Andreas Stamm Eva Dantas Doris Fischer Sunayana ... - ETH Zürich

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Andreas Stamm et al.
2 The role of technology and innovation in decoupling economic growth
from environmental pressures
Two approaches can be distinguished in analysing the interrelations between socioeconomic
development and related damage to the natural environment:
— To a certain extent, an already degraded resource base or ecosystem may be restored,
e.g. by reforestation or soil decontamination.
— Considering the limits of this first approach, efforts have to be made to effectively
decouple economic growth from depletion of natural resources.
Once an ecosystem is severely damaged, its rehabilitation is usually a long-term issue. In
detail, that process requires very different time frames, depending on the nature of the environmental
damage. For instance, while river water may return to reasonably sound quality
levels within a rather short time once the contamination source has been removed, forests
need many years to grow and decades to return to levels of biodiversity at least close
to natural conditions. Severely eroded or degraded soils will not recover in time frames
within the planning horizons of human beings. And of course there is damage to ecosystems
that can never be reversed, such as the extinction of species.
According to the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, which has been described as “the
largest global effort ever undertaken to catalog the state of the world’s ecosystems and the
human effects on them” (Sachs 2008, 145), many ecosystems have already been degraded
to such an extent that their ability to provide services for human beings (food, timber,
water etc., but also regulatory, support and cultural services) has been severely reduced.
Box 1: The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) was called for by the United Nations Secretary-General
Kofi Annan in 2000. Initiated in 2001, the objective of the MA was to provide an integrated assessment of
the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and to analyse options available to en-hance
the conservation of ecosystems and their contributions to meeting human needs. The main find-ings of
this exercise may be summarised as follows:
Over the past five decades, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any
comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, freshwater,
timber, fibre and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diver-sity
of life on Earth.
The changes that have been made to ecosystems have contributed to substantial net gains in human wellbeing
and economic development, but these gains have been achieved at growing costs in the form of
degradation of many ecosystem services, increased risks of nonlinear changes, and exacerbation of poverty
for some groups of people. These problems, unless addressed, will substantially diminish the benefits
that future generations obtain from ecosystems.
The degradation of ecosystem services could grow significantly worse during the first half of this century,
and it constitutes a barrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
The challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while satisfying increasing demands for services
can be partially met under some scenarios considered by the MA, but will involve significant
changes in policies, institutions and practices that are not currently under way. Many options exist to
conserve or enhance specific ecosystem services in ways that reduce negative trade-offs or that provide
positive synergies with other ecosystem services.
Source: www.millenniumassessment.org
German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)