Policy responses to Global
Environmental Change
Davina Vačkářová
vackarova.d@czechglobe.cz
Global policies on environment and sustainability
2030 Agenda for sustainable development:
transforming our world
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals, 169 targets and 231 indicators
„We resolve, between now and 2030, to end poverty and hunger everywhere; to
combat inequalities within and among countries; to build peaceful, just and
inclusive societies; to protect human rights and promote gender equality and the
empowerment of women and girls; and to ensure the lasting protection of the
planet and its natural resources. We resolve also to create conditions for
sustainable, inclusive and sustained economic growth, shared prosperity and
decent work for all, taking into account different levels of national development
and capacities“
UN (2015) Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable
development. UN, New York
• Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to
climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all
countries
• Integrate climate change measures into national
policies, strategies and planning
• Implement the commitment undertaken by
developed-country parties to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change to a
goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion annually by
2020 from all sources
• Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for
effective climate change-related planning and
management in least developed countries and
small island developing States, including focusing
on women, youth and local and marginalized
communities
• By 2020, ensure the conservation, restoration and
sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater
ecosystems and their services, in particular forests,
wetlands, mountains and drylands, in line with obligations
under international agreements
• Take urgent and significant action to reduce the
degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity
and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of
threatened species
• By 2020, integrate ecosystem and biodiversity values into
national and local planning, development processes,
poverty reduction strategies and accounts
• Mobilize significant resources from all sources and at all
levels to finance sustainable forest management and
provide adequate incentives to developing countries to
advance such management, including for conservation and
reforestation
• End all forms of discrimination against all women
and girls everywhere
• Eliminate all forms of violence against all women
and girls in the public and private spheres,
including trafficking and sexual and other types of
exploitation
• Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic
work through the provision of public services,
infrastructure and social protection policies and
the promotion of shared responsibility within the
household and the family as nationally appropriate
• Ensure women’s full and effective participation
and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels
of decision-making in political, economic and
public life
• By 2030, progressively achieve and sustain income
growth of the bottom 40 per cent of the population at
a rate higher than the national average
• By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic
and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex,
disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or
other status
• Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of
outcome, including by eliminating discriminatory laws,
policies and practices and promoting appropriate
legislation, policies and action in this regard
• Implement the principle of special and differential
treatment for developing countries, in particular least
developed countries, in accordance with World Trade
Organization agreements
Andrew L. Fanning et al., The social shortfall and ecological overshoot of nations. Nature Sustainability 5, 2022, pp. 26-36
UNEP (2011) Decoupling natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth
Trade-offs between various SDGs goals: is everything
possible?
Climate change
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC)
• Paris Agreement (COP 21, effective from 2016)
• Its overarching goal is to hold “the increase in the global average
temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue
efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial
levels.”
• Parties aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as
possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country
Parties, and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with
best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic
emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the
second half of this century, on the basis of equity, and in the context of
sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.
• Adaptation to climate change
McKay et al., Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points.
Science, 2022
IPCC Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and
Vulnerability
• Adaptation options for managing a wide range of climate risks have been
proposed, planned or implemented across all sectors and regions, with prospects
for wide-ranging benefits to nearly all people and ecosystems
• Many options are widely applicable and could be scaled up to reduce
vulnerability or exposure for the majority of the world’s population and the
ecosystems they depend on (high confidence). These include nature restoration
(high confidence), changing diets and reducing food waste (high confidence),
infrastructure retrofitting (high confidence), building codes (medium confidence),
disaster early warning (high confidence) and cooperative governance (medium
confidence).
Incremental vs. transformational adaptation
• The majority of climate risk management and adaptation currently being planned
and implemented is incremental (high confidence). Transformational adaptation
will become increasingly necessary at higher global warming levels (medium
confidence) but can be associated with significant and inequitable trade-offs
(medium confidence).
• Adaptations with some of the highest transformative potential include migration
(high confidence), spatial planning (medium confidence), governance cooperation
(medium confidence), universal access to health care (medium confidence) and
changing food systems (medium confidence). Options that tend to modify
existing systems incrementally include early-warning systems (high confidence),
insurance (medium confidence) and improved water use efficiency (high
confidence)
(IPCC 2022)
Enabling Conditions
• Adaptation enablers are defined as those conditions or properties that
specifically promote or advance the adaptation process. Enablers are positively
associated with likelihood that adaptation planning occurs, and strategies will be
put into practice.
• Three broad enabling conditions are:
• governance (legislation, regulation, institutions, litigation),
• finance (needs, sources, intermediaries, instruments flows, equity) and
• knowledge (capacities, climate services, big data, Indigenous/local knowledge,
co-production, boundary organisations).
Biodiversity
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) (COP 15,
2022)
4 goals for 2050 and 23 targets for 2030
The vision of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is a
world of living in harmony with nature where “by 2050, biodiversity is
valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem
services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for
all people”
To take urgent action to halt and reverse biodiversity loss to put nature
on a path to recovery for the benefit of people and planet by conserving
and sustainably using biodiversity and by ensuring the fair and equitable
sharing of benefits from the use of genetic resources, while providing the
necessary means of implementation
Bending the curve of global biodiversity loss
Leclère, D., Obersteiner, M., Barrett, M. et al. Bending the curve of terrestrial biodiversity needs an integrated
strategy. Nature 585, 551–556 (2020).
Transformative change
• The Sustainable Development Goals and the 2050 Vision
for Biodiversity cannot be achieved without
transformative change
• Transformative change can be defined as a fundamental,
system-wide reorganization across technological,
economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals
and values (IPBES, 2018; IPCC, 2018).
• Transformative change can be defined as societal change
in terms of technological, economic and social structures.
It includes both personal and social transformation, and
includes shifts in values and beliefs, and patterns of social
behaviour.
• Transformative change has emerged in the policy
discourse and is increasingly seen as both necessary and
inevitable for biodiversity-related issues and sustainable
development more broadly.
Feeding the world without consuming the planet
• Intensification of agriculture: Encouraging ecological intensification and sustainable use of
multi-functional landscapes to close the yield gap.
• Organic agriculture: Improving certification schemes and organic agriculture
• Global supply chains: regulating root causes, such as land rights, commodity prices,
agricultural systems and market access
• Dietary transitions: substantially reducing the consumption of animal products in developed
countries and emerging economies has the potential to greatly lower the negative impacts of
farming while at the same time generating significant dividends in terms of people’s health
• Reducing food waste: improved food distribution and better food storage in developing
regions, and consumer education, and less wasteful marketing practices in developed
countries
• Food market transparency and price stability: Policy responses to price increases have
included reductions on food taxes and import tariffs, and increasing subsidies and food-based
safety nets
Disaster risk reduction
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (Sendai
Framework)
7 targets and 4 priorities for action to prevent new and reduce existing disaster
risks: (i) Understanding disaster risk; (ii) Strengthening disaster risk governance
to manage disaster risk; (iii) Investing in disaster reduction for resilience and;
(iv) Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response, and to "Build Back
Better" in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
It aims to achieve the substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives,
livelihoods and health and in the economic, physical, social, cultural and
environmental assets of persons, businesses, communities and countries
„Building Back Better“