Poverty-nature-climate
At the heart of everything we do, is the need to address the triple emergency of poverty and inequality, nature loss, and climate change.
We are all dependent on nature for the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the climate that makes our planet habitable. Yet we are facing global climate and ecological emergencies, which exacerbate deeply-rooted structural social injustices, poverty and inequality. We face an interconnected triple emergency of poverty, climate change and environmental degradation.
The interaction between climate change, people, and nature shows the need to understand and address this unprecedented triple emergency in an integrated way.
To tackle the triple emergency collectively, we must:
- Achieve social justice, gender equality, and human wellbeing for all in the context of permanently altered natural planetary systems, including the climate system and landscape scale ecosystems.
- Limit warming of the climate system to 1.5°C to prevent extreme human suffering and catastrophic loss of nature.
- Halt and reverse biodiversity loss and nature’s decline – a prerequisite for limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C, preventing mass extinctions, and achieving social justice and human wellbeing for all.
These fundamental principles must inform actions under each of the international conventions. They must also be a blueprint for integrated action across everything we do and invest in – including domestic plans and support to low- and middle-income countries.
To address the triple emergency we must collectively:
- Increase ambition: In each of the Rio Conventions, current actions are not matching what the science demands. We know what is needed, and it must be delivered. Ambition and implementation must be ratcheted up. If that happens across all three conventions, they will add up to more than the sum of their parts and enable real transformation.
- Increase coherence: It is no longer acceptable for governments and businesses to do “good” or make empty commitments in the name of these conventions, while continuing with business as usual that is driving the triple emergency. All areas of domestic and international policy must be consistent with all the conventions, and accompanied by measures that drive real world change.
- Achieve balance: Social and environmental factors must urgently become equals to economics in all policy making, decision making, and investments. The prioritisation of economic interests over social and environmental considerations has led to climate change and environmental decline at a global scale. The triple emergency is a result of unsustainable development. The only way forward is sustainable development that balances different needs against an awareness of the environmental, social, and economic limitations we face as a society.