5.4 Complementary Use of Environmental Footprints and Planetary …
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• Environmental unsustainability: the converted footprint of human activities
already exceeds the relevant converted boundaries, with consequences that
would move the planet’s environment to an unsafe state in which the stability
and resilience of Earth system functioning are being undermined (Z footprint,i −
Z boundary,i > 0, or Z footprint,i /Z boundary,i > 1).
5.4.3 Benefits of the F–B ESA Framework
The joint implementation of environmental footprints and planetary boundaries opens
the way for a novel and straightforward representation of environmental sustainability. While footprints have been found particularly suited to support decisions in
environmental impact assessment (EIA), many of which are limited in visualizing
the gaps between what is actually being done and what ought to be done from a
sustainability perspective. Examples include the nitrogen, phosphorus, and biodiversity footprints. One may argue, for instance, that it is not difficult to imagine
the development of nitrogen threshold within the nitrogen footprint framework; this,
however, suggests a position that in our view is undesirable because of rejecting the
use of existing knowledge on planetary boundaries which has gained considerable
interest and support from a broad range of the scientific community.
We believe that ESA represents a step ahead from EIA that is based on descriptive indicators (e.g., environmental footprints) that measure what is happening to the
environment (Smeets and Weterings 1999), as from a consumption-based angle it
makes more sense to give consumers the opportunity to take into account their environmental responsibility for closing the sustainability gap. In this regard, a prominent
advantage of implementing the F–B ESA framework is that it delivers valuable information on whether or not human activities give rise to a sustainability gap, and to what
extent. To meet the public and corporate needs of downscaling planetary boundaries
for the allocation of responsibility, developing measurable environmental boundaries
at sub-global scales is needed. We classify and exposit the scaling effects of planetary boundaries in-depth via Sects. 5.5.1 and 5.5.2, together with a discussion of
how to harmonize the footprint metric and boundary metric via Sect. 5.5.3 and of
the potential trade-offs of sustainability gaps between various environmental issues
via Sect. 5.5.4.
A further strength of the F–B ESA framework lies in its completeness of capturing
key environmental challenges to global sustainability, rather than a single footprint
nor a footprint family that covers. As the distinction between a policy target and a
natural threshold boundary has been brought to attention (Zijp et al. 2014), there is an
ever-greater need to understand how the sustainability gap and the policy gap differ.
The F–B ESA framework is appropriate for use in distinguishing these two types of
gaps. Conceived in simple terms, the sustainability gap is the distance between current
status and threshold values anticipated for scientific purposes, though revealed preferences and judgments cannot be completely avoided, and the policy gap is the one
79
• Environmental unsustainability: the converted footprint of human activities
already exceeds the relevant converted boundaries, with consequences that
would move the planet’s environment to an unsafe state in which the stability
and resilience of Earth system functioning are being undermined (Z footprint,i −
Z boundary,i > 0, or Z footprint,i /Z boundary,i > 1).
5.4.3 Benefits of the F–B ESA Framework
The joint implementation of environmental footprints and planetary boundaries opens
the way for a novel and straightforward representation of environmental sustainability. While footprints have been found particularly suited to support decisions in
environmental impact assessment (EIA), many of which are limited in visualizing
the gaps between what is actually being done and what ought to be done from a
sustainability perspective. Examples include the nitrogen, phosphorus, and biodiversity footprints. One may argue, for instance, that it is not difficult to imagine
the development of nitrogen threshold within the nitrogen footprint framework; this,
however, suggests a position that in our view is undesirable because of rejecting the
use of existing knowledge on planetary boundaries which has gained considerable
interest and support from a broad range of the scientific community.
We believe that ESA represents a step ahead from EIA that is based on descriptive indicators (e.g., environmental footprints) that measure what is happening to the
environment (Smeets and Weterings 1999), as from a consumption-based angle it
makes more sense to give consumers the opportunity to take into account their environmental responsibility for closing the sustainability gap. In this regard, a prominent
advantage of implementing the F–B ESA framework is that it delivers valuable information on whether or not human activities give rise to a sustainability gap, and to what
extent. To meet the public and corporate needs of downscaling planetary boundaries
for the allocation of responsibility, developing measurable environmental boundaries
at sub-global scales is needed. We classify and exposit the scaling effects of planetary boundaries in-depth via Sects. 5.5.1 and 5.5.2, together with a discussion of
how to harmonize the footprint metric and boundary metric via Sect. 5.5.3 and of
the potential trade-offs of sustainability gaps between various environmental issues
via Sect. 5.5.4.
A further strength of the F–B ESA framework lies in its completeness of capturing
key environmental challenges to global sustainability, rather than a single footprint
nor a footprint family that covers. As the distinction between a policy target and a
natural threshold boundary has been brought to attention (Zijp et al. 2014), there is an
ever-greater need to understand how the sustainability gap and the policy gap differ.
The F–B ESA framework is appropriate for use in distinguishing these two types of
gaps. Conceived in simple terms, the sustainability gap is the distance between current
status and threshold values anticipated for scientific purposes, though revealed preferences and judgments cannot be completely avoided, and the policy gap is the one