by Miriam Diamond, University of Toronto
The hope….
The Science-Policy Panel (SPP) offers great promise to address threats to the Earth’s biophysical systems and human health posed by pollution and waste by harnessing people’s needs for a safe and healthy planet and the expertise needed to explore ways to get to that goal. We need to manage the SPP so that evidence, and not ideology or vested interests, allows us to seek the transformative change needed to avert impending harms to human and ecosystem health from chemicals and waste, as one component of the triple planetary threats that include climate change and loss of biodiversity.
Can the SPP Help in Achieving Positive Transformative Change?
“Transformative change” is similar to the Holy Grail – if found it will bring healing powers. But finding it is the big problem. Many public agencies, universities, and corporate entities seek “transformative change” but sparingly few reach that goal. And if they do, the “transformative change” brings the good and the bad. Can the SPP for chemicals, waste and to prevent pollution achieve the Holy Grail of positive “transformative change”? What conditions can promote achievement of “good” transformative change?
Before embarking on answering these questions, it is important to describe the desired positive goals of transformative change. Here, we are guided by UNEA Resolution 5/8, which is borne from the greater ambition of the 1992 Rio Declaration, and recently the 2022 UN draft resolution on “the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment”. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals give greater specificity to these broad goals.
While most agree with these goals, the nature of transformative change needed and the means of implementation are highly contested. My understanding of the major transformative change needed is guided by observations and empirical analyses – we need to transform the current global system in which part of society over-consumes, as a requirement of conventional growth economics, while a much larger part is deprived sufficient resources to allow for a healthy and dignified existence. In other words, I see the main root cause of the triple planetary crisis as increasing over-consumption with inequitable under-consumption of natural and technological resources, including energy, food and infrastructure. The transformation change needed to rebalance over- and under-consumption is thwarted by a system of “lock-in” whereby technological, institutional, economic and political dynamics reinforce and maintain the status quo. A quick and depressing look at current green house gas emissions illustrates this point.
Given this back-drop, let’s return to answering the questions about whether and under what conditions could the SPP achieve transformational change.
Solutions Oriented Assessments
I hope that the SPP can bring about transformative change, but perhaps a more realistic goal would be that the SPP provides authoritative, solutions-oriented assessments that inspire sufficiently strong incremental changes to redress over- and under-consumption. Those solution-oriented assessments will have a greater chance of achieving this goal when they use a systems-analytical approach that broadly considers a particular issue and, importantly, its drivers, enabling elements and barriers to change. Such assessments with the analysis of solutions require interdisciplinarity, creativity and ambition balanced by pragmatism. The assessments must be insulated from vested interests who stand to gain materially from maintaining the status quo or one of its variants. Thus, a robust solutions-oriented assessment must be based on evidence, not ideology or an entity’s economic gain. This critical feature of the SPP’s assessments underscores the importance of a strong policy on Conflict of Interest and the policy’s enforcement.
The solutions-oriented assessments need to tackle implementation. Many solutions that sound great fail at the feet of implementation. As an academic, I’ve become acutely aware that brilliant ideas are often brilliant because they remain untested or cannot be implemented. Thus, solutions-oriented assessments need to specifically consider how and under what conditions they can be implemented — implementation itself requires a systems analytical approach.
Another of the SPP’s functions, horizon scanning, is needed to provide for “early warning” of emerging problems. Proactively addressing an emerging problem before it grows in magnitude is by far the most efficient and cost-effect approach, and could lead to early transformative change. The SPP could be an important source of “up-to-date and relevant information, identifying key gaps in scientific research, and encouraging and supporting communication between scientists and policymakers”. This function will face the daunting challenge of the “fire hose of information”, to which I will cynically comment that AI will both solve and exacerbate the problem. Here, it will be important that those key gaps are filled by research so that experts don’t continue to “look under the lamppost” at issues that are already well-studied.
Now I turn to two of the several elephants that are sitting in this room. The first is financing the SPP to at least give birth to ideas for transformative change. The reality is that there is an ever-growing list of needs that are drawing on limited funding. One reason for the growing needs is the very reason why the SPP is being established – increasingly costly harms to human and ecosystem health. But there is strong competition for funds to address the triple planetary crisis. Just within the past two years we have seen the establishment of the “Global Biodiversity Framework Fund” and the Climate Change “Loss and Damages Fund” that are vying for funds along with other UN and non-UN funds directed towards environmental protection. Donors to the 8th replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) pledged $5.33 billion over 4 years which pales in comparison to the estimated needed spending of $350 billion annually by 2030 to protect and restore nature. Here’s another comparison – annual expenditures by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were announced at $8.6 billion in 2024, or 85% more than GEF pledged funding. Although the Gates Foundation funding is anticipated to diminish in the future, its funding decisions, and that of other philanthropies, are controlled by private entities and are not subject to transparent prioritization, as is planned for the SPP. In short, the public system is starved for funds and a few private entities control a lot of funds. It is in this environment that private funding sources are being sought to augment public investments. Such “blended financing” arrangements can “de-risk” private investments (aka the public assumes those financial risks) and could allow for greater control of the agenda by private donors. Overall, the SPP again needs to be insulated from entities, both public and private, that seek an agenda of maintaining the status quo or perfecting incremental, non-transformative change.
The second elephant in the room is the geopolitical tensions that are playing out in this and all intergovernmental fora. Although all citizens of the world want one that is safe and clean, its nothing new that government-led (not people-led) geopolitical tensions spill over into any gathering of nations. For this, I offer the optimistic view which gave birth to the UN — that the SPP could enable inter-governmental cooperation towards ensuring a clean and health planet. Thus, my hope is that the environment could be a source of building peace and security. Which circles back to the need for creative and broad thinking for solutions-oriented assessments leading to transformative change. I’m ending on an optimistic note because, as a mother and now grandmother, its my obligation to work towards a safe and healthy planet for this and coming generations and for all species.