New York — The world is facing a triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss.
Climate change continues to pose an existential threat to humanity, with recent science estimating that we have possibly less than six years left to change course and rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to have a chance of avoiding the worst of the climate crisis.
Pollution is crippling air and water quality, exacerbating the inequality between wealthy and low-and middle-income countries. Biodiversity loss has the potential to collapse our food and water supply chains, putting further pressure on some of the most vulnerable countries in the world to manage the ever-growing risk of poverty, hunger, and harm to human health.
We also have scientific evidence that six of the nine core Planetary Boundaries have been crossed, posing a catastrophic danger to the Earth's overarching ecosystem.
With this in mind, the Climate Governance Commission, supported by the Earth governance smart coalition Mobilizing an Earth Governance Alliance (MEGA), seeks to assist in catalyzing the implementation of critical reforms to global governance institutions for the effective management of the triple planetary crisis.
Probably the most significant and fundamental reform that could be established quickly and effectively would be a Declaration by the UN General Assembly of a Planetary Emergency and the convening of a Planetary Emergency Platform to facilitate global cooperation to address the emergency.
Adopting a Planetary Emergency Declaration would ensure that policy actions to protect the environment - especially the climate - would be elevated to top priority in global, national and local decision-making, requiring concerted action by all sectors of government, similar to the way that other critical emergencies are addressed.
Convening the Planetary Emergency Platform would help facilitate the development of cooperative plans for urgent action at all levels of governance on specific goals such as, for example, a global, fast-track de-carbonization package. The fact that we are indeed in a serious planetary emergency justifies and indeed requires an approach that can sufficiently address such an emergency.
Why declare a Planetary Emergency?
An emergency occurs when risks (impact X probability) are unacceptably high, and when time is a serious constraint. As identified by MEGA and the Climate Governance Commission based upon the best available science, we are at such a juncture. Consequently, with scientific evidence continuing to mount depicting the grave circumstances humanity finds itself in, the UN General Assembly, with the support of climate-vulnerable countries, should consider responding in kind, declaring a planetary emergency recognising this fundamental shift toward an emergency footing and moving quickly to convene an emergency platform to reflect these circumstances and facilitate urgent, coordinated action, with linked national emergency plans.
The growing urgency for declaring a planetary emergency stems from a history of a fragmented multilateral planetary policy system, that lacks a coordinated and ambitious response at the speed and scale required. Climate change to date has been treated as a peripheral issue dealt with primarily within a two-week framework every year at the climate COPs (Conference of the Parties), leading to a lack of effective cooperation between different aspects of the multilateral system and its domestic counterparts. Further, climate change solutions have not been adequately linked to mitigating pollution and biodiversity loss.
This siloed approach to handling the crisis as just another social and economic issue, rather than the interlinked and existential threat that it poses to society, illustrates how unequipped current governance structures are to handle this all-encompassing and systemic issue.
Consequently, global governance at present lacks the preparation and resilience necessary for current and future global shocks caused by the planetary emergency (e.g. extreme weather events, potential collapse of food supply chains, major economic crises, among other shock events).
However, this emergency also opens the door for the UN General Assembly and broader multilateral system to reconsider its framing of its approach and identify new governance mechanisms to address current gaps in the system. Governments and policymakers are now presented with an opportunity for transformation - to create a sustainable governance framework that facilitates the safe operation of humanity within its Planetary Boundaries.
Climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss and its related ecological, social, and economic problems are global issues, and thus require a whole-of-system approach to provide global solutions.
By recognizing that the world is in a state of acute distress through the Declaration of a Planetary Emergency at the UN General Assembly and thereby convening a Planetary Emergency Platform to coordinate a response to this emergency, policymakers would be provided with a framework needed to transcend current political divides to effectively address the challenges we face.
What would a Declaration of a Planetary Emergency at the UN General Assembly achieve?
We have already seen regional, national, and local climate emergency declarations issued across 2359 jurisdictions (as of August 2024). Such declarations by themselves have limited impact due to the global nature of this emergency. However, they demonstrate a keen interest in responding to the triple planetary crisis within an emergency framework, providing a core foundation for multilateral cooperation.
A Planetary Emergency Declaration would be science-led and action-focused, helping to elevate global planetary policy by connecting and elevating the existing declarations and filling the gaps in our current governance framework. Activating, focusing, and coordinating existing capacities at the UN through a Declaration of this kind could form a crucial aspect in ensuring that the Declaration is not merely a reflection of well-intended aspirations, but that it provides a solid basis for building effective, cooperative action.
A Planetary Emergency Declaration could build off and connect to its predecessors' efforts and acknowledge all inter-connected risks associated with the triple planetary crisis in order to facilitate a global green transition. This would in turn allow for the Declaration to stimulate, support and facilitate cooperation and implementation of planetary policy at multilateral, national, and subnational levels.
The Declaration could seek primarily to achieve three things at the outset.
Firstly, as noted above, it could place the multilateral system on an acknowledged emergency footing, allowing for more ambitious action at all levels of governance, and reducing the current barriers to planetary progress.
Secondly, a Declaration could open the door for more effective emergency governance platforms including in particular the convening of a Planetary Emergency Platform, in line with the broader proposal of the UN Secretary General that emergency platforms be convened to strengthen the response to complex global shocks.
A Planetary Emergency Platform, using the Declaration as its basis, could be tasked with coordinating, defragmenting, and harmonizing the international community's response to the triple planetary crisis. This would, in turn, speed up much needed solutions to the crisis, including, for example, the unlocking of greater climate finance and increased protection of crucial global commons under threat from human activity, from the Amazon to the High Seas.
A Platform of this kind would also be capable of developing a Planetary Emergency Plan, which could outline and bring into effect these desired outcomes, as well as assist with monitoring the implementation of the Declaration.
Finally, a Declaration of Planetary Emergency would allow for scientific concepts like Planetary Boundaries to become more familiar and integrated into our global policy responses, as well as creating vital opportunities to bridge the gap between planetary science and policy.
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The Declaration could seek to ensure policymakers have greater impetus to take emergency action to protect these Planetary Boundaries, helping to generate political support and reduce geopolitical barriers to progress.
A Planetary Emergency Declaration at the UN General Assembly could serve as a crucial next step toward remedying the - to date - dysfunctional and inadequate nature of our response to the triple planetary crisis and convene a Planetary Emergency Platform as a key governance mechanism to facilitate the cooperation required between national and subnational entities to ensure effective and equitable planetary action.
Working with climate-vulnerable states, and global experts, the Climate Governance Commission and Mobilizing an Earth Governance Alliance will offer support to build a coalition to advance this Declaration at the UN General Assembly and accelerate our shared efforts to capably and effectively manage the global environment.
Eoin Jackson is Chief of Staff and Legal Fellow at the Climate Governance Commission and Co-Convenor of the Earth Governance ImPACT Coalition; Nina Malekyazdi is a Summer Intern at the Climate Governance Commission and a graduate in International Relations of the University of British Columbia
Source: Mobilizing an Earth Governance Alliance (MEGA)
MEGA is a coalition of civil society organizations working in cooperation with like-minded governments, legislators, experts, private sector actors and other stakeholders to strengthen existing environmental governance mechanisms and establish additional mechanisms. MEGA is led by the Climate Governance Commission and World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy (co-hosts) in cooperation with 28 co-sponsoring organizations.
IPS UN Bureau
