By Prof. (Dr.) Bharat H. Desai
On June 17, 2024 - the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought – the Secretary-General (UNSG) Antonio Guterres, the UN’s proverbial conscience-keeper, issued a stern warning to all the 193-member states that almost 40% of planet’s land is degraded land. “The security, prosperity and health of billions of people rely on thriving lands supporting lives, livelihoods and ecosystems, but we're vandalising the Earth that sustains us,” the UNSG said. In fact, Guterres concern emanates from the humankind’s profound insensitivity since he felt (World Environment Day; June 05, 2024) that “Our planet is trying to tell us something. But we don't seem to be listening”.
The UNSG’s words were echoed (June 20, 2024) by CEO and Chairperson of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Carlos Manuel Rodríguez at the 67th Council meeting (Washington DC; June 17-20, 2024), as he observed: “We are at a moment of truth for the planet. We need to rise to the challenge by assessing what we have, where we need to go, and how we will get there.” During 2024, several global confabulations are lined up. They comprise Bonn climate talks (June 3-13, 2024), the industrialized countries 50th G7 periodic parleys in Apulia (Italy) (June 13-15, 2024), G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro (November 18-19, 2024), the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly (September 10, 2024), and UNFCCC Baku COP29 (November 11-22, 2024). Even if greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions hit zero tomorrow, a recent study found that climate chaos will still cost at least $38 trillion a year by 2050. This staggering cost only underscores the gravity and implications of climate change as one of the triple planetary levels.
The Human Predicament
The current warning bells concerning planetary level crisis and quest of conscientious thought leaders and decision-makers to find solutions underscores proverbial dilemma of the humankind on living in harmony with nature (GA resolution 75/220 of December 21, 2020). It vividly reminds us about the alarm bells rung in the decades of sixties and seventies through scholarly works such as Silent Spring (Rachel Carson, 1962), The Limits to Growth (Club of Rome, 1972), This Endangered Planet (Richard Falk, 1972) and Only One Earth (Barbara Ward & Rene Dubos, 1972). They in fact set the stage for the epochal first UN Conference on Human Environment (Stockholm, 1972). This author recalls his my early publication, as a doctoral scholar, on “Destroying the Global Environment” (International Perspectives, Ottawa, Nov./Dec. 1986), that sought to underscore the “human quest for development seriously threatens our fragile ecosystem”. The resultant global environmental regulatory process has come a long way. In fact, full 50 years later, two curated scholarly works of this author in 2022 (Envisioning Our Environmental Future) and 2021 (Our Earth Matters) reflected the spirit of those early works by reminding the decision-makers as regards rapidly “depleting time" for a decisive course correction.
The existential crisis has emanated from human frailty and inability to know The Limits to Growth, as propounded by the 1972 Club of Rome report and the finitude of resources on our only abode – the Earth. There appears human civilizational inability to overcome the greed (against need). It constitutes the root cause of the global problematique and the proverbial predicament of humankind. The Club of Rome report had aptly prophesized that: “It is the predicament of mankind that man can perceive the problematique, yet, despite his considerable knowledge and skills, he does not understand the origins, significance, and interrelationships of its many components and thus is unable to devise effective responses. This failure occurs in large part because we continue to examine single items in the problematique without understanding that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, that change in one element means change in the others.” (The Limits to Growth, p.11). Isn’t it ironical that notwithstanding all the intellect, resources as well as scientific and technological prowess, the humankind is unable to make a decisive course correction for our own planetary existence?
The Planetary Crisis
The humankind appears to have sleepwalked into the current crisis impinging upon the planet Earth’s essential ecological processes. As observed in preface to this author’s curated futuristic ideational works, Envisioning Our Environmental Future (2022) as well as Our Earth Matters (2021), we need to “ponder on the rapidly depleting time we have left for remedial action to safeguard our future amid warnings of impending environmental catastrophe”. It is this planetary level crisis that stares the humankind in the face in the third decade of the 21st century. Exactly a year ago, the feisty UN Secretary-General (UNSG) António Guterres, in his opening remarks on June 02, 2022 at the 2022 Stockholm+50 Conference described the triple planetary crisis as “our number one existential threat” that needs “an urgent, all-out effort to turn things around.” Ironically, in the words of the UNSG, the human consumption is “at the rate of 1.7 planets a year” and the “global well-being is in jeopardy”. Similarly, Inger Andersen, UNEP executive director and the Secretary-General of Stockholm+50, underscored that “If we do not change, the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste will only accelerate." The President of the 76th General Assembly, Abdulla Shahid, also reminded that the policies we implement today “will shape the world we live in tomorrow”.
The UNSG’s warnings have graphically vindicated this author’s 1992 scholarly prognosis (Social Science & Medicine, vol.35, no.4, 1992), at the time of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit that: “much of the developmental process in the world today does not appear to be sustainable…the human quest to conquer nature through science and technology has brought us on to the present brink. The threats to our eco-system essentially emanate from human activities in almost every sector.” At this stage, the drivers of the triple planetary crisis include: climate emergency; ecosystem degradation leading to biodiversity loss and pollution and waste.
The alarm bells rung by the UNSG, as the chief executive officer, are based upon the findings of several scientific reports released during 2022-2023 including IPCC6; UNEP and WMO. The Global Annual Decadal Update (2024-2028) released by the WMO has underscored that: “there is an 80 percent likelihood that the annual average global temperature will temporarily exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one of the next five years”. In WMO’s report in February 2023 has predicted that during the period 2013-2022 sea level rise has been 4.5 mm/yr, wherein the human influence is construed as the main driver of such ominous sea level rise. Similarly, the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (April 2022) drew a grim scenario that the “Net anthropogenic GHG emissions have increased since 2010 across all major sectors globally…as have cumulative net CO2 emissions since 1850”. Even UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2023 has warned that “Global GHG emissions increased by 1.2 per cent from 2021 to 2022 to reach a new record of 57.4 gigatons of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e)”. In fact, the UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2022 had reinforced the global concerns that “the international community is falling far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place. Only an urgent system-wide transformation can avoid climate disaster”.
We now live in the Anthropocene as the new geological epoch (recognized on 21 May 2019), with an ‘unmistakable imprint of human activities’. This has been affirmed in the formal proposal of the Anthropocene Working Group to the Sub-commission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (October 31, 2023). That, in turn, calls for a new human prism for the care, maintenance and ‘trusteeship of the planet’. It is an appropriate occasion to reflect upon the course traversed in the past fifty years only to earnestly look ahead to seek answers for our better common environmental future. It raises some pertinent questions: What lies in store for us in the next three quarters of the 21st century? How do we manage our profligate life styles, heavy resource extraction-based production processes and wasteful patterns of consumption so as not to endanger the very survival of life on planet earth in general and the future of humankind in particular? It calls for serious prognosis to make sense of the concerted international environmental law-making and institution-building processes (Bharat Desai, Institutionalizing International Environmental Law: Ardsley, NY, 2004) comprising the normative approach at work, global conferencing technique (1972, 1992, 2002, 2012, 2022) wherein the UN General Assembly has been an anchor, application and efficacy of the basic legal underpinnings of international law to the environmental challenges, actual working of the giant treaty-making enterprise, and quest for a robust international environmental governance architecture (Bharat Desai, International Environmental Governance: Bill, 2014).
It is yet another defining moment for a futuristic gaze to make sense of the perennial “predicament of mankind” to “devise effective responses” for the “world problematique” (The Limits to Growth, 1972). In turn, in calls for an honest introspection as regards what have we attained in the last six decades or so that comprised giant regulatory process, use of innovative tools and techniques, art and craft of law-making. Has it brought about changes in human mindsets, jettisoning of greed and defining our needs? What could be the new ideas, approaches, processes, regulatory tools and institutional structures to address the “world problematique”? This question still continues to haunt the humankind.
2024: Year of the Planetary Future
The year 2024 is all set to become a landmark in succession to 2023 and 2022 that witnessed summits on the Sustainable Development Goals (New York; September 18-19, 2023) and the Stockholm+50 Conference (Stockholm; June 2-3, 2022). The outcome of both these global conferences [(1) 2023 - here; (2) 2022 - here] has shown the gravity of the smouldering planetary level environmental crisis (here; here). During 2024, as mandated by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution 76/307 of September 8, 2022 (Modalities Resolution), another momentous Summit of the Future will be held in New York on September 22-23, 2024. Hence, the year will be cast in stone as the year of the Planetary Future.
The gravity of the planetary crisis came out vividly in the June 02, 2022 address of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who reminded the UN member states that we have not kept our promises on the global environment, our consumption is “at the rate of 1.7 planets a year” and the “global well-being is in jeopardy” (Secretary-General's remarks to Stockholm+50| UNSG).The gathering storms and the growing scientific evidence underscore the planetary-level environmental crisis at work. As the coming events cast their shadows before, humankind seems to have sleepwalked into planetary crisis (The Sleepwalking into a Planetary Crisis; (here; here) Some Heads of Government have showed realization that “the decisions we make today are going to determine our future for decades to come” (Remarks by President Biden | The White House) as well as in securing “a better future to the world, and a better world to the future” (Indian PM Modi address to the US Congress (narendramodi.in). Can we reverse this planetary crisis? What lies in store for the planetary future with rapidly depleting time?
Need for Futuristic Ideas
The above-mentioned gathering storms provide enough indications of a planetary-level environmental crisis. Do they cast shadows of the coming events in the 21st century? It is almost akin to some of the catastrophic events including the two world wars that devastated the world in the 20th century. Hence, it was logical that one of the panellists of the June 5, 2023 global webinar, Patricia Mbote (Director, UNEP Law Division), endorsed this author’s ideational quest for “exploring the future pathways” [Desai, Preface: EPL 51 (1-2) 2021, 1-2] to address the planetary level crisis. The global environmental crisis has worsened notwithstanding the mega regulatory enterprise at work. The crucial question that haunt the humankind are: What went wrong? What decisive course correction is required? Thus, it makes great sense to strive for innovative and iconoclastic solutions that could form a basis for a decisive course correction. This author precisely sought to walk-the-talk by bringing together cutting-edge ideas of global thought leaders by curating three marathon scholarly processes: (i) Regulating Global Climate Change (2023); (ii) Envisioning Our Environmental Future (2022); and (iii) Our Earth Matters (2021). After the 2024 Summit of the Future (September 22-23), it would be appropriate for the UNGA to hold an emergency special session to set in motion a normative process to nudge the 193 member states to gear up for global environmental challenges as a planetary concern [Desai, EPL 52 (5-6) 2022, 332-347]. It posits a challenge for the global scholarly community for pursuing an ideational groundwork, including contours of the UNGA’s normative process, to be affirmed by a concrete plan of action as a follow-up to the outcome of the forthcoming 2024 Summit of the Future.
It is in this wider context that this author has audaciously organized the EPL (Environmental Policy and Law) Special Issue 54 (2024) on The Planetary Future wherein some of the global thought leaders from the five continents would contribute their ideational and solution-oriented papers to look ahead into the future. The Part – I of the EPL Special Issue [54 (2-3) 2024] comprises 10 cutting-edge contributions by these eminent scholars: Edith Brown Weiss (Georgetown University); Oran R. Young (University of California at Santa Barbara); Maria Frenanda Espinosa Garcés (former Ecuadorian Foreign Minister and President of the 73rd UN General Assembly); Klaus Bosselmann (University of Auckland); Kazuhiro Nakatani (Tokai University); Eve Darian-Smith (University of California at Irvin); Vesselin Popovski (Jindal Global University); David L. VanderZwaag (Dalhousie University); Oliver C. Ruppel (Stellenbosch University & University of Graz). All of these articles can be accessed under O2S model (here).
The Road Ahead
The second batch of scholarly ideas will be curated and published by the author, prior to the 2024 Summit of the Future in the EPL Special Issue: Part – II 54 (4-5) 2024 on The Planetary Future. Apart from the above mentioned concrete scholarly churning organized from the home turf of the School of International Studies (here, here), far-away from the decision-making centres’ of the world, this author moderated a Global Webinar (June 05 @ 5.30 PM) on the 2024 World Environment Day. The first part of the discourse was held on June 05, 2024 with a panel of eminent speakers on the theme: The Planetary Future: Part – I (World Environment Day 2024). It will be followed by two more successive webinars before and after the 2024 Summit of the Future: Part – II (Summit of the Future; September 19, 2024); Part – III (World Human Rights Day; December 10, 2024).
A lot of scholarly ideas will be required to strengthen and amplify push for the global regulatory juggernaut, to make international law instruments work as well as ensure that various global actors including sovereign states, international institutions and other decision-makers take the task of securing our planetary future seriously. The author will strive to remain engaged in this audacious scholarly quest – even as a drop in the ocean – from the other side of the globe, 12, 000 km away from the decision-making centre of the world. One only hopes that someday it will accrue plaudits for the author’s home turf of SIS/ JNU (here, here) – where he has strived for excellence over the years notwithstanding all odds to produce a reasonable body of solution-oriented outstanding scholarly works in the field of International Law.
This Article is an Original Contribution for the SIS Blog.
Prof. (Dr.) Bharat H. Desai is Professor of International Law and Chairperson of the Centre for International Legal Studies (SIS, JNU), who served as a member of the Official Indian Delegations to various multilateral negotiations (2002-2008), coordinated the knowledge initiatives for SIS Faculty Wall of Honor (2023), Inter-University Consortium: JNU; Jammu; Kashmir; Sikkim (2012-2020) and Making SIS Visible (2008-2013) as well as contributes as the Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Policy and Law (IOS Press: Amsterdam).