What kind of sustainable development goals should emerge from Rio?

This post was also published today on the Guardian’s Poverty Matters blog

I attended an ‘expert panel’ discussion recently on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Originating in a proposal by the Colombian government for what comes after 2015, when most of the Millennium Development Goals expire, some initial progress on the SDGs is being increasingly seen as one of the few wins from a rather forlorn-looking Earth Summit in Rio next week. The essence of the proposal is that global goals help focus leaders’ attention and galvanize aid, but that this time around, they need to bring together development and environment into a single set of targets.

The most likely result in Rio is a paragraph or two in the final summit document, kicking off several months/years of talks to design and approve a new set of goals before the MDGs’ sell-by date arrives. But I’m worried that much of the discussion is taking place in a political vacuum, ignoring the political and economic context that will shape any decision and opting instead for the comforting-but-illusory safety of wonkish debates about indicators and metrics. Here’s the gist of my pitch to the meeting.

Firstly, the context is totally different to when the MDGs were agreed (late 1990s). The rich countries are in recession (compared to a long boom) and the US is in a presidential election campaign; there is no prospect of EU leadership to rival that of the Utstein group and (later) the UK and US governments in the late 90s; there is G-zero drift at the multilateral level (i.e. no-one taking global responsibility, contrasting with post Cold War dynamism in the 90s); and poverty is now mainly a middle income country phenomenon (and so ending it becomes more an issue of domestic redistribution). Finally, any agreement is likely to be more shock-driven, in terms of needing crises (political or economic) to generate the necessary momentum for agreement and implementation.

Secondly, the MDGs were largely about increasing the quantity and quality of aid. That is an implausible mission in the next 10 years. The graph shows World Bank research on the impact of previous banking crises on donor aid flows – aid typically rises for a couple of years and then falls of a cliff, not returning to its former levels for 15 years. The latest global aid numbers suggest a repeat of that pattern could be under way, so goals and targets are unlikely to have the same impact this time around.

So third, we need to think about what instruments have historically been born out of, or worked in, a downturn. Candidates include:

- Long term norm setting
- New sources of revenue, whether international or national, eg the financial transaction tax, closing down tax havens, increased royalties from natural resources, or domestic tax reform
- Re-regulation of financial sectors and introduction of social safety nets (cf the New Deal, born out of the Great Depression.)
- Creating the ‘enabling conditions’ for local people’s movements and others to put pressure on governments, eg access to good quality data, reporting requirements on governments
- Low/zero cost forms of pressure, eg league tables or peer review that use name and shame to create a race to the top between neighbours and rivals.

Add all this together and I think the most sensible approach to the SDGs is to aim for an ‘inspirational envelope’ in Rio, accompanied by low-cost commitments that will become sources of progressive traction (rather than explicit targets), primarily on national governments, forcing them to pay increased attention to issues of poverty eradication and sustainability.

Using Claire Melamed’s handy typology, that means agreeing a big ‘Bulls Eye’ end goal – zero hunger (Ban Ki Moon); zero poverty (WEF); human security (IDS); universal basic services; sustainability (or hey, how about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?). That could build on Kate Raworth’s doughnut framework (see yesterday’s post), combining development goals and planetary boundaries (see graphic).

Add to that, agreements on data and process to put in place the enabling conditions for future progress. Finally, and hardest to pin down, is it possible to create mechanisms that allow governments, the multilateral system or citizens to respond to shocks by accelerating progress? Not sure quite what this would involve, but the current MDG-type construct is very incremental/steady-state, whereas we know that a lot of social progress comes during and after shocks – can that be reflected in the SDGs in some way?

One other thought: it will soon be 20 years since the World Bank conducted ‘Voices of the Poor’, a ground-breaking study of more than 60,000 poor people in 60 countries that changed our understanding of the nature of poverty. Could Rio agree that it is time for a re-run to see how much has changed/remained the same?

This is all light-years away from the kind of SDG lists that are circulating, which more closely resemble Claire Melamed’s ‘Christmas Tree’ category. My concern is that this is more due to intellectual inertia (let’s take the MDGs and add some more) than a real attempt to understand the possibilities in the current political and economic context.

The doughnut is on a roll: where next for doughnut economics?

Kate Raworth, Oxfam research colleague and host of the new ‘doughnut economics’ blog, updates us on her big idea, prior to Rio+20

My Oxfam discussion paper on social and planetary boundaries – aka the Doughnut – has gained a striking degree of traction in the debates running up to Rio+20. It’s been picked up by commentators such as George Monbiot, Grist and by the UN . The idea, like its namesake, appears to be sticky. That’s probably because it captures, in a very simple image, a vision of sustainable development which combines the compelling framework of planetary boundaries with the demands of human rights.

(and if you don’t know what I’m on about, here’s a four minute video tour to fill you in.)

The planetary boundaries framework may be compelling but the run-up to Rio has also prompted several interesting critiques of the concept, such as the proposal that we should focus on planetary opportunities rather than boundaries, and critiques from the Breakthrough Institute, including that most planetary boundaries are not actually planetary in scale, but have critical national or regional thresholds, such as for freshwater use (more on that below…).

So the debate will be lively, and I’m heading to (and tweeting from) Rio+20 to join it – but the idea of thinking about sustainable development through the lens of planetary and social boundaries has a life far beyond Rio. Here are four issues that I’m keen to explore further:

1. Rethinking economic development. If we take the idea of planetary boundaries and social boundaries as a starting point in pursuing prosperity, what are the implications for what economies should be aimed at? And what’s the evidence that ‘green growth’ and technological solutions can or cannot get us there?

2. Who’s pressuring the planet? Humanity has transgressed at least three of the planetary boundaries – but where’s that pressure coming from? What can data tell us about inequalities in using natural resources, within and between countries? And what are the implications for achieving social equity in the Doughnut?

3. Determining the social foundation. The 11 dimensions of the social foundation are illustrative, and are based on the top 11 social priorities raised by governments in their submissions to Rio+20. But they are by no means perfect. Critical dimensions such as personal security, housing and transport are missing, for starters, and all of these have important relations to resource availability, distribution and stress. Other dimensions, such as gender equality, are better seen as characteristics of all the other social dimensions, rather than separate dimensions in themselves. And what level of achievement should be considered as reaching the foundation? Some people have rightly pointed out that $1.25 per day is too low as an indicator of a decent level of income – but surely so too is $2. So what should a 2.0 version of the social foundation look like? Who should draw it up?

4. National doughnut analyses. The Breakthrough Institute’s critique that most planetary boundaries are not planetary is correct – many make more sense at the national or regional scale. But this point was set out in the original paper on planetary boundaries by Rockström and the other authors. And that makes national and regional analyses of planetary and social boundaries all the more interesting. So what would happen if you took the doughnut concept and applied it at the country, or even city, level? What would be the dimensions of a national social foundation, and what are the main stresses on a nation’s critical natural thresholds? Would this approach open up new perspectives, and could it help move forward national debates and policymaking on pathways for sustainable development?

As part of exploring these questions, I’ve just started a new blog, Doughnut Economics, focused on rethinking 21st century economics and equity through the lens of planetary and social boundaries. If you’ve got suggestions, critiques, contacts, ideas, or even answers, I’d love to hear them.

And if you are lucky (or crazy) enough to be in Rio next week, come along and debate the doughnut at Oxfam’s panel discussion on planetary and social boundaries, supported by EXPO Milano 2015, on 17th June, 9.30-11am, in IIED’s Fair Ideas conference (we’ve got a great line-up of speakers including Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity Without Growth – it promises to be a great debate).

Kate Raworth is Senior Researcher at Oxfam – link here to her new blog, Doughnut Economics, and follow her on Twitter @KateRaworth

How good/bad are different countries at turning carbon emissions into development?

One result of the doughnut economics discussion is that we need to think much more about the carbon efficiency of development. So which countries are getting the best return on rising carbon emissions, in terms of life expectancy and per capita income?

Here are two animated graphics of 13 country trajectories. The thirteen major countries comprise more than half of the world’s population and carbon emissions. Territorial emission trajectories are green; trade-adjusted emissions (recognizing that if you import something to consume, that that should count as an emission) allowing for carbon are blue, contrasted with the global trend fit curves (dotted lines) for consumption-based carbon in 1990 and 2005. You can freeze, go back and forward etc to get a better grip of what is going on.

First life expectancy v carbon emissions

Next income per capita v carbon emissions

What do they show?
• Countries vary a whole lot in their pathways.
• Some are good and getting better at creating good development outcomes while not emitting much.
• Some are bad and getting worse, especially when we consider trade in embodied emissions.
• It’s getting easier to get longer lives for less.
• It’s currently apparently NOT possible to have long life and low emissions with high incomes.

[h/t Timmons Roberts. c/o Tim Gore]

‘The doughnut ‘compass’ is a powerful idea’: Earth scientists respond to the doughnut…….

Some initial thoughts on yesterday’s post on doughnut economics from Mark Stafford Smith and Will Steffen. Mark (left) is Science Director of the Climate Adaptation Flagship at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, and is Co-chair of the upcoming Planet Under Pressure: New Knowledge towards Solutions conference in London, March 2012. Will Steffen (right) is Executive Director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, and Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. He is a co-author of the original paper on nine planetary boundaries.

The original ‘planetary boundaries’ concept focused on biophysical factors: there was some internal logic to this – it aimed to identify the conditions under which we couldn’t expect the planet to continue supporting us, regardless of how we care to organise ourselves as a human race.  But of course, as soon as you ask practical questions about how we might manage our interaction with these boundaries, social and economic issues come into the picture.  Hence the idea of linking a biophysical ceiling with a social foundation is a great one, and the image of a doughnut containing the safe and just space for humanity is a great visualisation of this.

And visualisations are genuinely important, because people need to grasp an issue intuitively before they can really act on it.  One route for action that Kate mentions is through establishing a set of global ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) that are currently proposed as part of what comes after the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). [previous post on SDGs here]

So, how would we move from these great insights to some SDGs?

The key point is that many of the social and environmental boundaries interact profoundly, and we cannot go on talking of sustainable development but acting on development and sustainability separately. 

These interactions can be positive or negative.

Positive and synergistic interactions represent key opportunities:  for example, clean energy can replace smoky cooking fuels, and not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric pollution, but also improve the health of the poor and provide more time for women and children to gain an education.  In cases like this, social and environmental outcomes can be delivered together, and potentially at a much lesser cost than if they were tackled separately.

Of course other interactions represent challenging trade-offs: we know that if world poverty is tackled by simply bringing everyone up to the level of GDP enjoyed by today’s richest using today’s technologies, then our environment would be devastated.  However, as Kate points out, major improvements in equity can be gained with relatively little additional consumption if appropriately targeted, and our attention is focused on appropriate measures of well-being and levels of equity. 

In short, whether the interactions are negative or positive, if the social and environmental aspects are tackled in consort, we are likely to handle their interactions much more efficiently and effectively than if we try to do them independently.

So a challenge for the doughnut is, how to depict the interactions that really matter across the safe and just operating space?

A practical way to develop SDGs is probably to articulate a small number (5 or 6?) high level integrated goals, and then have sub-goals that dissect out the interactions, deliberately separating areas of synergy and trade-off so they can be addressed properly. 

The high level goals are ultimately a matter for policy, but they should really link social and environmental outcomes.   For example, perhaps equitable and healthy access to low carbon energy – not just any energy, but from low carbon sources that reduce neighbourhood pollution.  Perhaps food security for all whilst improving ecosystem resources – not food at any environmental cost, but a focus on avoiding waste and devising food production systems that trade off a little ‘efficiency’ for supporting other ecosystem services.  Perhaps access to meaningful employment that supports environmental outcomes – here’s one that might be truly synergistic.

Each of these high level goals then needs dissection.  For example, food security for all whilst improving ecosystem resources: this could have a synergistic sub-goal that relates to managing the global phosphorus cycle (a planetary boundary concern with big impacts on ecosystem services) in ways that improves the equitable distribution of fertilisers globally (an equity concern).  Meanwhile a more challenging sub-goal might deal with the trade-off between high production levels and the use of water resources.

We shouldn’t over-complicate the SDGs, though, because many issues are linked. Improvements in education mostly go along with improvements in health; likewise improvements in managing the nitrogen cycle in farming will often be correlated with improvements in managing phosphorus too.  In fact, we wonder whether a focus on managing key planetary boundaries at the same time as really focusing on equitable outcomes across geographies, generations and genders might not get us 80% of the way there, given the other factors that would come in their wake.

Meanwhile, the initial discussion of SDGs in the Rio+20 zero draft makes it sound as if these are a simple environmental add-on to the MDGs.  This approach would be a profound failure.

The doughnut concept must be a call to arms, to devise SDGs which truly link the doughnut’s floor and its ceiling.  Then these will become the real supportive pillars of sustainable development.

What do you think these integrated pillars should be?

Can we live inside the doughnut? Why the world needs planetary and social boundaries

This post (and commentaries over the next few days) presents some important new thinking by my research team colleague, Kate Raworth. It summarises her new Discussion Paper, published by Oxfam today. 

When crossing unknown territory, a compass can be pretty handy. Achieving sustainable development for nine billion people has to be high on the list of humanity’s great uncharted journeys. So here’s an idea, in a new Oxfam Discussion Paper, for a global compass to point us in the right direction (Fig 1).

Fig 1. Planetary and social boundaries: a safe and just space for humanity

Source: Oxfam, inspired by Rockström et al (2009)

What’s going on here? Start with the outer ring. In 2009, a group of leading Earth-system scientists (aka Rockström et al) proposed a set of nine Earth-system processes (like freshwater use, climate regulation, and the nitrogen cycle) that are critical for keeping this planet in the stable state which has been so beneficial to humankind over the past 10,000 years (that’s the Holocene, and it’s nothing to sniff at: it gave us agriculture, and all that has followed…).

Putting excessive stress on these critical processes could lead to tipping points of abrupt and irreversible environmental change, so Rockström et al proposed a set of boundaries for avoiding those danger zones. Together, the nine boundaries constitute an environmental ceiling – what their authors call ‘a safe operating space for humanity’.

That’s a compelling approach to environmental sustainability, but humanity is glaringly absent from the picture. After all, an environmentally safe space could be compatible with appalling poverty and injustice.

So how about combining planetary boundaries together with the concept of social boundaries? (now focus on the inner ring of Fig. 1) Just as there is an environmental ceiling, beyond which lies unacceptable environmental degradation, so too there is a social foundation, below which lies unacceptable human deprivation.

Like what, exactly? Well, human rights provide the cornerstone for defining that, and identifying the top priorities is the focus of debate over renewing the Millennium Development Goals after 2015, and creating Sustainable Development Goals at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) this June. But a first glimpse of 21st century consensus on unacceptable deprivations comes from the issues raised by governments in their submissions to Rio+20: they prioritised 11 dimensions of human deprivation, and so these form the inner ring of Fig 1.

Between the social foundation and the planetary ceiling lies an area – shaped like a doughnut – which is the safe and just space for humanity to thrive in. The 21st century’s unprecedented journey is to move into that space from both sides: to eradicate poverty and inequity for all, within the means of the planet’s limited resources.

Where are we now? Far outside the doughnut

Every compass needs a needle – and boundaries need metrics. Rockström and co. stuck their necks out when they had a first go at quantifying 7 of the 9 planetary boundaries (acknowledging huge uncertainties in doing so) and estimated that three have already been dangerously crossed: on climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen use. 

So I’ve stuck my neck out, too, suggesting indicators for 8 of the 11 social boundaries. Humanity is falling far below the social foundation on each one, as depicted in Fig. 2. Take food, for example: 13% of people in the world are undernourished – that 13% is represented by the blue gap below the social foundation. Likewise, 21% of people live in income poverty and an estimated 30% don’t have access to essential medicines.

Fig 2: Falling far below the social foundation

So that’s the doughnut on a plate: planetary and social boundaries combined to create a safe and just space for humanity to thrive in.

But what does all this bring to the debate? Two messages for starters.

1. Who’s stressing the planet? The rich, not the poor. Bringing everyone alive today above the social foundation need not stress planetary boundaries.

• Food: Meeting the calorie needs of the 13% of the world’s population facing hunger would require just 1% of the current global food supply
• Energy: Bringing electricity to the 19% of people who currently lack it could be achieved with less than a 1% increase in global CO2 emissions
• Income: Ending income poverty for the 21% of people who live on less than $1.25 a day would require just 0.2% of global income.

The real source of stress is excessive resource use by roughly the richest 10% of people in the world – backed up by the aspirations of a rapidly growing global middle class seeking to emulate those unsustainable lifestyles. Thanks to the extraordinary scale of global inequality, widespread poverty coexists with dangerous planetary stress.

2. Growth on trial: The aim of economic development must be to bring humanity into the safe and just space, ending deprivation and keeping within safe levels of resource use. Traditional growth policies have largely failed to deliver on both accounts: far too few benefits of GDP growth have gone to people living in poverty, and far too much of GDP’s rise has been at the cost of degrading natural resources.

If respecting planetary and social boundaries is the objective, then – in wealthy economies at least – the onus falls on those promoting unlimited GDP growth to show that it can bring humanity within the doughnut. The G20, among others, stand for the vision of ‘inclusive and sustainable economic growth’, but no country has yet shown that it is possible. If unlimited GDP growth is to have a place in doughnut economics, it has a long way to go to prove itself.

Any verdicts on the doughnut? Are social boundaries a useful complement to planetary boundaries? Does the combination bring a useful perspective to 21st century challenges? And what is it missing? Take a bite or toss it away – I’d love to know…

Kate Raworth is Senior Researcher at Oxfam GB. Download the full Discussion Paper: A Safe and Just Space for Humanity: can we live within the doughnut? A discussion paper does not necessarily represent Oxfam policy, but is intended to encourage public debate, in this case, in the run-up to the UN conference on sustainable development (Rio+20) in June.

And here’s Kate talking through her Big Idea:

What’s the state of the world’s water and land? New FAO report.

This is encouraging. Alex Evans has been banging on for a while about the need for a ‘World Resources Report’ that charts the state of planetary resource stocks (not flows, like all the other reports). Now the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has done exactly that. The State of Land and Water Resources (SOLAW) is FAO’s first flagship publication on the global status of land and water resources. New editions will be published every 3 to 5 years. Here’s the summary: 

“The world’s cultivated area has grown by 12 percent over the last 50 years. The global irrigated area has doubled over the same period, accounting for most of the net increase in cultivated land. Meanwhile, agricultural production has grown between 2.5 and 3 times, thanks to significant increase in the yield of major crops.

However, global achievements in production in some regions have been associated with degradation of land and water resources, and the deterioration of related ecosystem goods and services. These, include biomass, carbon storage, soil health, water storage and supply, biodiversity, and social and cultural services. Agriculture already uses 11 percent of the world’s land surface for crop production. It also makes use of 70 percent of all water withdrawn from aquifers, streams and lakes. Agricultural policies have primarily benefitted farmers with productive land and access to water, bypassing the majority of small-scale producers who are still locked in a poverty trap of high vulnerability, land degradation and climatic uncertainty.

Land and water institutions have not kept pace with the growing intensity of river basin development and the increasing degree of inter-dependence and competition over land and water resources. Much more adaptable and collaborative institutions are needed to respond effectively to natural resource scarcity and market opportunities.

Toward 2050, rising population and incomes are expected to call for 70 percent more food production globally, and up to 100 percent more in developing countries, relative to 2009 levels. Yet, the distribution of land and water resources does not favour those countries that need to produce more in the future: the average availability of cultivated land per capita in low-income countries is less than half that of high-income countries, and the suitability of cultivated land for cropping is generally lower. Some countries with rapidly growing demand for food are also those that face high levels of land or water scarcity. The largest contribution to increases in agricultural output will most likely come from intensification of production on existing agricultural land. This will require widespread adoption of sustainable land management practices, and more efficient use of irrigation water through enhanced flexibility, reliability and timing of irrigation water delivery.

The prevailing patterns of agricultural production need to be critically reviewed. A series of land and water systems now face the risk of progressive breakdown of their productive capacity under a combination of excessive demographic pressure and unsustainable agricultural practices. The physical limits to land and water availability within these systems may be further exacerbated in places by external drivers, including climate change, competition with other sectors and socio-economic changes. These systems at risk warrant priority attention for remedial action simply because there are no substitutes.

The potential exists to expand production efficiently to address food security and poverty while limiting impacts on other ecosystem values. There is scope for governments and the private sector, including farmers, to be much more proactive in advancing the general adoption of sustainable land and water management practices. Actions include not just technical options to promote sustainable intensification and reduce production risks, they also comprise a set of conditions to remove constraints and build flexibility. These include (1) the removal of distortions in the incentives framework, (2) improvement of land tenure and access to resources, (3) strengthened and more collaborative land and water institutions, (4) efficient support services including knowledge exchange, adaptive research, and rural finance, and (5) better and more secured access to markets.

Widespread adoption of sustainable land and water management practices will also require the global community to have the political will to put in place the financial and institutional support to encourage widespread adoption of responsible agricultural practices. The negative trend in national budgets and official development assistance allocated to land and water needs to be reversed. Possible new financing options include payments for environmental services (PES) and the carbon market. Finally, there is a need for much more effective integration of international policies and initiatives dealing with land and water management. Only by these changes can the world feed its citizens through a sustainable agriculture that produces within environmental limits.”

Main risks summarized in the map below (click on the link to get a decent sized version), plus lots of interactive maps on eg water scarcity here [h/t Richard King]

SYSTEMS_AT_RISK_MAP

From planetary ceilings to social floors: can we live inside the doughnut?

This is a guest post and a request for comments and suggestions by Kate Raworth, Oxfam’s Senior Researcher, who is doing some really interesting thinking on new economics and the ‘post 2015 agenda’ – i.e. what comes after the MDGs.

In 2009, 29 of the world’s leading Earth-system scientists drew up a set of nine ‘planetary boundaries’: critical natural processes that we must not breach if we want to maintain Earth’s stable state of the last 10,000 years. Like what? Like climate change, ozone depletion, and biodiversity loss.  No small fry. They got bold and attempted a first quantification of these boundaries (eg setting a climate change boundary of 350ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere). And the area within these boundaries, they said, define “a safe operating space for humanity”.

Hmm. Environmentally safe, yes, but would it be socially just? After all, an environmentally safe space for humanity could be compatible with a multitude of human conditions, some of which may be appalling. Are there not also social boundaries – perhaps freedom from extreme income inequality, or from illiteracy – that we must not breach if we want to achieve social justice and a stable international order? Superimposing these social boundaries onto the planetary boundaries would define a safe and socially just operating space for humanity: no longer a circle, but a doughnut, bounded by an outer environmental ceiling and an inner social floor.

Planetary and social boundaries: can we live inside the doughnut?

What if 29 (or so…) international development thinkers and doers got together to propose such a set of social boundaries. What would they come up with? Could they be quantified? And could this become a useful framework for developing sustainable development goals beyond 2015?

The idea provokes questions. How should social boundaries be determined? They could, for instance, be derived from human rights, human capabilities, the Millennium Development Goals, multi-dimensional measures of poverty, a mix of all these – or some other source? And how many should there be? (nine would be neat, perhaps too neat…).

But back up a minute. Can we really put Earth systems and social systems in one framework? There are obvious differences. Earth systems existed quite happily without humans, and have been in the safe space for 10,000 years. Social systems don’t exist without us, and have never been fully in the just space (though a lot of people are working on that). And while Earth systems can tolerate a degree of stress, human rights mean that the outcomes for individuals in social systems matter inherently, not only because of their cumulative implications for social dynamics.

Yes, there are differences – but there are surprising similarities too. Both planetary boundaries and social boundaries are part global, but also part regional, or even local. They both have thresholds or danger zones that are difficult to identify (until you cross them…). Quantifying the safe boundaries involves normative judgements about acceptable levels of stress and risk – whether planetary or social. And both sets have interdependencies: staying on the safe side of one boundary depends, in part, on staying on the safe side of others (eg climate change is shaped by land-use change, illiteracy is shaped by gender inequality).

So if this idea has merit, what difference could it make? Three insights become clear:

First, planetary and social boundaries together imply a purpose for ‘economic progress’: to pursue human well-being, while remaining or moving back inside the doughnut – below the environmental ceiling, and above the social floor. Ecological economists have long sought to situate the economy within environmental limits; feminist economists (and others) have highlighted the social (and non-monetised) consequences of economic activity. Planetary and social boundaries help bring these ideas together in a simple, visual way (is this the birth of Doughnut Economics?…).

Second, how we get inside that doughnut involves careful balancing and timing between planetary and social boundaries. According to Earth-system scientists, we are three times over the global limit in our use of nitrogen (it’s polluting lakes, rivers and coasts, and the life within them, and contributing to climate change). But if we cut back by two thirds overnight, say by drastically reducing fertilizer use, the immediate consequences for global food supply, hunger, and poverty would be devastating. Looking at planetary and social boundaries together helps make these challenges starkly clear.

Third, non-monetary metrics must clearly be given more weight in policy making. Economic progress cannot be assessed only – or even primarily – in monetary terms (such as incomes per capita and GDP growth rates). Where the edges are, and whether or not we are hitting them, matters for stability and justice. Policymakers must take more notice of, and be more accountable for, the impact of economic activity on planetary and social boundaries, defined in ‘natural’ and ‘social’ metrics, such as species extinction rates, and unemployment rates.

So there’s the pitch. What do you think? Does the idea of social boundaries make sense, and does it make a difference? What should those social boundaries be, and could they be quantified? And could planetary and social boundaries help define Sustainable Development Goals for post 2015?

Anyone for doughnuts?

GROW: Oxfam’s new Global Campaign

As promised, here’s the outline of the new 4 year Oxfam mega-campaign, GROW. The website is here, with the launch report ‘Growing a Better Future’ and lots of background papers and case studies.

The point of departure for Grow is that the survival and flourishing of humanity in this century will be determined by its success in rising to two historic challenges: ending hunger and learning to live within the planet’s ecological boundaries.

The warning signs of a gathering emergency are clear. We have entered an age of crisis: of food price spikes and oil price hikes; of scrambles for land and growing water stress; of climate change that Oxfam can already see affecting its programmes around the world. The threat that now faces us contrasts with steady, indeed historically unprecedented, development over the last 60 years. This constitutes a profound challenge to our existing models and understanding of development.

GROW has a simple message. Together we can avoid this grim future, but it will require decisive national and international action. We must simultaneously meet three challenges:

The sustainable production challenge
The food system must be transformed. By 2050, demand for food will increase by 70 per cent. This demand must be met despite flat-lining yields, increasing water scarcity and growing competition over land. At the same time agriculture must rapidly adapt to climate change if precipitous declines in productivity are to be avoided, and its carbon footprint must be slashed.

The equity challenge
In the developing world, nearly 1 billion of us go without enough to eat. Meanwhile an obesity epidemic is rapidly spreading from industrialized to emerging economies. Fair shares and social justice matter just as much as production. Moreover, how we grow the extra food required will matter as much as how much food is grown. Key to meeting the equity challenge is investing in small farmers. Hunger and poverty are concentrated in rural areas. Unlocking the potential of small producers represents our single biggest opportunity to increase food production, boost food security and reduce poverty and vulnerability. Background paper from Swati Naryan on India’s dismal performance on hunger here.

The resilience challenge
The food system is increasingly fragile. Oil price shocks are transmitted to food prices through input and transport costs. More frequent and serious weather events, a sign of climate change, are disrupting farming. But perhaps most shocking is the role of governments in triggering, rather than averting, food price crises. Policies of narrow self-interest and zero-sum competition such as land grabs, biofuel programmes and export bans make a bad situation worse.

We must radically change how we collectively manage risks and build resilience to shocks and volatility. But the institutions needed to protect the most vulnerable are often inadequate or entirely missing. Correcting this institutional deficit will mean building what the GROW campaign calls a ‘new prosperity’. This will require three big shifts.

Build a new global system to avert food crises
Governments must develop integrated strategies to build poor people’s resilience to hunger, by creating jobs, adapting to climate change, investing in disaster risk reduction, and extending social protection. Globally, we must regulate for resilience, building a system of food reserves, increasing market transparency, putting in place rules to tackle export restrictions and ending trade-distorting agricultural subsidies. The annual $20bn subsidy to biofuels must be overhauled. Finally, we must build and reform the international institutions we need to manage risks and respond to shocks. Food aid must be untied and, along with a new global climate fund, properly funded. Background paper from Alex Evans here.

Build a new agricultural future
Donors, international organisations and national governments must prioritise the needs of small-scale food producers in developing countries, where the major gains in productivity, sustainable intensification, poverty reduction and resilience can be achieved. This particularly applies to women farmers, who in many countries grow most of the food, yet are largely excluded from support from the agricultural system. Companies must embrace the opportunities provided by smallholder agriculture. Donors and international organisations must continue to raise agriculture spending within aid budgets (down from 20.4% of aid in 1983 to just 3.7% in 2006). Rich countries must end their trade-distorting agricultural subsidies. New global regulations are needed to govern investment in land to ensure it delivers social and environmental returns. And national governments must invest more in agriculture, while carefully regulating private investment in land and water to ensure secure access for women and men living in poverty. Background papers on agroforestry in Bolivia and improving food security in Nepal.

Build a new ecological future
National governments must intervene to speed up and direct the low carbon transition, for example by investing R&D in clean energy. There is a long way to go – currently global subsidies for renewable energy are just $57bn compared to $312bn for fossil fuels. They can create incentives through the use of subsidies and tax breaks to guide private capital to where it is needed. They can tax undesirables – such as greenhouse gas emissions – to direct economic activity towards desirable alternatives. And they can regulate: for example, to stop companies polluting or to encourage them to provide goods and services they otherwise would not. But ultimately our success or failure in building a new ecological future will depend on a global deal on climate change.

Achieving this new prosperity will take all the energy, ingenuity and determination that humankind can muster. The scale of the challenge is unprecedented, but so is the prize – a sustainable future, free of hunger. That future will have to be built from the top down and from the bottom up. From the top, ambitious leaders will drive success, overcoming the opposition of vested interests. Far-sighted corporate leaders will break ranks with damaging industry lobbies. From the bottom, networks of citizens, consumers, producers, communities and civil society organisations will demand change. Oxfam will work with these groups, and others like them, to build a growing global movement to end hunger and set a path towards a new prosperity.

Excited? I am, as is Alex Evans. And Lula – see below, who as president of Brazil, delivered extraordinary progress in reducing hunger. Join the campaign here (tell your friends) or start by signing the petition to the G20 leaders here.

Coming up next: some top killer facts, and why on earth did we call it GROW?

The new Future of Food and Farming Report: excellent diagnosis; patchy cure; no power and politics

I attended the launch at the UK Treasury this week of The Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and Choices for Global Sustainability. It’s a high level UK government report from some top scientists, and should have significant influence over the next few years on much of the terrain Oxfam will be exploring in its new campaign on food and resource constraints. Here are some initial impressions, based on the 40 page (!) executive summary.

Overall Message: ‘The food system is failing humanity’, John Beddington, Chief Scientific Adviser to UK Government at the launch.

The report argues that there are both major failings in the food system today, and five key future challenges, namely:

1. Balancing future supply and demand sustainably (i.e. feed the 9 billion without destroying the planet)

2. Managing volatility and protecting the vulnerable from unavoidable volatility

3. Ending hunger (the social justice/Amartya Sen bit)

4. Mitigating climate change in agriculture

5. Maintaining biodiversity and ‘ecosystem services’ (which seems to be what we now call the environment)

It sees small farmers as ‘an important component of both hunger and poverty reduction’ (p. 25)

In terms of policy asks, it lists the key priorities for action for policy makers as:
1. Spread best practice.
2. Invest in new knowledge.
3. Make sustainable food production central in development.
4. Work on the assumption that there is little new land for agriculture.
5. Ensure long-term sustainability of fish stocks.
6. Promote sustainable intensification.
7. Include the environment in food system economics.
8. Reduce waste – both in high- and low-income countries.
9. Improve the evidence base upon which decisions are made and develop metrics to assess progress.
10. Anticipate major issues with water availability for food production.
11. Work to change consumption patterns.
12. Empower citizens.

What do I disagree with? Not much. The report is maybe a bit too starry-eyed about science and technology, both old and new (hardly surprising given its authorship), but even there, with caveats:

‘New technologies (such as the genetic modification of living organisms and the use of cloned livestock and nanotechnology) should not be excluded a priori on ethical or moral grounds, though there is a need to respect the views of people who take a contrary view….. Decisions about the acceptability of new technologies need to be made in the context of competing risks (rather than by simplistic versions of the precautionary principle); the potential costs of not utilising new technology must be taken into account.’ (exec sum, p. 11)

Economically, the report is fairly liberal – arguing strongly for liberalized trade and against government intervention in a number of areas such as the regulation of corporate oligopolies (exec sum p 21). In contrast to its explicit criticism of export bans, it is more ambivalent (and vague) about land grabs.

The limits to liberalism are particularly evident in the lack of ideas on reducing volatility, where the report prefers transparency, information and safety nets to any kind of more forceful regulation (pp. 23/4). It says the jury is still out on whether speculation is a significant cause of volatility and is sceptical on global and virtual reserves apart from for WFP stocks for specific emergencies (p. 24).

It is pretty timid on the need to reduce meat consumption, merely mentioning it as a future possibility (p. 22)

But what worries me much more are the gaps. The report follows the unfortunate standard pattern of strong diagnosis, weak cure and absolute vacuum on issues of power and politics. There are several welcome but vague references to empowering women and northern consumers, but there it ends. There is almost no mention of producer organizations or more generally how to achieve a fairer distribution of power in markets, even though it is clear that the benefits of participation in such markets are shaped to a large extent by the relative power of the players involved.

When it comes to a model of change, there isn’t one. No discussion of what to do when those who profit from the status quo resist change. Instead the report takes refuge in the passive tense ‘a stronger constituency for hunger reduction needs to be built’. No power analysis, or sense of how the reforms it proposes might actually come about, and which are more/less politically feasible. No discussion of the likely role of climate and economic shocks like the food price spike in triggering change. Another depressing ‘if I ruled the world’ technocrats’ report, in fact.

It really is striking how many of these reports and processes refuse to stray from the happy sunlit uplands of evidence-based policy-making and win-win solutions. They see the global food system is dysfunctional, but talk as if this is just through some kind of accidental oversight or lack of research, rather than as an outcome of historical processes, including distributive conflicts and political struggle. Instead, the authors assume they can talk of a collective ‘we’, with shared interests and common solutions. The contrast between the subtlety of the science and the crudity/absence of politics (beyond largely vacuous appeals to ‘political will’ and ‘good governance’) is striking. It echoes the kind of ‘magical thinking’ on climate change that ran aground in Cancun, and which is regularly and brilliantly critiqued on the Political Climate blog.

When confronted with trade-offs – win-lose issues – such reports generally deny or avoid them, and have little idea how to discuss, let alone influence, non evidence-based approaches, even though those are an essential (some would argue much more important) part of political reality. The gulf between the polite debate in Whitehall and the turmoil on the streets of Cairo and Tunis (driven in part by high food prices) could not be greater.

In a sense, I guess that’s OK. Reports like these try to influence governments and other decision makers by expanding the boundary of rational policy making against the forces of ‘irrational’ (or at least non evidence-based) conflicts and political power. Talking of conflicts and power could mean taking sides and would risk compromising their objectivity in the eyes of their target audience. Instead, they aim to strengthen the hand of the Platonic guardians, be they civil servants or scientists, in shaping public policy and that is (generally) a good thing.

But even if the rationalist bubble is expanding over time, this approach still leaves a huge chunk of real life outside the remit of such reports, and that seems a serious weakness. Wouldn’t it be great if some body had the courage and the funding to take 10 of the major international reports (Stern on Climate Change, others on development, MDGs etc etc) and produced a parallel series of ‘the politics of X’ reports for each (and Anthony Giddens’ effort on climate change doesn’t count)? Any takers?

State of the World report 2011 – innovation but no politics

Yesterday the WorldWatch Institute launched its new State of the World 2011 report, (or at least the overview chapter, which is the only one I can find online – if people can point to an online downloadable version, please help me out here). The overall report website’s here, but as a confirmed techno-neanderthal, I found it pretty un-user friendly. Tech whinge over.

The SoW reports are published annually and are usually good value. This one is on ‘innovations that nourish the planet’, pulling together good news stories on sustainability from a two year research programme in 25 sub-Saharan African nations. It finds a ‘treasure trove’ of good ideas from nitrogen-fixing trees to better storage systems to rooftop gardening.

Conclusion? ‘If each of their individual innovations were scaled up to bring food to the tables of not one farmer but 100 million or more, as well as to the consumers who depend on them, it could change the entire global food system.’

Wow, that is some ‘if’. And there, depressingly, the report leaves it – no discussion of how such good ideas might actually be adopted, whose interests they serve or undermine, what political or social processes have led to their adoption or abandonment in the past. I get hugely frustrated with this kind of ‘if I ruled the world’ environmentalism – surely we have to go on to think of how such changes might actually take place, rather than be content with ‘hey, we found some organic gardens in Senegal that are more productive than their non-organic neighbour. Job done.’

Rant over (I’m obviously in a grumpy mood today) and back to the report. SoW recommends three ‘major shifts’. The most interesting is ‘go beyond seeds’, which argues that we must:

‘Look beyond the handful of crops that have absorbed most of agriculture’s attention and also beyond developing new seeds as the default solution for hunger and poverty. The long-standing focus on seeds is no surprise: they are elegant vessels for delivering new technology to a farm. Whether it is an American corn farmer looking for more drought tolerance or a bean farmer in the Kenyan highlands, buying a new type of seed is a relatively inexpensive and immediate way to try to boost a farm’s harvest and income. But this search for just the right seed has tended to erode crop diversity in both rich and poor nations. At the same time, building soils, growing crops other than grains, making better use of rainfed farms, and investing in other elements of the farm landscape have been profoundly neglected. Yet these hold vast promise for raising incomes and reducing poverty.’

The problem is that ‘few companies have figured out ways to profit from encouraging the rebuilding of soils or aquifers.’ This echoes a nice distinction made by my colleague Kate Raworth, between technologies based on products (seeds, fertilisers etc – easily marketed, and so picked up by the private sector) and those based on practices (water management, soil use etc – often more important, but much harder to package up, sell and make a profit on).

The other two ‘major shifts’ are

‘Go beyond farms’ – which turns out to mean reducing waste and crop losses, improving infrastructure and adding value to crops, but stops short of leaving altogether – migration does not get a mention despite its importance as a rural livelihood strategy (perhaps a touch of peasant romanticism ruling out migration as an acceptable option?). 

‘Go beyond Africa’: which means improving food aid and helping small farmers cash in on carbon markets.