A Long-Term Vision for 2050

I’ve crossed paths with UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook before. Trouble is, I never actually bothered to read them. That was somewhat the mistake my part, because The Sixth Edition¹ in short is in broad agreement with my interpretation of the contemporary situation.

It starts out identifying the problem - the Sustainable Development Goals aren’t quite sustainable enough, because there’s a distinct lack of precision in the language. But in order to produce that, we need to group those SDGs, and it just so happens that - broadly - these fit into three distinct groups; human well-being, sustainable consumption and production, and natural resource use. And these, of course, are bidirectional meaning one affects the other. No, in fact, it’s even simpler. Everything comes down to human well-being in the end. Everything is justified in the name or protecting you.

Some issues are more precisely defined than others, and - coincidentally - those related to climate change and biodiversity loss are better developed than others. Probably because the entire scam hinges around those two.

The Grand Plan

What we have to do, per document, is protect and manage the natural resource base, with the explicit aim of transformation towards long-term sustainability. And in that regard, GEO-6 is interestingly titled, Healthy Planet, Healthy People, and part A of the document is themed ‘State of the Global Environment’.

It goes to establish the UN conference in Stockholm in 1972 as the defining moment, where global politicians came together to agree that pollution shouldn’t exceed the planet’s ability to clean itself. Of course, at this stage only few realised that carbon dioxide - literal plant food - would be considered just that a few decades down the line. But since back then, a number of conferences have progressively established targets for environmental protection and sustainable human development.