Tracking National Environmental Performance Relative to Planetary Boundaries - A Consumption Based Indicator Framework

The Planetary Boundaries framework describes the safe operational space for the Earth. The framework builds upon accumulating evidence that human activities have become the main driver of global environmental change in the... [ view full abstract ]

The Planetary Boundaries framework describes the safe operational space for the Earth. The framework builds upon accumulating evidence that human activities have become the main driver of global environmental change in the Anthropocene, capable of effectively influencing critical Earth system processes. The safe operational space defined by the Planetary Boundaries aims to encircle the manoeuvrable room for the global human society to achieve a sustainable living. Several control variables, measuring critical earth system processes, have been proposed to operationalize the framework. There is, however, a need to measure and motivate (national) policy towards (international) collaborative progress. Although some efforts have been made to downscale the planetary boundaries to the national or personal level, a comprehensive indicator set for assessing contribution to and progress of individual countries and regions in regard to the Planetary Boundaries is currently missing. Here we present a multi-indicator framework of seven consumption based accounts (footprints) measuring the environmental consequences of the socio-economic metabolism in accordance with the Planetary Boundary concept. The consumption based indicators used in the framework are based on the latest version of the global, UN SEEA (System of Environmental-Economic Accounting) compatible multi-regional input-output table database EXIOBASE. As such, each indicator measures the global environmental impacts occurring due to consumption within a specific country. We argue, that this is an important prerequisite for an effective policy design and measurement as it accounts for problem shifting due to outsourcing of production processes from one county to another. Based on the proposed indicator set, we analyse the progress of each of the Planetary Boundary domains over the last 20 years for major world regions as well as individual countries. We identify decoupling of human/economic development from environmental impacts for each of the indicators based on a Population-Affluence-Technology (PAT) decomposition, highlighting the role of each component towards sustainable development within the safe operational space of the Earth. Country rankings based on the consumption accounts per capita (footprints) provides a comparison of the uneven distribution of current environmental impacts. We discuss shortcomings of the approach in respect to uncertainty, country coverage and time-lag. To conclude, the linking of the proposed set of consumption based indicators to the Planetary Boundary framework provides the analysis tool needed to assess global sustainable development efforts.

Keywords: Planetary Boundaries, Footprints, EXIOBASE, MRIO, sustainable development