 18 – 19).
Formal criteria, when widely adopted and, as necessary, enforced throughregulation, offer one route to shaping the selection environment for innovation.
For example, firms seeking financing may choose to align their product with
the Green Bond Principles (ICMA, 2021; Maltais & Nykvist, 2020, pp. 10 – 11).
A further and potentially influential example is the emerging standard fora circular economy. The ISO is drafting such a standard, ISO 59004 (BP Lindahl
et al.), which defines a circular economy as ‘an economic system that uses
a systemic approach to maintain a circular flow of resources, by regenerating,retaining or adding to their value, while contributing to sustainable
development’ (BP Lindahl & Dahlhammar). It lays out a number of definitions
and principles, including that organizations ‘regenerate, retain, or add value’
effectively; inclusively collaborate with stakeholders along value chains andacross value networks, and share the value created;sustainably manage and regenerate stocks and flows;
and track those stocks and flows in a transparent
manner to enable accountability. Adopting theseprinciples at the level of research, development,
and design would shape the form of new products
and the ways in which they are provided to users.

A potentiallyinfluential
example isthe emerging
standard for acircular economy.

At a high level, official taxonomies of sustainable activities – that is,classification systems that provide common definitions of what constitutes
a sustainable activity – can address concerns with greenwashing and facilitate
the linking of international capital with a credible pipeline of projects (BP Duttet al.). Regulation based on such a taxonomy would boost investor confidence
in investment opportunities in developing countries. Because of the broad
scope and therefore potentially strong influence of taxonomies of sustainable
activities, it is crucial that they be developed through a transparent andinclusive process.

Keys to unlock a better future

Principles can also be developed for nature-based
solutions, despite the complexities that arise fromrelying on living components that are embedded
within dynamic social contexts. The challenges are
significant: little data are available for life cycle costsof nature-based solutions, and it is not always clear whether adaptationinterventions are indeed targeting those that need them the most (Bisaro &Hinkel, 2016; Lehmann et al., 2018). However, some degree of standardizationof cost estimation and analysis of benefits would greatly assist cities,
coastal communities, and others to incorporate nature-based solutions
into their standard decision-making (BP Barquet & Green). More generally,well‑designed stakeholder-informed approaches can systematically identify
ecosystem service trade-offs, synergies and ‘hotspots’ associated with green
infrastructure (BP Barquet & Green; Cousins, 2021; Meerow & Newell, 2017).

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While the EU taxonomy was the first major taxonomic framework to be
implemented, taxonomies are at various stages of development in developing
countries such as China, Malaysia, South Africa, and India. Given thesocio‑economic contexts of developing countries, these could consider
weaving in relevant socio-economic criteria besides environmental standards
in taxonomy development, in order to facilitate a just transition to a low-carbon
economy (BP Dutt et al).
This short list of examples shows how common standards and principles canhelp to shape the selection environment for innovation, which has a cumulative
impact on technological development. Any definitions, rules and principles
must respect the very real and non-negotiable biophysical limits of the planet.
As Raworth’s ‘doughnut’ metaphor highlights, the goal for a sustainable
future is to provide a good quality of life for all in a manner consistent withecological limits (Raworth, 2017). Crucially, that implies that the twin crisesof overdevelopment and underdevelopment (see Chapter 2) are closelyinterlinked. Both goals must be pursued with equal vigour, and neither should
be subordinated to the other.
Recommendations to change the selection environment for innovation:• Businesses should adopt voluntary sustainability standards and principles
so that they become market-leading and influence innovation and productdevelopment.
• Governments should develop binding standards and classification schemes
when voluntary standards are not aligning with sustainability goals or they
are not sufficiently influential.
• International organizations should seek to harmonize standards, with special
concern to entry requirements for low- and middle-income countries, sothat they can access new markets for sustainable products and align theirinnovation systems to ambitious selection environments.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future• Publicly funded innovation should demand adherence to standards.

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Prosperity that lasts, for all, can be promoted through a number of actions
that together make a sustainable lifestyle an easy choice, refocus fromproducts to functions, make supply chains work better for people andplanet, align national statistics with sustainability, and change the selection
environment for innovation so that it positively drives all these changes.
Beyond these, creating an enabling infrastructure and making new innovations
will require substantial investment.

4.3 Invest in a better future
All the actions identified above – to redefine our relationship with nature andto ensure lasting prosperity for all – and additional actions to transition ourenergy, food and transport systems will need investment.
The way we live now relies on globally distributed networks of production,
trade and waste. The day-to-day transactions within those networks rely on
and are shaped by the existing set of long-lived infrastructure, machinery andbuildings (Fisch-Romito et al., 2021). Private expectations of profit and publicplanning determines investment in new long-lived goods, and therefore theshape of future day-to-day transactions.
Any future sustainable world – with multiple economies and cultures,supporting all individuals equitably – will have its own complex networks
of production and trade. Because of a tight relationship between energy
consumption and complexity, in a sustainable world
those networks may be simpler than ones that
dominate today (Tainter, 2011). Nevertheless, they will
still be substantial and have an impact on people andthe planet. The long-lived goods supporting those
networks will also differ from those of today, whichmeans that the pathway to that future sustainable
world depends crucially on investment decisions madetoday (BP Dutt et al.; Lecocq & Shalizi, 2014).

The real challenge
is to redirect
financial flows,
moving the
global economy
and society to asustainable path.

A sustainability transition requires investment in new and greener capital
goods, while simultaneously shifting capital away from unsustainable systems.
Abandoning existing capital goods before the end of their productive lifetime
heightens risks for investors exposed to these assets during the transition(Cahen-Fourot et al., 2021). In recent years, certain carbon‑emitting sectors
have declined, such as coal-fired power plants and coal mining, and to a lesser
extent petroleum-related activity, perhaps more for economic reasons andto avoid local health impacts than a commitment to sustainability goals. In
any case, the real challenge is to redirect financial flows to promote alternate
technologies or business models, eventually moving the global economy andsociety to a sustainable path.
In some cases, the ‘new’ capital will be productive only with other kinds ofinvestment. For example, replacing a fossil-fuel refinery with a biofuel refinery

Keys to unlock a better future

The sustainable finance discourse today has toa large extent focused on new, green investment
opportunities. However, as in any technologicaltransition (Perez, 2010), some existing capital goods –for fossil-fuel extraction (Lazarus & van Asselt, 2018) as well as power plants(Chignell & Gross, 2013) and chemical plants (Jang et al., 2012); energyintensive industries (Bataille et al., 2018); and housing stock, vehicle fleets,and road networks (Lecocq & Shalizi, 2014) – will have to be either substantiallymodified or abandoned entirely.

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(Demirbas, 2010) requires both that sustainable biomass feedstock is available
and that demand is sufficient (Haveren et al., 2008). A new pool of labour skills
must be available to build and operate new capital equipment. Also necessaryis the will to abandon the old before the end of its useful life, while at thesame time ensuring a just transition to support communities dependent on theolder assets for their livelihoods. More investment capital alone will not delivera societal transformation towards sustainable development.
Transition risks exist in low-income countries as well as high-income countries(Espagne et al., 2021). Nevertheless, the bulk of anticipated new investment
in long-lived capital stocks will be in low-income countries, and there is a
one-time opportunity to make those new investments green (Lecocq & Shalizi,2014). This means that low-emission investments in emerging markets are
key to a low-carbon transition (BP Dutt et al.). In
some cases, low‑income countries can ‘leapfrog’
beyond high-emitting technologies into fossil-fuelfree, low-emitting, and low-impact technologies as
their economies grow (Bond et al., 2021; Goldemberg
et al., 1987).

A massive amountof capital is readyfor sustainability
investments,
yet funding gaps
persist.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Today, we have the paradoxical situation of a massive
amount of capital ready for sustainability investments,
yet persistent funding gaps in low‑income countries.
The SDG funding gap globally has been estimated at
USD 2.5 trillion, before the Covid-19 pandemic (OECD,
2020a), and the climate finance goal of mobilising USD 100 billion per year by2020 was not delivered on by Annex I countries. At the same time, UNCTAD
estimates that the value of sustainability‑themed investment products in global
capital markets amounted to USD 3.2 trillion in 2020, up more than 80% from2019 (UNCTAD, 2021). These products include sustainable funds, green bonds,
social bonds and mixed-sustainability bonds. Most of these are registered inhigh-income countries and targeted at assets in developed markets.

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The entry of mainstream financial actors with such products into thesustainability arena is a clear transition in the making. These flows are driven
partly by the potential returns and partly by a growing trend in financial
institutions to follow net-zero or similar standards. However, the dominantfactor shaping the direction of global and national financial flows will remain
the perceived profitability of any transaction.

Areas for action
Investing in a better future is necessary both for ensuring prosperity for
all and redefining our relationship with nature. Action is needed not just to
mobilize capital for sustainability, but to ensure sufficient levels, supporting
allocation to places and sectors in need, and transitioning out of unsustainable
practices and retiring inappropriate capital goods.
Public and private investment must act together. During the Covid-19
pandemic, governments showed their fiscal potential to act at a large scaleto achieve necessary ends, and some public asset-holding entities such as
sovereign wealth funds have the potential to actively promote sustainable
development. However, the scope for public spending is limited in relation to
the investment gap, and the most important challenge is to see how the flowof finance in the private market of savers, investors and intermediaries canbe shaped to meet sustainability ends.
We identify four key areas of action for both public and private actors in
the financial system starting with investment in innovation, to deployment,
to steering the allocation according to sustainability goals.

1
2
3
4

Recognize and enhance public funding of innovation and co-developmentof technology
Incentivize active engagement in private financeRaise adequate private finance
Reduce risks to sustainability, enhance risks of unsustainability

Recognize and enhance public funding of innovationand co‑development of technology
Government funding and mission-driven public investment have uniqueroles in sustainability-oriented innovation systems. To bridge the technology
gap between rich and poor countries, it is time for a shift from ‘technology
transfer’ to a paradigm of ‘co-development of technology’.

A classic example is all of the technology that came from the ‘space race’ thatbegan in the 1960s, but others include investments in telephony, computers
and the internet; energy infrastructure including batteries; and othertechnologies integral to many of our lives today. International public capital,
drawn from multilateral development finance institutions, has also supported
early-stage investments.
The state usually takes a critical role in the stage of research and development,
but it continues to be important through product development and entry into
the market (see Figure 4.3).
Today recognition is growing of how effective government can be with aninnovation-focussed industrial strategy. A sustainability transition appears
likely to be possible only with a specifically green industrial strategy that helps

Keys to unlock a better future

For nearly all of the innovative technologies we enjoy today, and for ‘green’
technologies specifically (Semieniuk & Mazzucato, 2019), states have played
an essential role (Fligstein, 2008; Mazzucato, 2015). Historically, governments
in high-income countries and, more recently, middle-income countries, havebeen able to undertake patient, committed and mission-driven investment
in early stages of development, when costs and failure rates are higher thanindustries are generally willing to bear.

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resolve coordination problems, helps ‘sunrise industries’ to emerge, and ‘sunset
industries’ to retire (Hallegatte et al., 2013; Rodrik, 2014).
Industrial strategies are again being promoted by many countries, e.g. India(Ganesan et al., 2014), Germany (Financial Times Editorial Board, 2019), theUK (Thomas & Pickard, 2020), and the US (Politi & Williams, 2021). Arguably,
this policy shift in high-income countries came from careful study of theexperiences of emerging economies. In a provocative and influential paper,
Chang (2003) pointed out that today’s high-income countries had achieved

Figure 4.3

Stages of development anddeployment of novel technologies

R&D

Research

PublicMission-driven

Early investment

Venture capital

Early-stage
technology
development

Concept/
Invention

Product
development

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future
110

Production& marketing

Mission-driven & responsive

Public funding

PrivateEquity, debt,
direct investment andtechnology transfer

Corporate

Source: adapted from Semieniuk & Mazzucato (2019).

Private funding

Corporate & individual

their current status with ample doses of government intervention, as did therapidly growing Asian economies of the 1990s. Current advice for developing
countries leans towards a strategic and globally oriented industrial policy,
featuring facilitation and coordination, rather than direction, of private sector
activity (Lall & Teubal, 1998; Schrank & Kurtz, 2005). In keeping with this trend,
the World Bank has noted the importance of innovation policy for developing
countries in recent publications (Cirera et al., 2020; Cirera & Maloney, 2017).
More broadly, mission-driven public investment can contribute tosustainability-oriented innovation systems (Altenburg & Pegels, 2012).
For example, governments and international financial institutions can create
enabling conditions for smallholder innovation in sustainable agriculturalintensification (Hounkonnou et al., 2012) and staple crop value chains(AfDB, 2018).
These efforts are promising for both high-income and low-income countries.
However, the structure of innovation systems will be quite different whenit comes to addressing ‘underdevelopment’ versus ‘overdevelopment’(Oyelaran‑Oyeyinka, 2006). Financial systems in low-income countries lackcapacity to catalyse investment flows in financially underserved sectors andto innovative and novel technologies. As illustrated in
Figure 4.3, that requires patient capital, typically drawn
from public sources, to underwrite a portion of theinvestment risks (BP Dutt et al.).

For long-termsustainability,
technologies must
be co-developed.

The common element in green innovation strategies of
low-income and high‑income countries is the long-termgoal of sustainability. That common interest meansthat technologies must be co-developed. In contrast,
the dominant paradigm today is ‘technology transfer’,where technologies are developed – and the intellectual property rights
formalized – in high-income countries, and subsequently sold to developing
countries (BP Ghosh et al.).

Key modalities for co-development include co-ownership of intellectual
property rights, pooling resources through innovative financial incentives,arrangements for risk and liability management, and multi-stakeholder
partnerships for governance and transparency (BP Ghosh et al.). Codevelopment should be preceded by inclusive consultation on governancearrangements, not just for terms of co-development but also for deployment.
Co-development is particularly crucial when the technology has the potential
to cause harm on other countries, as with geoengineering (Biermann, Oomen,
et al., 2022; BP Ghosh et al.).

Keys to unlock a better future

Established in the 1972 Stockholm Declaration (Principle 20), the dominant
approach has not been successful, because the lack of technology cooperation
has resulted in uncertainties and technological lock-ins (Ghosh et al., 2019;see also Box 2.1). A review of technology transfer initiatives in the energy
and agriculture sectors showed that few go beyond knowledge exchange
and preliminary R&D activities, to actual transfer (BP Ghosh et al.).

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Within the private sector, co-development is nothing new. Foreign direct
investment enters countries in a variety of forms (Nakandala et al., 2016),
while technology aoption follows multiple routes (Stock & Tatikonda, 2000),and some of them are highly collaborative. But co-development has notfeatured in international funding for development. A notable and very recent
exception is the African Development Bank’s Alliance for Green Infrastructurein Africa (AfDB, 2022).
Recommendations to enhance governments’ role in innovation:• Increase public research and development funding to missions co-definedwith stakeholders (industry, civil society, local communities affected,
academia) to achieve sustainability goals.
• Target international finance to low- and middle-income countries to develop
and implement green industrial strategies, as well as their co-defined andnationally owned missions and innovation systems, especially countries
faced with a phase-down of fossil fuel production.
• Replace ineffective technology transfer mechanisms with a new paradigmof ‘technology co-development’.

Incentivize active engagement in private finance
Private finance has a critical role in bringing innovation to market. Private
investors should engage more actively to ensure sustainable financebecomes the norm.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Private investors usually enter rather late in the innovation process, thoughsome investors such as venture capitalists invest at earlier stages. These
investors broadly invest through equity (ownership of a company’s shares),or debt (see Figure 4.3 above).

112

Crucially, most investment in physical infrastructure for ‘clean’, ‘green’ orsustainable technology is debt financed (BP Dutt et al.]. For example, solar
and wind projects in India receive three-quarters of their financing in theform of debt, and one-quarter from equity (Dutt et al., 2020).
At a global scale, private investors are increasingly interested in monitoring
the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of theirinvestments (Amel-Zadeh & Serafeim, 2018; EF, 2020). But most investors will
only tolerate very small reductions in returns compared to the broader market.
For example, venture capitalists who wish to invest in sustainablebusinesses look for start-ups with a solid business model that can deliver
good performance on the ‘triple bottom-line’ of people, planet and profit(Bocken, 2015). Governments can contribute significantly to the viability of
new ventures through for example regulations, subsidies, procurement andsupport for research and development (Bocken, 2015, p. Table 3; Moore& Wüstenhagen, 2004).

Green bond issuances are typically associated with mature and commercially
viable technology investments, offering returns only very slightly below thoseof the broader market (Kölbel et al., 2020, p. 562; Maltais & Nykvist, 2020).
For bonds, the counterpart of slightly lower returns for investors is lower costof capital for issuers, which is an incentive to enter the market; while thedifference in cost of capital is very modest, it more than compensates forthe cost of certification (Maltais & Nykvist, 2020, p. 10). The evidence thus
suggests that however positive the trend of increasing certification may
be, green bonds are not a promising funding source for novel or complex
investments with high perceived risk.
Whether for equities or bonds, investors may be more passive or active in
relation to the targets of their investment (Amel-Zadeh & Serafeim, 2018, p. 94).
The most direct passive approach is to apply a screen to investments based on
ESG criteria. Any investments that do not pass through the screen are excluded
from the investor or fund manager’s portfolio. Various
metrics and principles for innovation in Section 4.2
are relevant criteria for an ESG screen as well. Theylink investor preferences to technological development.

Active investor
engagement ismuch more likely
to be impactful.

Active investor engagement is much more likely
to be impactful than passive investment (Kölbel
et al., 2020). Higher shares of ESG assets in any
single passive investor’s portfolio – even a sizeable
institutional investor – will have at most a marginal impact on the economy
as a whole (Heinkel et al., 2001; Kölbel et al., 2020; Maltais et al., 2021)
and current ESG metrics lack both transparency and standardization(EF, 2020; Widyawati, 2020).

Active investors engage with the firms in which they invest, either directlyor through shareholder initiatives. They therefore have much more power
to transform sectors or industries that would be excluded by an ESG screen.
Rapid action on climate change, for example, will require active engagementwith high-emitting sectors such as steel, cement, or oil and gas (Maltais
et al., 2021).
Such activities, driven by private actors, should be encouraged but also
monitored and incentivized in order to ensure movement towards sustainability.

• Financial actors and investors should engage more in active approaches
to investing to support rapid action on climate change, especially withhigh‑emitting sectors.
• Governments should provide enabling conditions for viability of sustainable
investment at early stages of commercialization or start-up.

Keys to unlock a better future

Recommendations to incentivize active engagement in private finance:

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Raise adequate private finance
To raise private finance to the needed scale for sustainability investmentsin the developing world, public finance needs to ‘de-risk’ and playa catalytic role.
Four critical dimensions – scale, regulation, balance and risk – must change
for emerging markets to access investments for sustainable infrastructure.
Far more capital is needed than has been negotiated: for example, theUSD 100 billion pledged for the Paris Agreement must be a floor rather thana ceiling, when trillions of dollars are needed by countries that have yet to build
the infrastructure and energy systems to meet the developmental aspirationsof their people (BP Ghosh & Raha).
At COP 26, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (2021) announced
that financial actors with USD 130 trillion under management are committing
to align their portfolios and operations with net-zero climate targets. That
exceeded the estimated amount required to achieve
net zero over the next 30 years. The announcement
highlighted the vast capacity of private-sector financeto address the climate challenge and, by extension,a sustainability transition.

The gap between
private andstate investment
capacity islongstanding.

In contrast, government commitments fell short (Angele
et al., 2021). Moreover, even large emerging economies
face challenges mobilizing domestic resources. For
example, achieving India’s stated 2070 net-zero target
would entail an investment of USD 10.1 trillion in 2020
prices (Singh & Sidhu, 2021). While a large part of the investment requirement
could be mobilized through conventional sources, a significant investment
gap of USD 3.5 trillion would remain (BP Dutt et al.).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

The level of commitment from the private sector at COP 26 was new, but
the gap between private and state investment capacity is longstanding. The
relative decline of the public sector emerged from a decades-long intellectualand political trend to reduce the scope of state intervention in the economy(Burgin, 2012; Lobao et al., 2018; Stahl, 2021).

114

With the rapid expansion of renewable energy and the idea of ‘a just energy
transition’, a third player is entering the field when it comes to cost- andbenefit-sharing of investments – local communities (see Box 4.6). There
are important lessons from these cases for other sustainability transitions
that require capital investment for the distribution of returns and ownershiparrangements.

Sharing costs and benefits in just energy transitions(BP Muñoz-Cabré and Vega-Araújo)
Annual investment in renewables is estimated to be about USD 1.6 trillion
by 2030, under the IEA Net-Zero scenario (IEA, 2021). All those capital
investments, many enabled with public resources, are likely to generatesignificant returns and other economic and social benefits.
Renewable energy projects have the potential to create large benefits for
local communities. Community benefit packages appear to be key for public
acceptability. The further expansion of benefit-sharing schemes means larger
amounts of funds going to often relatively dispersed and lightly populatedrural zones. This highlights the importance for communities of developing
community action plans, where key priorities for investment are identified,
are updated on a regular basis, and are aligned with sustainable practices.
Benefit sharing can occur through returns boosting the local tax revenues
and being used for local government services, mandated social investments
by the owner in local communities, or crediting local residential electricity
customers where the projects are based, or community ownership, whichbrings more capital into local economies and can strengthen communities
in terms of empowerment, skills development and local regeneration. Whilethe latter are found in wealthier nations, documented evidence of their use
in developing countries is limited.
The role of government is key in ensuring that local communities can reap
the benefits of the energy transition, including by establishing appropriate
institutional and regulatory frameworks, and policies to promote community
benefits. An example can be found in Scotland, where the government has
issued good practice guidelines for community benefits, encourages online
registration of the agreements reached and offers free advice and support
at any stage of the negotiation with developers.
Costs include losses from transitioning away from legacy projects. In the US
alone, customers will likely pay USD 20–25 billion yearly for utilities’ ‘stranded
assets’ that will need to retire early to maintain the US nationally determined
contribution (NDCs) target (Varadarajan et al., 2021). Developing countries
have on average newer coal power plant fleets, and will take the brunt of theloss in a transition.
On the other hand, the energy transition is expected to create many additionaljobs, and thus livelihoods, beyond the locations where projects are located.
And other benefits related to digitization could be realized: some energy
transition technologies involve vast quantities of data (from smart homes
to electric vehicles and beyond) that can have high value.

Keys to unlock a better future

Box 4.6

115

For low-income countries, a key goal is to increase the amount of domestic
credit to businesses. Using data from the World Bank World Development
Indicators, domestic credit to the private sector is less than half of GDP
for lower middle income and low-income countries, compared to well over
100% for upper middle and high-income countries – the lower the national
income level, the greater the disadvantage when it comes to mobilizing muchneeded domestic credit for investment (BP Dutt et al.).
The lack of credit can hamper even highly promising investments. Utility‑scale
renewables in China and India are well-established and known to befinancially viable. Yet mobilizing finance at sufficient scale to meet sustainable
development trajectories from existing sources remains a challenge (BP Duttet al.; Singh et al., 2020).
Multilateralism will have a critical role to play in scaling up private investment
flows towards pertinent technologies in developing countries. To facilitate
international private finance at scale, financial regulation in developing
countries needs to be mappable to international standards. In the absenceof international harmonization of such standards, these could hinder rather
than accelerate capital flows.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Therefore, central banks and financial supervisors in developing country
jurisdictions must engage with their counterparts on multilateral fora during
the development of regulation to ensure international harmonization. Emerging

116

Photo: jia yu / Moment / GettyImages

multilateral platforms and processes should not only bolster the capacityof catalytic finance interventions but also create enabling environmentsthat maximize the effectiveness of financial and fiscal interventions that
aim to direct capital towards sustainability (BP Dutt et al.).
In order to be effective, emerging sustainable finance fora must learn fromthe experience of mainstream multilateral finance processes that have been
criticized for under-representation of developing country interests. Given thatdeveloping countries will be the major destinations of sustainable investments,
in order to be truly effective, sustainable finance platforms must include
developing countries as equal partners in shaping the global sustainablefinance architecture.
Recommendations to raise private finance to the needed scale:• Multilateral climate finance institutions should substantially enhance grant
finance, to support capitalization of catalytic instruments that help makeavailable domestic credit to sustainable investments in developing countries.
• Governments should coordinate to harmonize financial regulation
frameworks (e.g. taxonomies, disclosure standards) in developing countries
with international frameworks. to remove barriers to mobilizing andaccessing finance internationally.

Reduce risks to sustainability, enhance risks of unsustainability
As important as de-risking sustainable investment may be, it is equallyimportant to raise the perceived riskiness – and therefore the cost of capital –of unsustainable investment, for example through mandates for minimum
allocation of lending portfolios.

While risk profiles are relatively low for well-established technologies, including
low-carbon alternatives such as utility-scale solar and wind power production,
they are high for technologies with a shorter track record (BP Dutt et al.).
Private investors will avoid risky projects, unless the prospects for profit arehigh enough to justify the extraordinary risk.
The transition from novel and high-risk technologies to potentially profitable
technologies – between early-stage technology and product development in
Figure 4.3 – results in high potential combined with lack of investor experience.
That can lead to overinvestment and a financial bubble (Perez, 2002).
Arguably, this is the phase for some renewable energy technologies (BP Muñoz
Cabré & Vega Araújo), triggering some concern that a ‘green bubble’ mightKeys to unlock a better future

One key to increasing the scale of private finance for a sustainability transition
is to alter the perceived riskiness of investments. This includes both reducing
the perceived risk of sustainable investments and raising the perceived riskof unsustainable investments, for example through allocation mandates on
lending portfolios.

117be emerging (Jones, 2021). The prospect of a bubble is not, in itself, a barrier
to transformation, but bursting bubbles often lead investors to be excessively
cautious. Governments can take measures to ensure that investment continues
to flow to viable projects if a green bubble were to emerge and burst.
Investors can view projects as risky for reasons other than uncertainty over
new technologies. For example, nature-based solutions are highly tailoredto particular environments and are expected to yield benefits only overlong timescales. Moreover, as they typically involve multiple actors andbeneficiaries, they may require novel and complex governance structures,
which can increase the perceived riskiness of the projects (BP Barquet &Green; McQuaid, 2019).
Investors also consider the policy environment in their assessment of risk.
If they question the stability or degree of enforcement of the incentives forgreen investment (or disincentives for non-green investment), then they may
be hesitant to invest. Doubts may arise if there are economic actors who feelthey may be harmed by a policy and who are powerful enough to successfully
lobby to block action or to direct policy in ways that benefit themselves(Altenburg & Pegels, 2012, p. 13; Geels, 2014; Lockwood, 2015).
The inevitable complexity of the real-world environment in which policy plays
out can impede effective implementation (see Box 4.7).

BOX 4.7

Carbon leakage and other problems (BP Olsson & Dawkins)

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Cross-border ‘carbon leakage’ can be illustrated within the EU. Industrial
emitters within the EU, who sell their products on global markets, canlose market share to non-EU companies not subject to the EU Emissions
Trading System, resulting in negligible net emission reductions and reduced
competitiveness of EU firms.

118

The initial EU policy response was to distribute carbon dioxide allowances
for free to firms at risk of carbon leakage, which did little for the climate. In
future, carbon leakage is set to be addressed via a carbon border adjustment
mechanism; that is, a carbon dioxide-based tariff on imported goods. In
the process, the initial policy recommendation – to internalize the cost ofenvironmental harm through trade in emissions permits – ran into real-world
implementation challenges that undermine confidence in the effectivenessof policy.
However, this solution to an EU policy challenge is highly contentious asa unilateral measure. Carbon leakage would not be an issue if consumption
lifestyle emissions were taxed or mitigated within the EU. Instead, the focus
is on production emissions – for example, from China – for making goods
that Europeans want. As the EU exempts private jets or private yachts fromemissions controls, the policy’s concerns over carbon leakage are a stark
contrast with uncompromised lifestyles (see Section 4.1).

Many low-income countries cannot de-risk financially underserved sectors
and technologies. To overcome this barrier, risks can be pooled acrosscountries and then de-risked through a common fund. Proposals such as those
for a Global Clean Investment Risk Mitigation Mechanism (GCI-RMM) could
address this gap. The GCI-RMM is envisioned to operate on the principle of risk
pooling across projects and across countries. Its design could achieve further
reductions in the cost of de-risking (Ghosh & Harihar, 2021).
As important as de-risking sustainable investment may be, of equal importanceis raising the perceived riskiness of unsustainable investment, including
capital costs. As noted earlier, private-sector financial institutions are looking
to systematically invest in low-carbon investment opportunities. While
such an organic shift in capital allocation priorities is welcome, regulators
can accelerate the shift towards sustainability. Mandates for a minimum
allocation of lending portfolios of banks and non-bank financial institutions to
SDG‑compliant activities, as well as for institutional investors such as pension,
insurance, and mutual funds to invest a minimum portion of their portfolios insustainable assets could be considered by financial regulators (BP Dutt et al.).
Recommendations to reduce risks to sustainability and enhance risks
of unsustainability:• Governments should reduce investor risk by providing a stable policy
environment with long-term goals set in key areas of sustainability.
International agreements are an effective way of setting shared long-term,
binding goals.
• Governments and international financial institutions should consider
joint de‑risking initiatives to meet the sustainability investment needs
in low‑income countries and emerging markets, where domestic credit
to the private sector is insufficient.
• Educate investors on novel and emerging sustainability technologies
and solutions, to enable accurate assessments of risk.

By taking actions in these areas and embarking on the three overarching shifts,
societies can actively design better futures. Many of these actions will notdeliver immediate benefits for the planet, people or their prosperity – othermeasures are needed for that. We believe, however, that they have systemic
importance by unlocking progress across sectors and that, if seeded now, they
will have transformative effect.

Keys to unlock a better future• Regulators should consider mandates for minimum allocation of lending
portfolios to sustainable assets, in order to enhance the perceived riskof unsustainable investment portfolios.

119

5

Improving
conditions
for change

Highlights
The institutions and governance system built for the challengesof the past might very well have created some of the challengesof the present. The structural barriers of policy incoherence,
weak multilateralism and lack of accountability must be decisively
tackled to enable effective action on redefining humans’
relationship with nature, ensuring lasting prosperity for all, andinvesting in a better future.
With more actors and stakeholders participating in global
governance today, many more routes are available to taking
action. However, conflicts of interest and uneven power
relationships must also be recognized.
Governments and international organizations must make theirpolicy mixes coherent and consistent towards sustainability
goals, in order to increase incentives for action, by adopting
new practices and tools for more integrated and systemic
policymaking.

Countries, companies and citizens have to be held accountable
for their actions and their inaction. We need new imaginative
mechanisms for nurturing constructive accountability, which
incentivizes and leads to bold action and change, rather than
threatens and leads to pre-emptive action and reduced ambition.

To achieve this environmental goal will demand the acceptance of
responsibility by citizens and communities and by enterprises andinstitutions at every level, all sharing equitably in common efforts.
– 1972 Stockholm Declaration, Preamble

Improving conditions for change

The gap in trust and solidarity between countries acts as
a barrier to new agreements, to raising ambition and toaccelerated national implementation. Opportunities exist to
renew multilateralism, to more effectively tackle environmentand development crises and to rebuild solidarity: developing
multilateral responses to chronic risks, replacing technology
transfer with a new paradigm of ‘co-development of technology’,and setting norms for the global financial system.

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A range of actions can be taken immediately to redefine humans’ relationshipwith nature, ensure lasting prosperity for all, and invest in a better future, as
discussed above. However, these actions and other large-scale shifts havebeen and will continue to be hindered from reaching their full effect unlessstructural barriers in our institutional and governance systems are tackled.
Above all, we must ask ourselves: Do we have the rules, norms and institutional
structures fit for purpose for the 21st century, to ensure progress in humandevelopment for all, equity in access to resources, sustainability for nature now
and for future generations, and justice for the most vulnerable? The institutions
that were meant to solve the challenges of the past might very well havecreated the challenges of the present. The structures that intermediatedfinance, technology and power after the Second World War, and particularly
after the end of the Cold War, may no longer suffice to respond to the needsof hundreds of millions still without the basics – sufficient income, food,healthcare, water or energy.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Moreover, the aspirations of an emerging global middle class will have to be
met with systems of production and consumption vastly different from what
the world has known so far, even as we struggle to reduce inequality andvarious forms of discrimination, including gender disparities. Beyond therhetoric, countries, companies and citizens have to be held accountable
for their actions and inactions; governments must make their policy mixes
coherent and consistent towards sustainability goals; and multilateral
institutions have to be reformed to renew trust in global cooperation andensure resources are provided to those who lackaccess to financial markets, banks and other ‘big
finance’ entities.

122

At the global
level, relatively
centralized andsingle multilateral
institutions
have morphed
to a stateof polycentric
governance.

Considering these structural barriers today requires
understanding that the institutional context haschanged since the 1972 Stockholm Conference.
At all levels of society, a broad shift has taken place,from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ (Rosenau, 1992).
A growing range of actors – companies, financial
institutions, civil society organizations – now participate
in governance.

This shift is clear at the global level, where relatively
centralized and single multilateral institutions havemorphed to a state of polycentric governance (Ostrom,
2009, 2012) and regime complexity (Abbott, 2012;
Biermann & Kim, 2020; Bulkeley et al., 2014; Keohane & Victor, 2011), in which
multiple stakeholders take part. Global climate governance is most indicativeof this shift, with an abundance of partnerships and initiatives (see Figure 5.1),
as well as other governance domains, such as biodiversity, chemicals, ocean
and the SDGs domain at large.
Today, a complex network of actors and institutions interact with different
sources of agency and legitimacy, including voting power, legislative power,
financial resources, business influence, innovation capacity, consumer

Figure 5.1

Actors in environmental global governance
Private sector

National
governments

Civil societyIntergovernmentalorganizations and agencies

Subnational
authorities(cities, states,
regions)

Companies (public,
private, state-owned)

Investors,
financial institutions
and philanthropy

Social movements
and consumer groups

Non-governmental/
non-profit organizations

Research institutions
and academia

Source: adapted from Future of Climate Cooperation (2021).

Media (public,
private outlets,social media)

Improving conditions for change

Public sector

123pressure and discursive power. On the positive side, this means many more
opportunities and routes are available to accelerate global action than throughmultilateral institutions and agreements alone.
However, the shift from multilateralism to ‘multistakeholderism’ in global
governance (Gleckman, 2018) means that there can be deep incoherence
between conflicting interests, as well as unevenness of power and influence
between corporate-commercial actors and local-civic voices (see e.g. (Canfield
et al., 2021; Gleckman, 2018; Manahan & Kumar, 2021; Sapinski, 2015). Amidthese parallel and connected shifts, states have continued to be, and mustbe, central actors that shoulder unique responsibilities and powers to shapevoluntary action, at the national and global levels (Betsill et al., 2020; Giessen
et al., 2016; Mazzucato, 2015).
In the same way, for transboundary environmental issues, multilateralenvironmental agreements (MEAs) continue to be the core means toregulate and set norms for conduct. Despite the high number of MEAs, theireffectiveness in closing the action gap has been limited (Box 2.1).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

In stark contrast to the evolving nature of environmental risks, environmental
treaties are often segregated by topic, sector and geographic divisions
that create fragmented and diffused governance structures – leading tooverlapping and conflicting negotiations (Azizi et al., 2019). Inadequate
coherence and coordination for a functional division of tasks may result in a lackof transparency and accountability across institutions.

124

Photo: Pavliha / E+ / GettyImages

5.1 Policy coherence: ensure
stronger and more consistent
incentives for action
No action for sustainability, however well intended, will succeed if it isundermined by unresolved goal conflicts and policy incoherence. Many
new approaches for more integrated and systemic policymaking are readyfor use, to tackle policy incoherence at international and national levels andthereby ensure strong and consistent incentives for target groups to takeaccelerated action.
Why have we not seen more action in all the areas discussed in Chapter 4,given that we know the need and that many of the proposed actions can leadto multiple benefits? The simplest explanation is that incentives to act havenot been strong enough. Without strong incentives, individuals are not making
more sustainable consumption choices, companies
are not adopting more sustainable business models,and governments are not investing more in thesustainability transition.

Incentives toact have not beenstrong enough.

The corollary to insufficient ambition is that target groups may be faced withincoherent and conflicting incentives from the totality of the policy mix.
In other words, taken all together, our economic growth policies, trade andindustrial policies, environmental policies, etc., conflict with each other orexist in a vacuum, without dovetailing together. Chapter 4 identified several
examples, e.g. agricultural subsidies that particularly benefit animal foodproducts over plant-based foods (BP Verkuijl et al.) and legal frameworks thatdisincentivize remanufacturing products and using waste as a resource (BPLindahl & Dalhammar).
Other examples of instances where environmental goals and policies co-exist
with environmentally harmful subsidies include those for fisheries, pesticides
and fertilizers, and fossil fuels – where reduced costs for an industry undercut
goals of marine protection, ecosystem and species preservation, and land

Improving conditions for change

Weak incentives, in turn, can be explained in two ways:
insufficient ambition and incoherent or conflicting
incentives. For example, incentives from a given
policy instrument may not be strong and compelling enough to transform
behaviour. For example, a recent review of 37 studies on the effects of carbon
taxes and emission trading schemes found that these instruments had only
reduced emissions by 0–2% per year (Green, 2021), compared with the 6–7%
reduction target required as per UNEP (UNEP, 2020). The scope of and pricelevel resulting from these instruments in terms of resetting incentives were
not sufficient to trigger deeper change. In other words, the policy instruments
were not sufficiently ambitious – which is particularly problematic in the caseof high-income countries, given the principle of common but differentiatedresponsibilities and capacities.

125

use conservation. A recent assessment showed that environmentally harmful
subsidies amount to at least USD 1.8 trillion a year, or about 2% of global GDP(Koplow & Steenblik, 2022b). That total is almost three times the level of global
climate finance in 2019 – 2020 (Climate Policy Initiative, 2021) and 18 times theParis Agreement goal to mobilize USD 100 billion per year by 2020 for climate
action in countries that need support.
Another example is the failure to use economic stimulus spending asa means to achieve sustainability objectives. The Oxford Economic Recovery
Observatory estimates that, by early April 2022, only 31% of global Covid-19
recovery spending can be considered ‘green’ (Oxford University Economic
Recovery Project, 2022). Looking at government spending related to theenergy sector during the Covid-19 pandemic, support that promotes fossil
fuels has so far well exceeded that for renewable and other energy sourcesin major economies (Figure 5.2).
What can be done to tackle this structural barrier, by national governments
and international organizations alike?
Most research on policy coherence and integrated policymaking finds thata critical factor is political will (Nilsson & Persson, 2017; Persson & Runhaar,2018). Policy design derives from the political priorities that leaders set. For
example, low unemployment as a key political goal may lead governments
to support environmentally harmful industries in the short term to avoid job
loss, unless environmental goals are similarly prioritized and smart synergies
actively pursued. Similarly, a transformation towards sustainability involves
not just governments promoting sustainable choices and investments, but also
demoting unsustainable choices and investments (see Section 4.2 and 4.3) –decisions that can be politically challenging.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

An important step forward would be to recognize that what is technicallyreferred to as ‘policy coherence’ (for example, under SDG target 17.14) is often
more appropriately referred to as ‘political incoherence’.
It stems from perceived goal conflicts and cannot
be easily ‘managed’ away, but needs to be resolved
at a political level (Brand et al., 2021).

126

Goal conflicts
can be overcome
through smart
policy design andcompensatory
measures.

An example are European exports of fat-filled milk
powder to West African countries. Indirect subsidies
on the product encourage overproduction and low
prices for farmers in Europe. This has toughened
competition and severely impacted smallholder
farmers in Africa and stalled development of local
dairy production industries. There are three objectives
to address here: food security in West Africa, the modernization of West
Africa’s dairy industry, and the need to find a market for dairy products thatcannot be sold in Europe. The technical solutions to these questions requirepolitical decisions about priorities to be taken (Brand et al., 2021). In several
cases, goal conflicts can be overcome through smart policy design andcompensatory measures.

Figure 5.2
Government spending in energy sector during COVID-19 pandemic (2020 – 2021)
100%

700
% of cumulative publicmoney commitments

600
500
400
300
200
100

40%
20%

Fossil fuelClean energy

20
20
20
Ju 20
l2
02
Se
0
p
20
20
N
ov
20
Ja 20
n
20
21
M
ar
20
21
M
ay
20
21
M
ay

M
ay

M
ar

60%

0%

20
20
20
Ju 20
l2
02
Se
0
p
20
20
N
ov
20
Ja 20
n
20
21
M
ar
20
21
M
ay
20
21

0

80%

M
ar

Cumulative public money
commitments (billion USD)

800

Other energy

Source: Production Gap Report (2021).

Second, we must set up effective organizations that radically improvecoordination and collaboration, between government departments andbetween UN agencies, to handle ‘nexus’ issues in an integrated and systemic
way. For example, discussions on the impact of climate change on humanhealth, migration and resilience of infrastructure take place at different
platforms, such as the UN Security Council in New York City, the Human Rights
Council in Geneva, and UNEP in Nairobi; policy coherence requires alignmentof policy objectives, deliberate conflict checks and coordination on measuresto achieve outcomes for all stakeholders, in all of these places. The need forcoherence will rise with increasing impacts of climate change, which serve topush and merge predefined governance mandates of multilateral institutions.
Third, a range of analytical and process tools can support more integrated
and systemic policymaking and to reduce policy incoherence. The SDGs
have inspired a new wave of science-based tools to help decision makers
think systematically about how different policy proposals and interventions
could avoid trade-offs between goals and instead maximize synergies across
many goals (Allen et al., 2021; Bennich et al., 2020); examples include theSDG Interlinkages Analysis & Visualisation Tool, the SDG Synergies tool,and the EnablingSDGs tool. Their value often lies in the process, which enables
policymakers and stakeholders to reflect and expand their perspectives.

Improving conditions for change

Fortunately, there are several ways forward to reducing political/policy
incoherence, to ensure strong and consistent incentives for action towards
sustainable development. A first, basic step is to encourage more open debate
on genuine and resolvable goal conflicts, to ensure they are not wilfully
avoided or unintentionally ignored (Wong & van der Heijden, 2019).

127

Another innovative stream of policy analysis approaches looks at how positive
tipping points can be triggered and how change can become self-reinforcing,through positive feedback loops, leading to more systemic and transformativechange (EEIST, 2021; Lenton et al., 2022; Sharpe & Lenton, 2021). An importantelement here is to broaden the focus from monetizing costs and benefitsof a given action, to assessing wider risks and opportunities from both action
and inaction.
Finally, we must recognise the political economy of ambitious policy change
and ensure that procedures for consultation and participation create a levelplaying field for different interests and voices to be heard. Deep-seatedgoal conflicts and persistent policy incoherence can be traced back to interest
groups that actively maintain them. As communities, nations and regions get
locked into technologies, infrastructure, economics and politics (Erickson
et al., 2015; see Section 3.3), interest groups have an incentive to mobilize andpreserve certain goals and instruments. Some groups have disproportionate
influence (Franta, 2021; Oreskes & Conway, 2011), and as we note in Section
3.3, future generations may have no influence. Ensuring fair participation andtransparency of procedures is therefore key to tackling policy incoherence.
For transformative action on the planetary crises we face, the question should
be how synergistic policies can be designed and how self-accelerating change
can be triggered, rather than what the optimal solution at a given moment
might be. A zero-carbon transition – implicit in any scenario that stabilizes
atmospheric concentrations and temperatures – will involve wider changes inthe structure of the economy, behaviours, and the nature and composition ofindustry and infrastructure. For these changes to yield social, environmental
and economic dividends to the public, an integrated approach will be essential.
To sum up, goals agreed in the face of a global threat should be based on
science, risk and precaution, and they demand transformative rather thanmarginal change.
Recommendations to tackle the barrier of policy incoherence:

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future• Incoherent policies with a bearing on sustainability goals must be better
mapped, analysed and addressed, by many societal actors, to unlock
effective action.

128• National governments and international organizations should only use
integrated and systemic approaches to policymaking. They should use tools
for systematically analysing SDG interlinkages (synergies and trade-offs),
apply wider system boundaries and extended timescales to account for
future generations, and use frameworks for sequencing policy interventions
to trigger positive tipping points.
• National governments and international organizations should set and enforce
higher standards for transparency and public participation in the proceduresfor policymaking, to enable multiple perspectives on the resolution of goal
conflicts and pursuit of synergies. This includes perspectives of future
generations.

5.2 Solidarity: foster renewed
multilateralism
The gap in trust and solidarity between countries acts as a barrier to newagreements, to raising ambition and to accelerated national implementation.
Opportunities exist now to renew multilateralism, to more effectively tackle
environment and development crises and to rebuild solidarity: developing
multilateral responses to chronic risks, replacing technology transfer witha new paradigm of ‘co-development of technology’, and setting norms forthe global financial system.
The year 1972 marked the birth of environmental and sustainable development
multilateralism and diplomacy (Chasek, 2020). The Stockholm Declaration
envisioned a large and bold programme of multilateral cooperation, with theestablishment of UNEP as a central piece.
Behind this push was the recognition that environmental challenges withtransboundary dimensions needed collective action and governance platforms
across countries. Equally, for development to not be compromised and burdens
to be shared equitably, solidarity was to be bedrock of cooperation, centredaround ‘supporting measures’ of financial support, technology transfer andcapacity building (see Box 2.1).
There was another imperative, namely that cooperation on sustainable
development could foster peace and security, even as Cold War tensions
continued (BP Michel) and the process of decolonization remained incomplete.
It would be fair to say that many of these imperatives remain salient today andthat some have even grown in prominence.
Without solidarity, it is unlikely that multilateralplatforms will become effective or new mechanisms
for finance or technology will gain trust, given the
failures in converting many promises to action overthe past half century. Unless solidarity increases andmultilateralism is strengthened, many of the actions
proposed in Chapter 4 will not be impactful, for all
stakeholders.

A single institution need not have the capacity toperform all functions and contribute to the long-termsustainability of complex regulatory systems (Ghosh, 2011; UNDP, 2017).
Instead, complex environmental challenges could be confronted through afunctional division of tasks (UN General Assembly, 2017; UNDP, 2017).
A rich structure of multilateral cooperation and institutions has been built
since 1972, but cooperation mechanisms have not been strong enough to set
us on a path towards achieving the SDGs, themselves defined in multilateralprocesses. There are exceptions and success stories, most notably themultilateral cooperation on phasing out ozone-depleting substances andImproving conditions for change

Cooperation
on sustainable
development
could foster
peace andsecurity.

129

agreements to increase marine protected areas (Section 2.1). However, several
weaknesses remain that cut across environmental regimes and domains:• Fewer binding agreements: the tendency over time to move from ‘hard law’approaches to ‘soft law’ (Abbott & Snidal, 2000), culminating in ‘governanceby-goals’ with the SDGs (Kanie & Biermann, 2017), which has recently beenassessed to have had very limited impact (Biermann, Hickmann, et al., 2022).
• Growing fragmentation: a lack of coordination across environmental regimes,
creating ambiguities and loopholes (Hickmann et al., 2020; UN General
Assembly, 2018).
• Poor delivery of supporting measures: insufficient funding of financial
mechanisms operating under environmental regimes and core funding ofinternational institutions (see Box 2.1), especially in light of differentiatedresponsibilities of richer and poorer countries.
Although multilateralism can be considered a potentially more efficient andlegitimate means towards enhanced human development and security (Ghosh,2020) through global cooperation, today the premise of multilateralism is itself
at risk, as weak multilateralism has allowed for rising human insecurity andbreached planetary boundaries – and eroded confidence in multilateralism
even further (BP Ghosh & Raha).

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

A structural challenge is the persistence of coloniality in global institutions
and the lack of priority on justice and equity between countries. International
regimes that seek to develop frameworks of common responsibility to act

130

Photo: Entienou / E+ / GettyImages

without defining resources as common goods (BP Mallya & Raha) perpetuatehistorical exploitation and weak action in developing countries. Theseissues are reflected in the design of climate finance and technology transfer
instruments, which limit solidarity and confidence in multilateralism.
These weaknesses have resulted in a lack of trust between parties andweakening of incentives to act collectively, not least between the Global
North and South. This gap in trust and solidarity acts as a barrier to newagreements at the international level, and dampens
raising ambition and national implementation ofcommitments. To close this gap in trust, parties must
fulfil past and existing commitments, to unlock ambition
and action in new and emerging areas.

We all havean interestin avoiding
our ‘common
aversions’.

To build solidarity from the bottom up, it is also criticalto enhance legitimacy and trust in the multilateralsystem in the eyes of people. There is today an ‘elite–
citizen gap’, where citizens consistently have lessconfidence in international organizations than elites
do – across countries and across international organizations (BP Dellmuth& Fornborg). Episodes such as Brexit, street protests against international
economic institutions, and the rise of populism suggest a possible divergencein views of global governance between political and societal leaders on the one
hand and the general public on the other.
A common argument purports that today’s elites, as the main winners ofglobalization, are out of touch with ordinary citizens, who bear the bruntof its burdens (Dellmuth & Tallberg, 2021; Rodrik, 2018). The alleged result
is a significant political disjuncture, as well as a major obstacle to effective
and democratic global cooperation. Public trust is critical for member statesto empower and entrust the multilateral system.

Multilateralism is necessary for managing chronic risk. As new forms ofinternational cooperation emerge, we must focus on chronic risks outcomesthat all countries would want to avoid, our ‘common aversions’ (Ghosh, 2020).
We all have an interest in avoiding new pandemics, climate change‑induced
extreme weather events, and a collapse in agricultural output (Adams
et al., 2021).
Renewed drive for collective action can come from the way we organize
multilateral institutions to respond to shocks, as a form of de minimis
multilateralism (BP Ghosh & Raha). Private and national interests are notadequate for resolving collective challenges of such scale. We need global
and just solutions to global problems, even if these require structural change
in existing paths for decision-making.
The communal platforms we have – the UN, formed in the aftermath of WorldWar II to avoid another such calamitous conflict; the G20, founded in 1999

Improving conditions for change

Against this backdrop of gap in trust, we see three avenues forward to renew
multilateralism and rebuild international solidarity.

131

in response to global economic crises; and others – need to regroup now
and explore ways to ‘prevent environmental crises of planetary scale andsignificance’ (Ghosh, 2020; BP Ghosh & Raha). Box 5.1 offers concrete ideas
to build resilience to climate risk, in view of vulnerability and equity.

Box 5.1

Multilateralism for chronic risks – concrete ideas (BP Ghosh & Raha)
A Climate Risk Atlas for Developing Countries, covering critical vulnerabilities
to extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and cyclones, coastal
degradation, heat and water stress, and crop loss at a granular level, should
be a priority for multilateralism structured around chronic risks.
The Atlas should draw inputs from agencies such as the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Office for Disaster Risk
Reduction (UNDRR), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD),
CBD, UNDP and UNEP, as well as official banks and insurance and reinsurancecompanies. It should be formalized through intergovernmental processes andlinked to national and subnational disaster risk reduction plans of countries, andinternational bodies like the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and
the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (Mohanty & Wadhawan, 2021).
The data from the Atlas should feed into a Global Climate Risk Index.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Moreover, a series of overlapping and related shocks – such as a combinationof cyclones, landslides, drought and crop losses – could overwhelm insurance
firms. As seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, even the richest countries canslide into financial and institutional crisis when faced with shocks of a certain
magnitude compressed into a shorter time frame.

132

A multilateral mechanism – a Global Resilience Reserve Fund – for countries
with varying levels of vulnerability to pool their risks to climate shocks to avert
common disaster would partially overcome this challenge, given that different
countries face different kinds of climate risks. By pooling risks, the peaks ofrisk curves could be lowered for each country. Such a fund could be basedon a voluntary allocation of a share of a country’s Special Drawing Rights(SDRs) in the International Monetary Fund, and be drawn on only for disasters
above a certain threshold. Such a mechanism should not replicate the structuralinequities inherent to economic institutions regarding decision-making, voting
and veto rights, and conditioning of withdrawals to political measures likestructural adjustment.

The compelling motivator of common aversions could also spur action forindustrial decarbonization. Industries, irrespective of their location and sector,
require a holistic check to determine the extent to which they contribute tosustainability objectives, and a restructuring of industrial production to balance
economic growth and sustainability of ecosystems. Multilateral solutions
could revise industrial standards for products and processes, create measures
to limit adverse impacts to countries’ competitiveness, and avoid both tariff(e.g. unilateral carbon border adjustments) and non-tariff (technical standards)
barriers that may restrict trade.

Multilateralism is also required for the co-development of technology.
Another practical approach to rebuilding solidarity is to narrow the technology
divide. Out of approximately 3.3 million patent applications received globally in
2020, only 0.1% came from low-income countries, while almost 97% came fromhigh-income and upper-middle income countries combined (World Intellectual
Property Organization, 2021).
Technology and innovation are key to sustainable development, and viceversa: sustainable development is both a planetary need and can be vital forboosting economic competitiveness and dynamism, in order to bring benefits
from the opportunities that a greener economy would bring. By corollary, if thetechnology gap widens and poorer economies fall further behind, sustainable
development would be unlikely to get political support. A current example
is vaccine inequality against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic (seeBox 2.2): the failure to share or transfer lifesaving technologies today increases
the distrust of technologies to counter far more severe shocks from the climate
crisis – the de facto assumption is that these will end up excluding the poorand vulnerable.
Multilateralism as a form of inclusive governance cannot emerge without
ushering a shift in the still ineffective and one-sided status quo of technology
transfers. A standard means of implementation in environmental regimes
and established in the 1972 Stockholm Declaration (Principle 20), ‘technology
transfers’ are plagued by colonial challenges ofinflexible patent norms, limited financing, and political
will of the Global North to support the actual transfer
of knowledge or production capacities for low-cost
manufacturing of agricultural, energy and healthtechnologies to the Global South (BP Ghosh et al.).

As argued above (section 4.3), a key proposition
for renewed multilateralism is technology
co‑development and inclusive governance overtransactional transfers (BP Ghosh et al.). There isa need to reduce the technology divide and gaps in access for emerging
technologies of the future. Some measures required include creating ease oflicensing and co-ownership of intellectual property rights, pooling resources
through innovative financial and non‑financial incentives, and managing risk
and liability to ensure local adaptation in developing countries. ‘Sustainability
measures’ are not sustainable if they widen the technology gap; we must
enable sustainable development to a shared path for all.
Finally, multilateralism is required for orienting financial systems tosustainable development. As discussed in Section 4.3, increased andredirected public and private finance is crucial to boost investment insustainable development. The funding needs are particularly big in the Global
South, where little of the private financial flows are going, where domestic
public funds are limited and where multilateral public funds have fallen shortof promises (BP Dutt et al.). Multilateral cooperation and institutions haveseveral roles to play in reorienting financial systems to better serve sustainable
development.

Improving conditions for change‘Sustainability
measures’ arenot sustainable
if they widen thetechnology gap.

133

First, delivering late on the climate finance goal of mobilizing USD 100
billion by 2020 will be important to rebuilding trust generally in international
cooperation on climate change. Second, as previously discussed, concessional
finance support to developing country parties is necessary as a form ofcatalytic finance, to plug the existing finance gaps.
A further measure could be to develop a global risk
mitigation mechanism, to reduce the cost of de-risking
investments.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Multilateralism
plays an importantrole for equity andjustice, as well
as for directing
investment.

134

Third, financial regulation and standards need tobe harmonized for sustainable finance. Traditionally,
Global South interests have not been well represented
in such initiatives and fora but should be included
as equal partners in shaping the global sustainablefinance architecture (BP Dutt et al.).

Photo: Artur Debat / Moment / GettyImages

A new opportunity for the multilateral system will be to operationalize the‘climate consistency goal’, i.e. Article 2.1(c) of the Paris Agreement, to make‘finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas
emissions and climate-resilient development’ (Zamarioli et al., 2021). This
goes beyond a specific funding target and requires the multilateral system
to set norms for the financial system to follow (see Box 5.2).

Making sustainability a norm (Source: BP Desai)
How will this ‘greening’ of market-based investment flows move from ad
hoc voluntary initiatives to working practices that are considered normal
by investors and fund managers? Such value-framed conduct, for instance,
avoiding investments in activities based on child labour, is common today.
The most standard working practice is the pursuit of profit. This motivation
can be influenced by fiscal measures that reflect externalities through taxes
and subsidies and hence shape the prospects of profit. With the risks ofclimate change looming large in public consciousness, carbon pricing is
an important example.
But unilateral moves in this direction can affect the competitiveness of acountry’s producers if they are not part of an agreed global norm. Hence, somemeasures would help to change what is normal in the world of global finance:
global agreements where possible, clearer methodologies for measuring thecosts and benefits of externalities, and support to poorer countries that may
face serious short-term costs if they were to do this.
The working practices of financial firms are shaped by shareholders andinvestors, and a systematic effort to build an ethic of social and environmental
responsibility amongst people can increase the pressure on profit seeking
financial intermediaries to incorporate this ethic in their working practices.
Reorienting the working norms of private financial institutions will be a longhaul. This is where Multilateral Development Finance Institutions, aid agencies
and sovereign welfare funds can accelerate adoption of sustainability standards
by making sustainability norms a condition for their own activities and, more
importantly, for co-financing operations.
Today, providing resources for sustainability looks like a form of forward-looking
venture funding. But if pursued systematically it could become the norm, as,for instance, the funding of internet-based activities has become, after starting
as a high-risk venture operation in the 1990s.
In the immediate future, this normalization of sustainability criteria in financial
operations may only be accepted in climate mitigation activities. But withcoordinated multilateral persistence, it can extend to other areas such as water
conservation, biodiversity protection, air quality improvement and more, to keep
our activities within the planetary boundaries discussed above.

Improving conditions for change

Box 5.2

135

Multilateralism continues to play an important role for equity and justice. It plays
an essential role for inclusive participation in global decision-making, in thecontext of groupings of major economies and powers. It also plays an essential
role in directing funds to places where private capital is not invested.
At the same time, calls for enhanced justice within and through multilateral
institutions are intensifying. In today’s polycentric governance landscape,conscious effort needs to be made to recognize the role of and to empower
non-state parties, particularly civil society institutions. Greater participationand empowerment of civil society can bridge the gaps in trust between citizens
and global governance institutions, as well as promote accountability andtransparency.
Recommendations to foster renewed multilateralism:• International organizations, in collaboration with national governments,
should develop new ways of communicating about procedure andperformance to build trust with citizens, and engage specificallywith sceptics.
• New multilateral initiatives and mechanisms should be developed for dealing
with chronic global risks and especially for protecting the vulnerable wholack social safety nets.
• A new paradigm of ‘technology co-development’ should replace ineffective
technology transfer mechanisms; Stockholm+50 should provide a first UN
platform for exploring it.
• Multilateral institutions should use their norm-setting power to makesustainability a customary practice for private finance and international
harmonization efforts of financial regulations, and standards for sustainablefinance should be inclusive of developing countries.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future• High-income countries should deliver on climate finance goals as an
essential means of rebuilding trust.

136

5.3 Accountability:
ensure a culture ofaccountable promises
Filling the accountability gap could yield benefits within existing environmental
regimes, by improving their effectiveness, but also building trust acrossregimes, as successes in one issue area raise confidence in others. We mustensure constructive accountability, which incentivizes and leads to bold action
and change rather than threatens and lead to pre-emptive action and reduced
ambition. We need to make goals and targets matter and have value.

Weak accountability is emerging as a third important structural barrier,
50 years after the birth of environmental multilateralism. Despite muchprogress by states on agreeing to global environmental
targets, the track record on achievement is poor
(Figure 2.2). The follow-up and review mechanisms
for the SDGs are generally seen as weak and notenabling states to be held accountable, neither
at international level or domestically (Campaign
for a Decade of Accountability for the SDGs, 2021;
Å. Persson et al., 2016).

Existing
accountability
mechanisms,
typically in theform of submitting
national reports,
have notcompelled action.

Compliance remains a concern, with the proliferationof MEAs. Inadequate investment in the capacity
to ensure effective compliance at the national andsubnational levels and an inability to assure timely
legal redress at the international level has undermined
confidence in multilateralism. Existing accountability
mechanisms, typically in the form of submitting national reports, have notcompelled action, and the UN institutions receiving the reporting have
not had the mandate to take more action.
A parallel trend, since around 2015, has been the proliferation and groundswellof multi-stakeholder cooperative initiatives, partnerships and pledges
announced outside of the legally binding agreements, under several domains(climate, biodiversity, oceans, SDGs). They take diverse forms, some of which
are target-based with various degrees of measurability (e.g. targets, pledges,
campaigns, declarations, principles) and some of which are collaborative(e.g. networks, alliances, coalitions, partnerships; Future of Climate
Cooperation, 2021). For example,

In addition to these partnerships, the UNFCCC COP26 saw the announcementof several pledges involving both states and non-state actors, on methane
emissions, deforestation, phasing out coal and ending international fossil
fuel finance (UK Presidency, 2021). With the exception of the BreakthroughAgenda for advancing key clean energy technologies, few of these had details
on follow-up and progress tracking.
A third trajectory has been at the level of individual non-state actors –companies, cities, organizations. They have committed to a proliferationof ‘net zero’ climate targets, as well as targets for nature. So far, for the
net‑zero climate-related goals, very few of these targets are clearly
associated with accountability mechanisms (Figure 5.3). This holds acrossImproving conditions for change• The UNFCCC Global Climate Action portal, which started in 2014,
now features over 26 000 individual actors and more than 150 cooperative
initiatives; however, only 60 of these had reported on progress by 2021.
• The SDG Partnership Platform lists more than 6200 voluntary commitments
and multi-stakeholder partnerships, and it remains unclear how many havereported progress.
• The CBD Action Agenda lists 343 pledges and 129 partnership initiatives,and again, it is unclear how many have reported progress.

137

actor categories: national government, regional government, city government
and large companies. Independent analysis has shown that several companies’
targets do not yet meet rigorous standards (New Climate Institute, &Carbon Market Watch, 2022). The Science-Based Targets Initiative and theScience-Based Targets for Nature are examples of non-profit organizations
assisting companies that are striving for climate andsustainability goals – while the will to act is obvious,
accountability again remains a challenge.

The will to
act is obvious;
accountability
is a challenge.

While long known as a problem in global environmental
governance, the lack accountability is increasingly
being called out by a range of actors: from citizens
and youth taking governments and companies tocourt, from environmental movements highlighting
greenwashing, from investors wanting to differentiate quality of commitments,and from the UN Secretary-General, establishing a High-Level Expert
Group on Credibility, Transparency and Accountability of the Net-Zerocommitments of Non-State Actors (HLEG; Aggarwal et al., 2020; Persson,2021). This push for greater accountability has also brought an awarenessfor individual accountability.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

Weak accountability is a problem for two reasons. First, it severely
limits effectiveness in solving environmental problems and meetingtargets. In global environmental governance, it has been found that that
accountability mechanisms are often designed with respect to a specificgovernance institution’s goals (e.g. complying with procedural steps) rather
than achieving environmental outcomes (Kramarz & Park, 2016), which
can lead to an ‘accountability trap’ (Park & Kramarz, 2019). The culture of
unaccountability in global environmental governance (Halle & Najam, 2010)
also has risks, according to (Halle & Najam, 2010, p. 6): ‘the structural lackof mechanisms to monitor the level of implementation of obligations also
has a detrimental impact on negotiator behaviour, since the norm is to seek
big promises today without any reliable means to determine tomorrow
whether they are kept.’

138

The second reason is that it erodes public trust and credibility. Accountability
is a key element of democratic legitimacy, and integral to SDG16. It is also
important for social legitimacy, which is critical when success depends on
broad acceptance and buy-in (see Section 3.3; Figure 5.4).
Filling the accountability gap could then yield benefits within existing
environmental regimes, by improving their effectiveness. It could also build
trust across regimes, as successes in one issue area give confidence that
other challenges could also be confronted.
Keeping in mind the trends described above, accountability extends wellbeyond countries and national governments. Accountability must ensurethat governments fulfil their commitments primarily within their territories,
rather than ‘outsource’ actions (such as emissions mitigation) largely to othercountries. The burden of performance, combined with changes in lifestyles,
regulations or pricing of externalities, should lie largely within a government’s

Figure 5.3
Indicators of net-zero target governance
100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%
Countries(greenhouse gases)

States andRegions (population)

Cities(population)

Reporting mechanism

Published planInterim targets

Leaders held accountable

Companies(sales)

Source: Net Zero Tracker (2021).

Beyond government accountability, the proliferation of non-state actions
must be accompanied by standardized metrics of performance, transparencyof actions, independent review, and market and non-market means ofcombatting greenwashing. Accountability mechanisms have four key elements(Breuer & Leininger, 2021; Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen et al., 2018; Mashaw, 2006;
Schedler et al., 1999):• Responsibilities: Actors should be assigned clearly defined duties,
performance standards or responsibilities to take certain actions. If and when
standards are not clear, they should be developed scientifically.
• Information: Rights to access the information that is needed to effectively holdactors to account should be strengthened, through national or international law(e.g. Aarhus Convention). Information should be provided in a meaningful way,with milestones and benchmarks for progress and aggregated at appropriate
levels. With increasing digitalization comes growing opportunities to pursue

Improving conditions for change

jurisdiction. Only residual gaps should be bridged by offsets in othergeographies (see also Fankhauser et al., 2022).

139

open-source approaches and to rely on communities of practice, including
third parties (see e.g. CAMDA under the UNFCCC Global Climate Action portal).
• Answerability: Actors should be obliged to provide information and reasoned
justification for their actions, especially to the people affected by them. Thisrequires well-functioning fora for dialogue, exchange and peer review. For
example, the UNFCCC can conduct a Climate Policy Review (similar to the
WTO’s Trade Policy Reviews or the IMF’s reviews) with an enhanced focus andfrequency of assessment for the largest historical emitters.
• Consequences: Actors should expect that they may be subject to (i) formal orinformal and (ii) positive and negative consequences (sanctions) for their action
or inaction in relation to assigned responsibilities. Currently, consequences
are limited mainly to reputation at the intergovernmental level. The risk of legal
action against non-performance by states is largely missing because standardsof action have only been formalized into international law at a procedural level.
This limits assessment and determination of international liability. It may beequally relevant to empower existing technical mechanisms under international
conventions with quasi-judicial power to regulate state conduct. These andother suggestions, however, will need the political will of member states tosubmit to binding rules of conduct at the global level.

Figure 5.4
Perception of global accountability for the SDGs
Very accountable

4

3

140

2.34

Overallaverage

Middle East

North
America

2.16

Latin America andthe Caribbean

1.79

2.14

Asia andthe Pacific

1.76

Europe1

Not at all
accountable

Source: Campaign for a Decade of Accountability for the SDGs (2021, p. 37).

AfricaStockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future

2

2.72
2.40

Consequences for actors more broadly may be considered mainly ofa negative kind, such as reputational risk, naming-and-shaming, trade
sanctions, boycotts, divestment and litigation. However, it is equally important
to develop a wide range of positive consequences, such as praising,investment and preferential access, especially for actors who make significant
leaps in performance in relation to their starting points.
We must ensure constructive accountability, which incentivizes and leads
to bold action and change rather than threatening and pushing actors
to pre‑emptive regressive or negative actions and reduced ambition.
We need to make goals and targets matter and have value.
Multilateral institutions must return to the core principles of cooperation – ‘joint
monitoring and data sharing, building trust, investing in institutional and humancapacity, enforceable legal instruments, raising more financing, and equitably
sharing the gains’ (Ponzio & Ghosh, 2016) – to reclaim lost ground. Collective
action for more sustainable development will need accountability for past
behaviour from industrialized nations, proactive resolution of environmental
issues by developing nations, and a conscious change in the current and future
patterns of consumption (BP Ghosh & Raha).
Recommendations to ensure a culture of accountable promises:• Multilateral agreements and processes (UNFCCC, CBD, etc.) should
strengthen systematic tracking of action and progress on multi-stakeholder
pledges. Tracking should be simultaneously conducted by secretariats andby independent third parties, drawing both on official data submitted throughnational reporting and other data sources.

• Convene a UN Climate Accountability Summit at the UN General Assemblyor at COP meetings or other major meetings, start with an accountability
forum to give a dedicated and high-status platform for follow-up andreview of performance to date, before announcement of new pledges andcommitments. Set criteria where high achievers – in terms of demonstrating
effective action or demonstrating high ambition in relation to starting
point – are given a platform to inspire and incentivize accelerated action
and implementation.
• Build a community of practice within (and across) environmental domains
around tracking progress and convene diverse actors who can build theknowledge bank, e.g. national statistics offices, academia, civil society
and philanthropic organizations. Research and philanthropic funders
should invest more in datasets and evaluation methodologies to enableaccountability mechanisms to be effectively used.

Improving conditions for change• Develop proxy indicators of progress to measure the pace of transformation,
if and when the target is far in the future and ultimate indicators will take time
to show progress.

141

6

AcceleratingchangeAnniversaries provide moments of reflection: Where have we been? Where are
we going? Half a century after what can be considered a global awakening toneeded actions to protect humans and the only planet we have, we are looking
to the future.
The next decade will drive what happens to us and to the planet in thenext 50 years and beyond. We must act now if have any hope of reachinga sustainable existence in some of our lifetimes, in our children’s and ourchildren’s children’s lifetimes. We do not want to see a Stockholm+100
meeting – unless it is a global celebration of what we have managed to
set in motion at Stockholm+50.
By then, sustainable development will have been normalized. If we act now,in 50 years, we will not talk about ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ finance, cities,
lifestyles, jobs and so forth – because they will all be inherently sustainable
already (BP Desai).
For now, however, we need to focus and act on the specific areas ofchange that we see will bring us closer to sustainable development for theenvironment and humans. Both incremental and giant steps, for changes tolead to systemic change (Chapter 4), include environmental education for all,sustainable economies, and public support for innovation. A paradigm shift
towards co-development of technology could have transformative effects
on equitable prosperity.
We can also see that systemic changes are needed to remove barriers thathave long held us back from achieving the goal of human-environment
development in a sustainable fashion. We need to improve the conditions forchange by strengthening multilateralism and trust, establishing a culture ofaccountability, and insuring transparency and capacity-building, among othersteps forward (Chapter 5).
Those who will celebrate Stockholm+100 need to be given voice and power
now, as well as environmental and sustainability education to ensure they
can tackle the problems we leave them; many youth alive today feel the stressalready of future climate impacts, and indicate that they are willing to takeaction now (Aggarwal et al., 2022). We – all of us – need to take action now,
to make up for the slow pace of the past and speed up the pace for the future.

Accelerating change

The next steps taken, beyond Stockholm+50, could prove this to be thewatershed moment we need now. We hope we leave a legacy that unlocks
a sustainable future for all humans and our planet.

143References
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Appendix
Figure 2.2 background information
Assessment of achievement of global environment and sustainable
development targets
Below is the underlying data and sources for Figure 2.2

Set of global targets

Achievement

Pre-2012 global
environmental goals

By 2012:• UNEP first identified 320 goals in MEAs, in non-legally binding
instruments (since 1972), and outcomes of conferences convened
by specialized agencies. The majority were action-oriented rather
than target-oriented.
• 90 goals assessed in GEO-5: about half of the goals showed
no or little progress, or further deterioration.
• 34 goals assessed in 2012 Measuring Progress report: 3 goals
showed significant progress.
(UNEP, 2012)• Pre-2012• 320 goals identified• Of which 90 goals assessed

Millennium Development
Goals• 2000 – 2015
• 8 goals, with 18 targets

Aichi targets

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future• 2011 – 2020
• 20 targets, with 60 elements

160

Environmental dimensionof SDGs• 2015 – 2030
• 92 indicators for SDG targets

By 2015:• 8 goals: 1 goal was fully met (MDG 3)• Out of 14 targets that can be assessed quantitatively, 3.5 targets
were achieved.
(United Nations, 2015)

By 2020:• 20 targets: 0 had been fully achieved, 6 targets partially achieved.
• 60 elements: 7 had been achieved, 38 showed progress, 13 show
no progress or negative trend, 2 level of progress was unknown.
• National-level targets did not reflect the level of ambition
that countries had committed to in the Aichi targets and only
37% of national targets had been met or were on track to.
(Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2020)

By 2021:• 92 indicators (2000 – 2018 data): 26 showing positive trend
2000 – 2018 (does not represent that the SDG target will
be achieved), 2 showed very little change, 11 showed negative
trends, 52 had no or insufficient data
(UNEP 2021)
By 2019:• The 2019 GSDR assessed selected targets under each of the
17 SDGs. Goals 12, 13, 14 and 15 with a strong environmental
focus showed the worst performance of all 17 goals, with negativelong‑term trends.

Method to compile Figure 2.2
Adjustment was made to ensure the same achievement categories could
be used across the sets of targets.
• For the pre-2012 global environmental goals a first inventory by UNEP
identified more than 300 goals. 90 of these goals were assessed in GEO-5,
about half of which showed progress. The data displayed here represent the
sub-set represented in the UNEP Measuring Progress report from 2012. Theirassessment ‘Environmental scorecard’ figure (p. 3) lists 34 targets assessedas ‘significant progress’, ‘some progress’, ‘little or no progress’, ‘further
deterioration’, and ‘insufficient data to assess’. In our figure, the ‘little or no
progress’ and ‘further deterioration’ were both counted as ‘no progress’. For
the 8 targets that were represented as ranging across assessment categories,
the highest category was chosen in our figure.
• For the Millennium Development Goals, the summary assessment by Our
World in Data was used. Targets assessed as achieved (green) by them wereidentified as ‘achieved/significant progress’ in our figure. 10 of the targets thatwere assessed as ‘missed’ (red) were coded as ‘some progress’ in our figure
based on the data and 2 of the targets assessed as ‘missed’ were coded as‘no progress’ in our figure (MDG7.A and MDG7.B).
• For the Aichi targets, the assessment from the 2020 Global Biodiversity Outlook
was used. Their assessment categories were similar to those used in our figure.
• For the environmental dimension of SDGs, the assessment made in UNEP’s
Measuring Progress 2021 report was used. It looked at SDG indicator datafrom 2000 to 2018. Indicators assessed as ‘showing positive trend’ (26)were assessed here as ‘some progress’ to reflect the uncertainty of outcomeof these indicators by 2030, i.e. whether it will be significant by then or not.
Indicators assessed as ‘showing very little change’ (2) and ‘showing negative
trends’ (11) were in our figure assessed as ‘no progress’.

Figure 2.3 background information• Research on the environment has grown by as much as 30-fold, as measured
by the number of peer-reviewed journal articles published annually in thefield of ‘environmental sciences’ (search performed in academic database
Scopus, 12 February 2022).

Appendix

Environmental Assessment: achieved, but not translated into policy
at the needed level of ambition.
• Evaluation and review conducted at multiple levels today include formalizedintergovernmental scientific assessment processes, e.g. the International Panelon Climate Change (IPCC, since 1990), the Intergovernmental Science‑Policy
Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, since 2016),
Global Environmental Outlook (GEO, since 1997), and a new international
panel on chemicals and waste to be established (UNEA-5 resolution, UNEP/
EA5/L13/REV.1). In addition, regular global outlook reports are publishedby UN bodies, e.g. on natural resource use, biodiversity, chemicals andsustainable development.

161

• Monitoring of environmental data and indicators remains unsatisfactory.
By 2021, 57% of environment-related SDG targets still did not have sufficient
data globally to allow for regular and meaningful monitoring (see Figure 2.2
on achievement of global environment and sustainable development targets;
UNEP, 2021e).
• Information exchange has increased substantially, with numerous
intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder conferences, digital information
platforms, scientific and popular communication (see Figure 2.1).

Environmental Management: achieved, according to outputs rather thanoutcome and impact.
• Goal-setting and planning: Up to 2012, more than 300 goals had been set
globally either in international agreements or voluntary declarations. Since
then, at least three major sets of global targets with relevance for theenvironment have been agreed, with quantified and measurable goals andtargets to a large extent. However, goals set have not generally been achieved,
and may not be the ‘right’ goals.
• International consultation and agreements: More than 1300 multilateralenvironmental agreements (MEA) have been agreed since 1972 (Mitchell
et al., 2020a). The trend is towards more goal-based rather than rule-based
international governance; still, recent new agreements under consultation
include the Marine Biodiversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ)
and a global agreement to end plastic pollution (UNEA-5.2). Many MEAs sufferfrom poor implementation.

Stockholm+50: Unlocking a Better Future• Supporting measures: difficult to assess in terms of key indicators; generally
poorer track record.

162• Education and training: no reliable global indicators; stable progress can beassumed in several parts of the world. Environmental education in schools
has increased, with more than 92% of school curricula in 46 countries now
including environmental issues, although depth and breadth can be improved(UNESCO, 2021). Environmental training in the private sector has increased
substantially, considering the rapid growth rate in certificates issues forcorporate environmental management, according to the International
Standards Organization (ISO) 14001 standard (ISO, 2020).
• Public information: no global reliable indicators; stable progress can beassumed in several parts of the world. Several governments have legislation
on public access to environmental information. Public requests forenvironmental information from the EU are increasing (European Environmental
Bureau, 2019). However, barriers persist, despite the Aarhus Convention on
environmental information in the UNECE region. The start of the internet anddigital information flows led to wider and quicker access, including throughcrowdsourced information (Petiška & Moldan, 2021).

• Organization has steadily progressed through establishment and renewal ofinstitutions, at the international (UNEP; UN Environment Management Group;
multiple international organizations with an expanded environmental mandate;
Mitchell et al., 2020b) and national level (Busch & Jörgens, 2005; Egelston,2013), as well as through transnational networks and partnerships (Kalfagianni
et al., 2020; see also BP Michel). Many kinds of organizations have emerged in
a complex landscape, but a critique persists that environmental organizations
are typically too weak in terms of mandate, staff and budgetary resources(Ivanova, 2021) and that a ‘constitutional moment’ is needed for transformative
institutional reform (see Biermann et al., 2020).
• Financing: progress, but with large gaps to the levels agreed among parties
and/or to the levels needed as assessed by science and experts, and withproblems of access in low-income parts of the world. The SDG funding gap
is estimated at USD 2.5 trillion, set to increase as a consequence of theCovid-19 pandemic (OECD, 2020a). Environmentally damaging financing
continues, in the form of public subsidies and private investments (Koplow& Steenblik, 2022a). Mobilization of private finance for sustainable investment
has increased rapidly, but remains heavily skewed towards high- and middleincome countries (UNCTAD, 2021; see also BP Dutt et al.).
• Technical cooperation: lacking. Efforts have not met expectations for building
capacity in low-income countries to manage environmental problems throughtechnological, social and regulatory means. Official development assistance(ODA) has increased for projects, programmes and technical cooperationin absolute terms, but decreased as a percentage of Gross National Income(GNI) and is far from reaching the target of 0.7% of GNI (UN, 2021). Technology
transfer as a means of implementation remains weak, when measured in
dedicated ODA funding (UN, 2019) as well as implementation (BP Ghosh et al.)Figure 3.3 background information

Appendix

Sources: Business Sweden (2020); Dennis, M. (2021); European
Parliament (n.d.); Linnér & Selin (2018); Parliamentary Monitoring Group (n.d.);Statista (2022); Strategy& (2018); Union of Concerned Scientists (2017);
World Bank (n.d.).

163

About us
SEI is an international non-profit research and policy
organization that tackles environment and development
challenges. SEI was founded in 1989 and is named
after the Stockholm Declaration of 1972. We look to the
Declaration as the origin of our mandate, and we fulfilthat mandate through research and engagement.
CEEW is one of Asia’s leading not-for-profit policy
research institutions. The Council uses data, integrated
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Council addresses pressing global challenges throughan integrated and internationally focused approach.
It prides itself on the independence of its high-quality
research, develops partnerships with public and private
institutions, and engages with the wider public.