Bend the trend?

Report says sustainable resource use a must

ATTENTION IS being called to the role of natural resource use and management as a necessary part of the response to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution.

“The prevailing resource extraction and use models are a contributing and major causal factor of what is known as the triple planetary crisis. Moreover, natural resource use is highly unequal and creates strong differences in the distribution of costs and benefits, with the poor particularly disadvantaged throughout the cycle of use,” reveals the Global Resource Outlook 2024.

The report – titled Bend the Trend: Pathways to a liveable planet as resource use spikes and published by the United Nations Environment Programme – studies natural resources that are considered essential to the production of goods and services to meet human needs. These include biomass (including crops for food, energy and bio-based material) as well as wood for energy and industrial uses; metals such as iron and copper; land; and water.

“The current model also fails to deliver acceptable human development conditions for many on the planet. Without a systems-wide shift towards sustainable resource use, the current trajectories will contribute further to the surpassing of planetary boundaries and the inequalities that are characteristic of the global economy. This has also been framed as humanity transgressing a safe operating space,” the report added.

Among other things, this has also put the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in jeopardy.

“Natural resources are directly or indirectly linked to all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The way societies use natural resources through linear consumption and production patterns determines the trajectories of environmental impacts and human well-being. The use of natural resources is therefore intrinsically linked to the global community’s capacity to achieve sustainability, and deliver on multilateral environmental agreements relating to climate, biodiversity, land degradation and other issues,” the report explained.

At the same time, it revealed that the challenge also “relates to the long-term capacity of natural systems to deliver well-being for all, and given current inequality, especially to those who are lacking the basic material conditions for a decent life”.

ACT NOW

But, the report said, all is not lost, though it will require “concrete and immediate action at scale”.

“Since the dawn of the sustainability and environmental inter governmental agenda at the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Environment, governments have failed to deliver on many environmental and sustainability commitments, and the actions taken so far do not meet the scale of the challenge. The 2019 edition of this report showed that the extraction and initial processing of materials were responsible for 90 per cent of land-based biodiversity loss and water stress and 50 per cent of climate impacts,” it said.

“Moreover, the current resource use model leads to a highly unequal distribution of socio-economic benefits and environmental impacts. It is therefore critical to explicitly acknowledge the resource perspective to meet the global goals on human development, climate, biodiversity, pollution and land degradation, and to develop systemic actions that address common drivers of climate change, biodiversity loss and unsustainable resource use,” the report added.

Even with these realities, the report noted that resource use and management are currently “underrepresented in global, regional and national climate and biodiversity strategies; and there is a dearth of targets for guiding and evaluating how improved natural resource use and management can contribute to meeting global sustainability goals”.

Among other things, it said also that what is important is a commitment to change and to innovate.

“In a context of continuous change and recurrent and interconnected crises, improving how natural resources are used and managed can play a decisive role in more securely meeting human needs for all,” it said.