Sustainable Development in Times of Climate Change
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CHAPTER 5 A Haitian student takes part in a massive tree-planting campaign to reforest areas depleted for charcoal production and farm land. Sustainable Development in Times of Climate Change Transforming our world toward sustainability Chapter 5 addresses implementation of SDGs requires understanding environmental degradation and climate change as social and political issues. Adopting an eco-social lens in policy design and implementation can facilitate not only green but also fair approaches that will be required to achieve the SDGs. It would help minimize the risk of injustice associated with green economy policies, and redress the distributional impacts of environmental and climate change policies in favour of vulnerable groups. An eco-social policy mix brings together participatory governance and decision making, progressive social policies and environmental regulation with local initiatives and innovations to promote equitable and sustainable outcomes. 141 POLICY INNOVATIONS FOR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE 1. Introduction to those countries that are less affected or better prepared to cope with negative impacts, but have emitted the main share of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the course of industrialization (figure 5.1). Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing development as we know it. Decades of Economic development and climate change are progress risk being reversed, and existing efforts linked to the extent that per capita CO2 emissions to eradicate poverty nullified, if countries cannot increase with GDP per capita (that is, rich countries work together effectively to limit global warming emit more).2 Climate change is thus fraught with a and manage the consequences of climate change. double injustice that leaves those least responsible Climate change challenges the very foundations of for global warming incurring the highest social cost.3 a global economic system that is based on carbon- A similar situation applies to rich and poor countries fuelled growth, a system that is incompatible or regions. Differences in disaster risk reduction with environmental sustainability. It forces us to capacities become evident when comparing the recognize the reciprocal interlinkages and feedbacks percentage distribution of weather-related loss of complex social-ecological-economic systems which events with the percentage distribution of their require innovative new thinking, science, policy and impacts. Asia, for example, experienced 30 percent practice for sustainability. of the events but suffered 69 percent of fatalities. In contrast, North America, with 25 percent of While attention to both climate change and events, experienced 7 percent of fatalities.4 Similarly, unsustainable development has risen in recent the solutions employed to address climate change, decades, the focus has been primarily on whether technology-based or not, have differing environmental and economic dimensions and impacts for different groups of people. technological fixes. This approach has not worked. As this chapter shows, climate change is fundamentally This chapter calls for an eco-social turn in a social and political issue. Social dimensions, development thinking and policy responses. Social including the politics of transformative change, are issues cannot be disassociated from their ecological crucial for understanding both the drivers of climate context and environmental repercussions. The change and its impacts, as well as necessary responses chapter thus explores the role and scope of eco-social to address the problem in an equitable way. policies in addressing climate change and other forms of large-scale environmental degradation in conjunction with social justice issues, drawing Climate change is a social on different country and city examples from the and a political issue Global North and the Global South. It assesses developments in international sustainability and climate change–related policies based on green Climate change–related risks increase as a function economy examples. Looking at innovative measures of both the increasing number and intensity of that combine environmental and social objectives, environmental hazards and levels of socioeconomic it analyses the potential of eco-social approaches for vulnerability and exposure. Rapid urbanization promoting innovation and transformative change. processes, for example, lead to growing numbers of settlements in highly flood- and storm-exposed Comparing levels of human development (as coastal zones and low-lying areas. A large number of measured by the Human Development Index/HDI these fast-growing settlements comprise precarious on the basis of life expectancy, schooling and gross infrastructure and are often inhabited by people national income per capita) with per capita CO2 in vulnerable situations. The risks and social costs emissions demonstrates the overall link between associated with environmental and climate change development and CO2 emissions (figure 5.2). For are very unevenly distributed and closely linked to sustainable development, this means that most structural inequalities which leave disadvantaged industrialized countries need to drastically lower people and communities more exposed and their emissions whereas most developing and vulnerable to climate impacts.1 Women and children other low-emitting countries need to accelerate are often disproportionately affected. However, the development in a low-carbon way.5 It also reveals responsibility for climate change is often attributed that some countries have achieved high human 142 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN TIMES OF CLIMATE CHANGE Figure 5.1. Cumulative CO2 emissions 1850–2012, excluding land use change and forestry Data source: World Resources Institute 2015. development with relatively low per capita emissions activities. The success of the eco-social turn depends (for example, Costa Rica). When carbon emissions on whether a social and political perspective can are factored into the measurement of development be adopted in policy responses to environmental levels, country ranking can change significantly. degradation and climate change. Indeed, compared to the HDI, several developing countries, such as Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, Key findings from this chapter include the following. advance considerably (by 16 or more places) up • Climate change needs to be framed as a social the “human sustainable development index” when and political issue. carbon emissions are factored in.6 Some richer • Policies that engage beneficiaries actively in countries, notably the United States and Canada, planning and implementation yield better fall significantly. results. • Using an eco-social lens in policy integration Evidence discussed in this chapter supports the can overcome tensions between different goals argument that an explicit eco-social turn can and actors and promote equality, redistribution foster climate change resilience by simultaneously and empowerment as well as environmental supporting environmentally sound and socially just protection. • The transition to sustainability will depend to a Climate change challenges the very large extent on getting energy provision right. foundations of the global economic • Transformative change will require inclusive institutions and an enabling environment for system that is based on carbon-fuelled social innovation. growth, revealing a system that is Section 2 looks at why, despite all the policy attention incompatible with environmental to sustainable development since the 1992 Earth sustainability Summit, relatively little progress has been made. It 143 POLICY INNOVATIONS FOR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE Figure 5.2. CO2 emissions per capita by HDI Score Data source: UNDP 2015, country classification according to http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm, accessed 27 June 2016. The success of the eco-social turn 2. The Sustainability Turn depends on whether a social and political perspective can be adopted Increasing environmental pressures, combined in responses to environmental with advocacy work by environmental and social degradation and climate change movements and activists, have led to a stronger policy focus on environmental and climate-related issues. The interconnectedness of environmental goes on to highlight various innovative elements of sustainability and human well-being has been the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and increasingly recognized since the term sustainable the concept of resilience that has recently gained development was popularly defined in the 1987 traction. Section 3 analyses the social dimensions of Brundtland Report7 and taken up at the 1992 green economy approaches and highlights the need Earth Summit. Subsequently, however, the focus to adopt an eco-social lens in order to ensure that on sustainable development meant a significant economies are not only green but also equitable and turn away from the more progressive approaches inclusive. Section 4 examines the role of innovative associated with “eco-development” that were eco-social policies in promoting transformative promoted throughout the 1970s toward a much change and climate change resilience. In conclusion, vaguer concept that entailed a rebalancing of section 5 identifies the kinds of eco-social policies environmental, social and economic goals and that can support the transformation to sustainability. respecting the interests of future generations. 144 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN TIMES OF CLIMATE CHANGE Indeed, sustainable development gained traction been