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7 Summary
Substantial similarity exists between environmental footprints and planetary
boundaries, because almost all environmental issues that the PBF concerns, such as
climate change, water use, and land use, can be found in existing footprint accounts
accordingly. Interestingly, the two research communities are doing something quite
similar but with different strengths and challenges and lacking communication and
mutual understanding. As they are found to be limited in their own abilities to implement environmental sustainability assessment (ESA), it makes great sense to take
advantage of both in a complementary way. To that end, a footprint–boundary (F–B)
ESA framework is proposed as a tool for jointly assessing environmental sustainability (see Chap. 5). It challenges the isolation of the footprint community and the
planetary boundaries community, thus opening the door to collaborative research into
ESA. The primary purpose of the F–B ESA framework is to support policy makers
in responding to the widening sustainability gaps and in finding new ways to prevent
the planet’s environment from undesirable transitions.
The environmental issues that the F–B ESA framework deals with come in two
broad types, namely, the systemic processes and aggregated processes. Climate
change, for instance, fits within a systemic process whose unambiguous global nature
enables the climate boundary to be one of the few planetary boundaries which can
be downscaled to the national level through top-down approaches that seem to be
a normative or political issue more than a scientific issue. Water use, conversely,
is an aggregated process for which the environmental boundaries at the national
level can be quantified by upscaling local and regional water boundaries that are
spatially heterogeneous, depending on a great deal of well-documented survey data
for site-specific runoff and water availability. The main challenge to allocate planetary boundaries to nations is therefore a mix of downscaling and upscaling, as well
as a balance between scientific and political considerations (see Chaps. 5 and 6).
One prominent advantage of the F–B ESA framework is its capability to create
solutions to this challenge. Converting environmental boundaries from the planetary
scale to the national scale can be fulfilled by a series of steps, including the identification of target environmental issues, the selection of suitable footprint metrics,
the determination of the level at which specific environmental boundaries rely on,
the choice of appropriate methods for boundary accounting, the harmonization of
the footprint and boundary metrics, and the measurement of sustainability gaps (see
Chap. 6). In the case of climate change, atmospheric CO 2 concentration and radiative
forcing—two independent control variables for defining the climate boundary—are
integrated in a way consistent with the calculation of carbon footprint—a consensusbased impact indicator describing global warming effects of the Earth’s climate
system. On the national scale, the difference between the footprint and boundary
metrics, in either absolute or relative terms, offers a straightforward and practical
means of nation-specific ESA, explaining how far countries are from their individual
environmental boundaries.
7 Summary
Substantial similarity exists between environmental footprints and planetary
boundaries, because almost all environmental issues that the PBF concerns, such as
climate change, water use, and land use, can be found in existing footprint accounts
accordingly. Interestingly, the two research communities are doing something quite
similar but with different strengths and challenges and lacking communication and
mutual understanding. As they are found to be limited in their own abilities to implement environmental sustainability assessment (ESA), it makes great sense to take
advantage of both in a complementary way. To that end, a footprint–boundary (F–B)
ESA framework is proposed as a tool for jointly assessing environmental sustainability (see Chap. 5). It challenges the isolation of the footprint community and the
planetary boundaries community, thus opening the door to collaborative research into
ESA. The primary purpose of the F–B ESA framework is to support policy makers
in responding to the widening sustainability gaps and in finding new ways to prevent
the planet’s environment from undesirable transitions.
The environmental issues that the F–B ESA framework deals with come in two
broad types, namely, the systemic processes and aggregated processes. Climate
change, for instance, fits within a systemic process whose unambiguous global nature
enables the climate boundary to be one of the few planetary boundaries which can
be downscaled to the national level through top-down approaches that seem to be
a normative or political issue more than a scientific issue. Water use, conversely,
is an aggregated process for which the environmental boundaries at the national
level can be quantified by upscaling local and regional water boundaries that are
spatially heterogeneous, depending on a great deal of well-documented survey data
for site-specific runoff and water availability. The main challenge to allocate planetary boundaries to nations is therefore a mix of downscaling and upscaling, as well
as a balance between scientific and political considerations (see Chaps. 5 and 6).
One prominent advantage of the F–B ESA framework is its capability to create
solutions to this challenge. Converting environmental boundaries from the planetary
scale to the national scale can be fulfilled by a series of steps, including the identification of target environmental issues, the selection of suitable footprint metrics,
the determination of the level at which specific environmental boundaries rely on,
the choice of appropriate methods for boundary accounting, the harmonization of
the footprint and boundary metrics, and the measurement of sustainability gaps (see
Chap. 6). In the case of climate change, atmospheric CO 2 concentration and radiative
forcing—two independent control variables for defining the climate boundary—are
integrated in a way consistent with the calculation of carbon footprint—a consensusbased impact indicator describing global warming effects of the Earth’s climate
system. On the national scale, the difference between the footprint and boundary
metrics, in either absolute or relative terms, offers a straightforward and practical
means of nation-specific ESA, explaining how far countries are from their individual
environmental boundaries.