Quick Start to Planet Management

last revision - Nov 07, 2010

click here to return to earthmodal home

• “The ability of a country to follow sustainable development paths is determined to a large extent by the capacity of its people and its institutions as well as by its ecological and geographical conditions.
• “Specifically, capacity building encompasses the country's human, scientific, technological, organisational, institutional and resource capabilities.
• "A fundamental goal of capacity building is to enhance the ability to evaluate and address the crucial questions related to policy choices and modes of implementation among development options, based on an understanding of environmental potentials and limits and of needs as perceived by the people of the country concerned. As a result, the need to strengthen national capacities is shared by all countries.
• “The overall objectives of endogenous capacity building in this programme area are to develop and improve national and related sub-regional and regional capacities and capabilities for sustainable development"

"UNDP is the UN's global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. We are on the ground in 166 countries, working with them on their own solutions to global and national development challenges. As they develop local capacity, they draw on the people of UNDP and our wide range of partners."

Mission

"The Division for Sustainable Development provides leadership and is an authoritative source of expertise within the United Nations system on sustainable development. It promotes sustainable development as the substantive secretariat to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) and through technical cooperation and capacity building at international, regional and national levels. The context for the Division's work is the implementation of Agenda 21, the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation and the Barbados Programme of Action for Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States."


GLOBAL CHALLENGE, GLOBAL OPPORTUNITY: TRENDS IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (new window, 4.02MB, pdf)
alternate source: here
Published By The United Nations Department Of Economic And Social Affairs, For The World Summit On Sustainable Development
Johannesburg, 26 August – 4 September 2002

"Secretary-General Kofi Annan has identified five themes for particular attention at the Summit: water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity. These are critical areas for long-term development, involving complex interactions among economic, social and environmental factors and involving different sectors, organizations and disciplines. Those issues, together with population and poverty, and the relationships among them, are the focus of the material collected here."

Three Big Issues

Population and Carrying Capacity
Climate Change
Natural Capital Depletion

Population and Carrying Capacity

The Population Division is responsible for monitoring and appraisal of the broad range of areas in the field of population. To carry out this responsibility it:

• provides support and servicing of such intergovernmental bodies as the Commission on Population and Development, as well as related work of the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council, through the preparation of high-quality documentation, analytical work and facilitation of consensus-building and policy development. It supports the implementation of the recommendations in the Programme of Action adopted by the International Conference on Population and Development, including monitoring progress towards the achievement of the goals set out in the Programme of Action, as well as identifying, analyzing and investigating policy issues and salient global trends in the field of population and development.

• facilitates access by Governments to information on population trends and their interrelationships with social and economic development as an input to government policy and programme formulation. The official United Nations demographic estimates and projections are prepared for all countries and areas of the world, as well as urban and rural areas and major cities, and serve as the standard and consistent set of population figures for use throughout the United Nations system. International migration, infant, child and maternal mortality and increased adult mortality in some regions, as well as the demographic impact of AIDS, are critical emerging issues that are also addressed. Other priority areas for analysis are fertility levels, trends and their determinants, including contraceptive use as well as national population policies and the relationships among population dynamics and development issues.

• contributes to the capacity building of Member States to formulate national population and related policies and programmes for the effective implementation of the recommendations of the Programme of Action; and improves the institutional capabilities of Governments for the collection, analysis and distribution of national population information.

• enhances coordination and cooperation among the organizations of the United Nations system through the Administrative Consultative Committee Subcommittee on Demographic Estimates and Projections and between the United Nations system and other international, regional and national organizations active in the field of population.

• distributes electronic population information in response to requests and to support coordination among the United Nations entities in the field of population.

:: Exceeding carrying capacity (new window, webpage)

Some of the worst humanitarian crises since Rio, in countries like Haiti, Rwanda and Somalia, share as underlying causes, behind obvious political and ethnic divisions, a high and rapidly increasing density of population, extreme poverty, and a shortage of essential environmental resources, in particular a drop in per capita food production. These may be some of the first illustrations of the consequences of exceeding the environmental capacity of a country or region (Mathews, 1994; Atwood, 1994). The increase in environmental refugees who leave their homes because local resources can no longer support them is another symptom of this problem. The International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994 recognized the need to integrate population, environmental and poverty eradication factors in sustainable development policies, plans and programmes (UN, 1994b).

Beyond the Limits-Executive Summary (new window, website)

The following Scenario 1 graphic is taken from the output of the World 3 model. This model is discussed in the section Models (above) under World3 subsection. The readers are invited to obtain a copy of the model and run it for themselves - instructions are provided in that subsection.

Overshoot

The following are characteristics of a society that has grown beyond its limits—a society that is drawing upon the earth's resources faster than they can be restored, and that is releasing wastes and pollutants faster than the earth can absorb them or render them harmless.

• Falling stocks of groundwaters, forests, fish, soils.
  
• Rising accumulations of wastes and pollutants.
  
• Capital, energy, materials, and labor devoted to exploitation of more distant, deeper, or more dilute resources.
  
• Capital, energy, materials, and labor compensating for what were once free natural services (sewage treatment, flood control, air purification, pest control, restoring soil nutrients, preserving species).
  
• Capital, energy, materials, and labor diverted to defend or gain access to resources that are concentrated in a few remaining places (such as oil in the Middle East).
  
• Deterioration in physical capital, especially in long-lived infrastructure.
  
• Reduced investment in human resources (education, health care, shelter) in order to meet consumption needs or to pay debts.
  
• Increasing conflict over resources or pollution emission rights. Less social solidarity, more hoarding, greater gaps between haves and have-nots.

International Institute for Sustainable Development (new window, website)

The International Institute for Sustainable Development contributes to sustainable development by advancing policy recommendations on international trade and investment, economic policy, climate change, measurement and assessment, and natural resources management. By using Internet communications, we report on international negotiations and broker knowledge gained through collaborative projects with global partners, resulting in more rigorous research, capacity building in developing countries and better dialogue between North and South.

Carrying Capacity (new window, website)

Concept

Human life depends on healthy ecosystems which supply life-sustaining resources and absorb wastes. However, current growth and consumption patterns are placing increasing stress on ecosystems. Environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and the breakdown of social and economic systems are a few of the signs which indicate that ecosystems are stressed.

Ecosystems threatened by overharvesting and/or overwhelmed by more wastes than can be absorbed lose resilience (ie. the ability to absorb shocks and disturbances) and may suddenly break down and/or settle into a different system with less reilience. This implies there are thresholds at which the levels of stress will lead to the disruption of the system. One concept used to understand these critical limits and thresholds is carrying capacity which assumes that there are a finite number of people who can be supported without degrading the natural environment and social, economic and cultural systems and, as such, "is an indirect measure of the maximum level of stress that the ecosystem can maintain". ( Barbier, Burgess and Folke 1994).

Climate Change

GLOBAL CHALLENGE, GLOBAL OPPORTUNITY: TRENDS IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Published By The United Nations Department Of Economic And Social Affairs, For The World Summit On Sustainable Development
Johannesburg, 26 August – 4 September 2002

There are many signs of
climate change
• Global average surface temperatures have increased
by about 0.6°C since 1900.
• Sea levels are rising by about 1 cm per decade.
• Arctic sea ice thickness has declined 40 per cent in
the past 40 years.
• Major glaciers throughout the world are retreating.
• Lake ice is forming later in the autumn and melting earlier in the spring.
• Precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere has increased, particularly as intense rainfall.
• El Niño events have become more common and more intense.
• In parts of Asia and Africa, droughts have increased in frequency and intensity.
• Insurance payments for damage from floods and storms increased from about $2 billion annually in the 1980s
to $30 billion annually in the early 1990s.

International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (new window, website)

IGBP is an international scientific research programme built on interdisciplinarity, networking and integration. It addresses scientific questions where an international approach is the best or the only way to provide an answer. We add value to a large number of individual, national and regional research projects through integrating activities to achieve enhanced scientific understanding.

View large (new window, 85KB, graphic)

IGBP SCIENCE No. 4 (new window, 1.35MB, pdf)
Global Change and the Earth System: a Planet Under Pressure
Editors: Will Steffen and Peter Tyson

The Earth as a system

The fact that the Earth behaves as a single, interlinked, self-regulating system was put into dramatic focus in 1999 with the publication of the 420,000-year record from the Vostok ice core (Fig.1). These data, arguably among the most important produced by the scientific community in the 20th century, provide a powerful temporal context and dramatic visual evidence for an integrated planetary environmental system.
The Vostok ice core data give a wealth of insights into the Earth System. Three striking characteristics demonstrate beyond any doubt that the Earth is a system, with properties and behaviour that are characteristic of the System as a whole.

• The temporal dynamics of global temperature and of the global carbon cycle, as represented by the atmospheric concentration of the trace gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), are tightly coupled and show very similar patterns throughout the record.
• The main maxima and minima of temperature and atmospheric trace gas concentration follow a regular pattern through time, each cycle spanning approximately100,000 years.
• The range over which temperature and trace gas concentrations varied is bounded at upper and lower limits; the values fall recurrently within the same envelope through four cycles of the Earth System over the last half million years.

This systemic behaviour of Earth's environment is due to a combination of external forcing – primarily variations in solar radiation levels near the Earth's surface – and a large and complex array of feedbacks and forcings within Earth's environment itself. The internal dynamics of the System, rather than external forcings, undoubtedly keep the planet habitable for life.

Mandate and Membership of the IPCC

Recognizing the problem of potential global climate change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. It is open to all members of the UN and WMO.

The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. The IPCC does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate related data or other relevant parameters. It bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific/technical literature. Its role, organisation, participation and general procedures are laid down in the "Principles Governing IPCC Work"

View large (new window, 205kb, graphic)

Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers (new window, 754KB, pdf)

Robert T. Watson, Daniel L. Albritton, Terry Barker, Igor A. Bashmakov, Osvaldo Canziani, Renate Christ, Ulrich Cubasch, Ogunlade Davidson, Habiba Gitay, David Griggs, Kirsten Halsnaes, John Houghton, Joanna House, Zbigniew Kundzewicz, Murari Lal, Neil Leary, Christopher Magadza, James J. McCarthy, John F.B. Mitchell, Jose Roberto Moreira, Mohan Munasinghe, Ian Noble, Rajendra Pachauri, Barrie Pittock, Michael Prather, Richard G. Richels, John B. Robinson, Jayant Sathaye, Stephen Schneider, Robert Scholes, Thomas Stocker, Narasimhan Sundararaman, Rob Swart, Tomihiro Taniguchi, D. Zhou, and many IPCC authors and reviewers

"Natural, technical, and social sciences can provide essential information and evidence needed for decisions on what constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” At the same time, such decisions are value judgments determined through socio-political processes, taking into account considerations such as development, equity, and sustainability, as well as uncertainties and risk.

The basis for determining what constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic interference” will vary among regions—depending both on the local nature and consequences of climate change impacts, and also on the adaptive capacity available to cope with climate change—and depends upon mitigative capacity, since the magnitude and the rate of change are both important. There is no universally applicable best set of policies; rather, it is important to consider both the robustness of different policy measures against a range of possible future worlds, and the degree to which such climate-specific policies can be integrated with broader sustainable development policies.

The Third Assessment Report (TAR) provides an assessment of new scientific information and evidence as an input for policymakers in their determination of what constitutes “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” It provides, first, new projections of future concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, global and regional patterns of changes and rates of change in temperature, precipitation, and sea level, and changes in extreme climate events. It also examines possibilities for abrupt and irreversible changes in ocean circulation and the major ice sheets. Second, it provides an assessment of the biophysical and socio-economic impacts of climate change, with regard to risks to unique and threatened systems, risks associated with extreme weather events, the distribution of impacts, aggregate impacts, and risks of large-scale, high-impact events. Third, it provides an assessment of the potential for achieving a broad range of levels of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere through mitigation, and information about how adaptation can reduce vulnerability."

Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (new window, 1.1 MB, pdf)

IPCC, 2005 - Bert Metz, Ogunlade Davidson, Heleen de Coninck, Manuela Loos and Leo Meyer (Eds.)
Cambridge University Press, UK. pp 431.

Summary for Policymakers

1. Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) is a process consisting of the separation of CO2 from industrial and energy-related sources, transport to a storage location and long-term isolation from the atmosphere. This report considers CCS as an option in the portfolio of mitigation actions for stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.
See Summary (notes) in (new window, html, this site)

goto top of page

US Department of Energy (new window, webpage)
Carbon Sequestration Program (new window, webpage)

CARBON SEQUESTRATION RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT (new window, download, webpage)

Office of Science; Office of Fossil Energy; U.S. Department of Energy; December 1999

Chapter 8: Developing An Emerging Technology Road Map For Carbon Capture And Sequestration


IPCC Workshop for Carbon Capture and Storage 2002 (new window, webpage)

Overview of CO2 emission sources, potential, transport and geographical distribution of storage possibilities
John Gale; IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme, Stoke Orchard, Cheltenham, Glos. GL52 4RZ, UK

Abstract
Capture and storage of CO2 has the potential, when used in combination with other mitigation options, to make deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Geological storage is the preferred storage option because the reservoirs potentially have sufficient storage capacity to hold the required volumes of CO2. Any capture and storage project involves three distinct phases; capture of the CO2 from the emission source, dehydration followed by compression and transportation of CO2 and finally injection of CO2 into reservoirs at the storage site. To develop an understanding of the real potential of CO2 capture and storage for reducing CO2 emissions worldwide it is necessary to gain an awareness of the geographical distribution of the CO2 emissions and the storage reservoirs. Once the geographical relationship between sources and storage reservoirs is clear then transportation networks for the CO2 can be considered. This paper will review research activities underway worldwide that are developing the understanding of the geographical relationship between emission and storage site mapping, appraise the status of the work and indicate where additional work is needed to close any gaps in our understanding.

See also:
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

For the focus on renewable energies see the World Energy Assessment in the section Assessment of this site. Else see Management - Energy on this site.

Natural Capital Depletion

1. Introduction
2. Security of supply
3. Equity
4. Impacts on the Environment
5. Policy
6. Data and indicators
7. Links

The European Topic Centre of Resource and Waste Management (ETC/RWM) understand natural resources to cover both renewable resources and non-renewable resources. These can be further split into four categories:

• Renewable resources that are non-extinguishable such as wind and sunlight
• Renewable resources that are extinguishable i.e. all biological resources and vulnerable reservoirs such as soil and fresh water
• Non-renewable resources that are non-extinguishable such as metals and minerals. These resources cannot be destroyed but they can be dispersed due to natural causes or human activity. Recovery is possible but will require input of energy depending on the level of dispersal
• Non-renewable resources that are extinguishable i.e. fossil fuels. Either their use will be stopped through policy as a response to environmental impacts or by the market as increased scarcity leading eventually to non-competitive prices.

Three generic management principles for the sustainable use of natural resources were established by political institutions following Rio during the 1990s. These are:

1. The use of renewable resources should not exceed their renewable and/or regeneration rates
2. The use of non-renewable resources should not exceed the rate at which substitutes are developed
3. Outputs of substances to the environment from the use of resources (see below) should not exceed the assimilative capacity of environmental media (carrying capacity)

Use of renewables as referred to by principle 3 above, is these days taken to include the full life-cycle of the resource use or material flow. That life cycle includes extraction from the environment, processing, transformation utilisation and disposal. Outputs of substances include the release of all resulting residuals (e.g. waste, emissions, heat) back to the environment during all these life cycle stages.