Environmental Limits and Swiss Footprints Based on Planetary Boundaries A study commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) Final Report Authors Hy Dao Pascal Peduzzi Bruno Chatenoux Andrea De Bono Stefan Schwarzer (UNEP/GRID-Geneva and the University of Geneva) & Damien Friot (Shaping Environmental Action) Geneva, May 2015 i ii Environmental Limits and Swiss Footprints Based on Planetary Boundaries Keywords Planetary Boundaries, Green Economy, national footprints, Switzerland Advisory group Andreas Hauser (lead), Adrian Aeschlimann, Andreas Bachmann, Loa Buchli, Paul Filliger, Peter Gerber, Hans Gujer, Klaus Kammer, Anik Kohli, Nicolas Merky, Silvia Rauch, Ruedi Stähli, Gaston Theis, Markus Wüest (all Federal Office for the Environment FOEN), Anne- Marie Mayerat (Federal Statistical Office FSO) Acknowledgements The authors express their thanks for their substantive inputs to Markus Fischer and Jodok Guntern (Swiss Biodiversity Forum), as well as to Josef Tremp and Martin Pfaundler (Federal Office for the Environment FOEN), Rolf Frischknecht (Treeze), as well as to the participants of the workshop held in Bern (March 2014). Graphics : Stéphane Kluser, Stefan Schwarzer. Suggested form of citation Dao Hy, Friot Damien, Peduzzi Pascal, Bruno Chatenoux, Andrea De Bono, Stefan Schwarzer (2015), Environmental limits and Swiss footprints based on Planetary Boundaries, UNEP/GRID-Geneva & University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. Commissioned by: Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), Economics and Environmental Monitoring Division, CH-3003 Bern. The FOEN is an agency of the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). This report was prepared under contract to the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). The contractor bears sole responsibility for the content, which does not necessarily reflect the views of FOEN. Link for downloading this study http://pb.grid.unep.ch Abstract The goal of this study is to develop recommendations for a set of footprint limits for a Green Economy, by translating the environmental limits of our planet (“Planetary Boundaries”) to the context of Swiss demand (i.e. consumption). The proposed limit values serve as a rough orientation on a sustainable level of resource consumption from a scientific point of view; they are not meant as directly applicable political targets. We conclude that Switzerland should, as a priority, act on its footprints related to Climate Change, Ocean Acidification, Biodiversity Loss and Nitrogen Losses. This suggestion is based on the importance of these environmental processes for the good functioning of the global Earth system, the current global pressure on them as well as on the Swiss contribution to these pressures. i Environmental Limits and Swiss Footprints Based on Planetary Boundaries About this document This report was commissioned in November 2013 by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment to the Global Resource Information Database (UNEP/GRID-Geneva) and the Institute of Environmental Sciences (University of Geneva). It has been written in collaboration with the NGO Shaping Environmental Action. The document is structured in eight parts: 1. An introduction to the idea of a complementary perspective to consider global environmental issues, based on footprinting 2. A presentation of the objectives of the project 3. An introduction to the concept of Planetary Boundaries 4. A presentation of the distributional principles to define a country share of the Planetary Boundaries 5. A description of the approach applied in this report 6. Limits, footprints & performances for Switzerland and the World for each Planetary Boundary studied 7. Synthetic results for Switzerland and the world 8. Conclusion and perspectives ii Environmental Limits and Swiss Footprints Based on Planetary Boundaries Table of content 1. Introduction.................................................................................................................. 1 1.1. New approaches for global environmental issues: planetary tipping points and footprinting ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1.1. The classical perspective is territorial ............................................................. 1 1.1.2. Footprints provide a complementary perspective ........................................... 1 1.1.3. A new concept: the Planetary Boundaries ...................................................... 2 1.2. Current environmental situation and policy backgrounds ............................... 2 1.2.1. A rising footprint in Switzerland and in the EU ................................................ 2 1.2.2. Political background in Switzerland ................................................................ 2 1.2.3. European and international backgrounds ....................................................... 3 2. Objectives .................................................................................................................... 4 2.1. Swiss project: setting footprint limits for Switzerland ...................................... 4 2.1.1. Characteristics of the Swiss limits and indicators ........................................... 4 2.1.2. Expert workshop ............................................................................................ 4 2.2. This report ............................................................................................................ 5 2.3. Guiding principles ............................................................................................... 5 3. Understanding the limits of our planet ...................................................................... 6 3.1. Awareness of global changes and limits ........................................................... 6 3.2. The concept of environmental limits .................................................................. 8 3.3. The concept of Planetary Boundaries ................................................................ 9 3.3.1. Description of the concept .............................................................................. 9 3.3.2. Overview of Earth System processes considered ......................................... 10 3.3.3. Differences with the classical themes of the Swiss environmental policy ...... 11 4. Distributional principles for defining the share of Switzerland .............................. 12 4.1. General principles .............................................................................................. 12 4.2. Equal share per capita as starting point .......................................................... 12 4.3. Refined allocation approach ............................................................................. 13 5. Approach .................................................................................................................... 14 5.1. Identification of Planetary Boundaries with accepted global limits ............... 14 5.2. Selection of indicators ....................................................................................... 16 5.3. Computing the limits ......................................................................................... 17 5.3.1. Global limits.................................................................................................. 17 5.3.2. Downscaling limits to countries through allocation ........................................ 18 5.3.3. Downscaling approaches applied in this report ............................................. 21 5.4. Computing the footprints .................................................................................. 23 5.5. Assessing the performances ............................................................................ 24 5.6. Principles for setting priorities ......................................................................... 25 6. Limits, footprints & performances for Switzerland and the World ......................... 26 6.1. Climate Change .................................................................................................. 26 6.1.1. Description ................................................................................................... 26 6.1.2. Methodology................................................................................................. 26 6.1.3. Current performance .................................................................................... 30 6.1.4. Discussion: Climate Change ........................................................................ 32 iii Environmental Limits and Swiss Footprints Based on Planetary Boundaries 6.2. Ocean Acidification ........................................................................................... 33 6.2.1. Description ................................................................................................... 34 6.2.2. Methodology................................................................................................. 34 6.2.3. Current performance .................................................................................... 38 6.2.4. Discussion: Ocean Acidification.................................................................... 39 6.3. Nitrogen and Phosphorus Losses .................................................................... 39 6.3.1. Description ................................................................................................... 40 6.3.2. Methodology................................................................................................