{"id":346203,"date":"2025-12-15T06:29:32","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T06:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/346203\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T06:29:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T06:29:32","slug":"a-sustainable-future-requires-new-thinking-un-environment-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/346203\/","title":{"rendered":"A sustainable future requires new thinking: UN environment report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe Global Environment Outlook lays out a simple choice for humanity: continue down the road to a future devastated by climate change, dwindling nature, degraded land and polluted air, or change direction to secure a healthy planet, healthy people and healthy economies,\u201d said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unep.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UNEP<\/a> Executive Director Inger Andersen.<\/p>\n<p>The report has input from 287 multi-disciplinary scientists from 82 countries and stretches to well over 1,000 pages.<\/p>\n<p>Looking beyond GDP<\/p>\n<p>The report makes a case for interconnected \u2018whole-of-society\u2019 and \u2018whole-of-government\u2019 approaches to transform economy and finance, materials and waste, energy, food and the environment.<\/p>\n<p>Taking this path starts with moving beyond gross domestic product\u00a0(GDP) as a measure of economic wellbeing and instead using inclusive indicators that also track the health of human and natural capital.<\/p>\n<p>It continues with a transition to circular economy models; a rapid decarbonisation of the energy system; a shift towards sustainable diets, reduced waste and improved agricultural practices; and expanding protected areas and restoring degraded ecosystems \u2013 all backed by\u00a0behavioural, social and cultural shifts that include Indigenous and local knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>Two pathways to change<\/p>\n<p>The report lays out a social and a technological pathway to transformation.<\/p>\n<p>Behaviour-focused transformation pathway: lifestyle, behavioural and value changes. Social awareness of the environmental crises drives a shift in worldview.Technology-focused transformation pathway: innovation and technological solutions. An urbanized world\u00a0with significant global trade and technological spill-over.Why it matters<\/p>\n<p>According to UNEP:<\/p>\n<p>The state of the environment will dramatically worsen if the world continues to power economies under a business-as-usual pathway.Without action, global mean temperature rise is likely to exceed 1.5\u00b0C above pre-industrial levels in the early 2030s, exceed 2.0\u00b0C by the 2040s and keep climbing.Climate change would cut 4 per cent off annual global GDP by 2050 and 20 per cent by the end of the century.If made, the changes have the potential to avoid nine million pollution-related premature deaths, lift 200 million people out of undernourishment, and move 150 million people out of extreme poverty by 2050.<\/p>\n<p>The agency called on countries to follow the whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches laid out in the report to achieve a sustainable future.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis sounds like, and indeed is, a massive undertaking. But there is no technical reason why it cannot be done,\u201d Ms. Andersen said.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Global Environment Outlook lays out a simple choice for humanity: continue down the road to a future&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-346203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}