MDGs and Global Environmental
Change:
Governance, Innova:on and
Learning
Andreas Rechkemmer
Brussels, June 2009

The Anthropocene
• The Anthropocene is a term
invented by Paul Crutzen to signify
the fact that human beings for the
first time have taken hold not only of
the economy and of population
dynamics, but of the planet's physical
systems.
• The geologists call our time the
holocene but Crutzen noted that the
last two hundred years are really a
unique era, not only in human history
but in the Earth's physical history as
well.

More reasons for concern since 2001
(IPCC TAR)
IPCC TAR Redrawn with data from IPCC AR4
Schneider, S. et al., 2008 PNAS in press
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Lenton, T.M., Held, H., Kriegler, E., Hall, J.W., Lucht, W.,
Rahmstorf, S., Schellnhuber, H.J., 2008. Tipping elements
in the Earth's climate system. PNAS 105, 1786-1793.
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Switch and choke points

Cartogram: Greenhouse gases Emissions
Countries scaled according to cumulative emissions in billion tonnes carbon
equivalent in 2002. (Patz, Gibbs, et al, 2007)
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Cartogram: Health impacts of climate change
Deaths from malaria & dengue fever, diarrhoea,
malnutrition, flooding and (OECD countries) heatwaves
WHO regions scaled according to estimated mortality (per million people) in the
year 2000, attributable to the climate change that occurred from 1970s to 2000
(Patz, Gibbs, et al, 2007)
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Current Health Burden (deaths) due to Climate
Change
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Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem ‘services’ are ‘the benefits people obtain from ecosystems’
Four categories:
‐ Provisioning services: provide goods
‐ Regula0ng services : maintain a world in which it is biophysically possible for people to live
‐ Cultural services : make the world a place in which people like to live
‐ Suppor0ng services : are the underlying ecosystem processes that produce the
direct services described above
(Source: Brauman et al. 2007)

Ecosystems and Human Well‐Being
All humans completely depend on
Earth‘s ecosystems and the services
they provide
As human popula:ons grow, so do
the resource demands imposed on
ecosystems and the impacts of our
global footprint
A complex array of feedbacks and
tradeoffs exist
Processes sustaining these services
are vulnerable and each have
different thresholds, adap:ve
capaci:es and limits. The magnitude
of a par:cular type of disturbance
that can be absorbed by an
ecosystem is referred to as
ecosystem resilience

Ecosystem Services – Why Worry?
Three major problems are associated with the management of the worlds ecosystems:
1. Approx. 60% (15/24) of the ecosystem services examined during the
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment are being degraded or used
unsustainably.
2. Established but incomplete evidence that changes being made in
ecosystems are increasing the likelihood of nonlinear changes in
ecosystems which have important consequences for human well-being.
3. The harmful effects of the degradation of ecosystem services are being
borne disproportionately by the poor, women and indigenous peoples, are
contributing to growing inequalities, and are sometimes the principle factor
for causing poverty and social conflict.

Protec:ng Ecosystem Services
Institutions and governance:
•
hanges in institutional and environmental governance frameworks for effective
C
management of ecosystems.
Economics and incentives:
•
conomic and financial interventions as instruments to regulate the use of ecosystem
E
goods and services.
Social and behavioural responses:
• Public education, civil society action and empowerment of communities can be
instrumental in responding to ecosystem degradation.
Technological responses:
•
evelopment of technologies designed to increase the efficiency of resource use and
D
reduce impacts of drivers of environmental change.
Knowledge responses:
•
ffective management of ecosystems is constrained by a lack of knowledge and
E
information.

What is Resilience?
Capacity of a social and ecological system to accommodate
change without loosing its characteris:cs, structure and
func:ons
Capacity to buffer disturbances
Capacity to renewal and re-organization
Capacity to learning and adaptation
• To absorb stress or destructive forces
through resistance or adaptation.
• To manage, or maintain certain basic
functions and structures, during
disastrous events.
• To recover or ‘bounce back’ after an
event.

Why to focus nowadays on resilience?
• Resilience put emphasis on what communi:es can
do for themselves and how to strengthen their
capaci:es

Global Environmental Change and the Millennium
Development Goals
Global Environmental Change
Large costs for
wealth and
development
Growing Vulnerabili8es
Undermining the
possibili8es to
aAain the MDGs
Degrada8on of Ecoysstem
Services

The evolu:on of GEC and Development
strands of thinking
Global Environmental Systems Science
Development Research
Change Inter-disciplinary
research
Research
Trans-disciplinary
Processes of the Earth System Research Processes of social
development - Poverty
Vulnerability Alleviation
Adaptability Environment AND
Resilience Development
Human Dimensions – Impacts of
GEC and Sustainability
Impacts of Globalisation on the
Environment FOR Development
Environment
FEEDBACKS
SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS
ABRUPT CHANGE OF ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONS

Social‐Ecological Systems
from Chapin et al. 2006

Geels´ mul:‐level model
(Source: Geels 2002)

Smith`s Transi:on contexts

Rotmans´ four transi:on stages

Human-driven erosion of resilience
• impacting on ecosystem via emissions of waste,
pollutants and climate change
• removing biological diversity, whole functional groups of
species or whole trophic levels
• altering the magnitude, frequency and duration of
disturbance regimes
• The combined effects of those pressures makes
ecological systems more vulnerable to changes that
previously could be absorbed
Source: IGBP 2007

• Innova8on.‐ through imagina:on and novelty,
socie:es are able to develop diverse trajectories of
development and adapta:on within changeable
condi:ons, which in turn move the focus on the
heterogeneity of opportuni:es and poten:ali:es
that people have.
• Learning.‐ keeping the ‘memory’ of previous
adap:ve responses through local ins:tu:ons, norms,
and tradi:ons. In par:cular, the modifica:ons that
social groups introduce to resource use and
ecosystems dynamics can create awareness of the
global environment and linking global and local
ins:tu:ons.

Four closely linked core elements of are:
+ Knowledge in its forms, origins, production,
movement, control, and access to it across cultures
and geographical scales.
+Mechanisms and dynamics of learning by
individuals, communities, and institutions in the
context of the challenges of global change.

+Positive and negative determinants and
mechanisms of changes in attitudes, thinking,
and behavior in moving from knowledge to
sustainable societal practices on individual and
aggregated scales.
+The relationship and interactions between
policy‐making and knowledge, learning, and
changes in societal behavior in the process of
moving toward a sustainable future.