Humans have just 10 years to influence the future of the planet to avoid an irreversible environmental catastrophe, Christiana Figueres, the founding partner of Global Optimism, a group fighting the climate crisis, recently said at the Tokyo Forum 2020 Online conference. “The scary thing is that after 2030, it basically doesn’t matter what humans do because we will lose total control [over the Earth’s system],” said Figueres, a former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Figueres was referring to the UN’s landmark IPCC report, which stated that the world had just over a decade to change its trajectory in order to stay within the limits of 1.5C global heating. Once critical tipping points are exceeded, irreversible instability in the Earth’s systems will be triggered, say leading climate scientists.
To avoid this scenario, urgent international collaboration is needed to transition to more sustainable economies. Much of this involves better governance of the Earth’s key systems and functions, consisting of the atmosphere, oceans, biodiversity and climate systems, says Dr Naoko Ishii, executive vice president and director of the University of Tokyo’s new Center for Global Commons (CGC). The term “global commons” refers to resources that exist beyond formal geopolitical boundaries and are, as a result, harder to regulate.
“There’s currently no penalty, so it’s harder to protect these global commons,” says Ishii. The CGC is developing practical ways to safeguard the Earth’s critical systems and functions, and catalyse social change within the next decade to ensure a sustainable future.
One of the biggest challenges is the priceless nature of the Earth’s systems. It’s impossible to assign the ocean or the atmosphere with a specific economic value. Even when something is under the jurisdiction of a government, it can still be a challenge, says Ishii, giving the Amazon rainforest as an example. ”It isn’t valued well in the current economic system and there are no penalties for exploiting it,” she says. “The destruction of the rainforest is causing negative environmental impacts all over the world. Everyone would benefit from better stewardship of the Amazon.”
A new form of capitalism is therefore required, Ishii says. “Some businesses are moving from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism that takes care of humans, society and nature.”
As well as an intergovernmental and country-level approach, she stresses the need to mobilise a much broader social movement as soon as possible. “We want to involve everyone, from businesses to consumers and investors.” The goal is to manage the global commons in such a way that they are effectively protected and that production (of food, for example) is sustainable. “Our mission is to come up with a new social and legal norm so that Earth systems can be managed sustainably.”
The CGC is developing a new Global Commons Stewardship Framework, which consists of multiple components. One is long-term “scenario modelling” to show the pathways to reach the necessary targets. Another is an index to assess each country’s impact on the global commons. For example, the index score for Japan gets worse when the effect of trade is taken into account, explains Ishii, partly because imported food might have been produced as a result of deforestation.
A report on the pilot version of the Global Commons Stewardship Index (GCSI) concludes that rich countries have the greatest negative impact on global commons and that many small, wealthy countries, such as Luxembourg and Switzerland, perform particularly badly. In these poorly performing countries, consumers and businesses have an enormous impact on global commons far beyond their boundaries through complex supply chains and global trading, from production to transport.
The pilot version of GCSI, which acts as a guide to policymakers and business owners, shows that the impact on global commons varies substantially from country to country. By comparing how different countries perform, Ishii hopes to provoke debate that spurs international policy change and speeds up transformation. “By publishing these indicators at a country level, we’ll create the peer pressure that shows which governments are better at protecting global commons and build a greater sense of sharing this common goal.”
Global commons are about a whole suite of targets, from the protection of the Amazon rainforest to the conservation of biodiversity in the ocean and reduction of air pollution. Mitigating the climate crisis is just one piece of this jigsaw puzzle. So Ishii warns that we need to broaden our view. “Because all global commons are interconnected, it’s a complex picture, so each country needs a mix of solutions to ocean pollution, loss of biodiversity and the climate crisis.”
At the recent Tokyo Forum 2020 Online conference, held in December and curated by Ishii, more than 30 renowned speakers from around the world shared ideas about how to create an integrated framework for all stakeholders to steward the Earth’s shared resources. “We need a massive transformation … because our food systems have already created very large strains on our environment, on our economy, on our soil and on our water,” said Shenggen Fan, former director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) during the conference.
While the CGC promotes the widespread transition to more sustainable socio-economic systems including food systems and circular economies, Ishii says this might take longer for developing countries to achieve if they aren’t as far along in the transition process. She urges that developed and developing countries work together to ensure that the responsibility of governing the global commons is shared fairly.
“We need to incorporate all regions and I hope that developing countries will play as important a role as the developed countries and come together to share ambitions,” she says.
For more information on the Tokyo Forum 2020 Online conference, visit u-tokyo.ac.jp
