Benchmarking the Carbon, Water, and Land Footprints Against Allocated Planetary Boundaries
Growing scientific evidence for the indispensable role of environmental sustainability in sustainable development calls for appropriate frameworks and indicators for environmental sustainability assessment (ESA). In this chapter, we operationalize and upd
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Benchmarking the Carbon, Water, and Land Footprints Against Allocated Planetary Boundaries
Abstract Growing scientific evidence for the indispensable role of environmental sustainability in sustainable development calls for appropriate frameworks and indicators for environmental sustainability assessment (ESA). In this chapter, we operationalize and update the footprint–boundary ESA framework, with a particular focus on its methodological and application extensions to the national level. By using the latest datasets available, the planetary boundaries for carbon emissions, water use, and land use are allocated to 28 selected countries in comparison to the corresponding environmental footprints. The environmental sustainability ratio (ESR)—an internationally comparable indicator representing the sustainability gap between contemporary anthropogenic interference and critical capacity thresholds—allows one to map the reserve or transgression of the nation-specific environmental boundaries. Although the geographical distribution of the three ESRs varies across nations, in general, the worldwide unsustainability of carbon emissions is largely driven by economic development, while resource endowments play a central role in explaining national performance on water and land use. The main value added of this chapter is to provide concrete evidence of the validity of the proposed framework in allocating overall responsibility for environmental sustainability to sub-global scales and in informing policy makers about the need to prevent the planet’s environment from tipping into an undesirable state. Keywords Environmental sustainability · Environmental footprints · Planetary boundaries · Sustainability gap · Environmental sustainability ratio · Carbon emissions · Water use · Land use · Nations
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. Fang, Environmental Footprints, SpringerBriefs in Environmental Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61018-0_6
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6 Benchmarking the Carbon, Water and Land Footprints …
6.1 Introduction 6.1.1 Environmental Sustainability Assessment (ESA): A Brief Overview Humanity has entered a new era of sustainability challenges, the Anthropocene, in which the planet’s environment is under significant pressure from social, economic, and demographic forces. In striving to prevent our society and future generations from tipping into disastrous states, sustainable development has remained one of the primary policy goals in the large majority of countries over the world (Griggs et al. 2013). The United Nations is scheduled to announce the Sustainable Development Goals by 2015, an evolving program that is underway to replace the Millennium Development Goals (Costanza et al. 2014). In measuring progress towards sustainable transitions and human well-being, it is necessary to create ways to assess environmental sustainability—a non-negotiable prerequisite for the economic and social pillars of sustainable development (Goodland and Daly 1996). There have been ma
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