The recently concluded Stockholm +50 climate conference took place in the wake of looming climate change, economic shocks, and geopolitical tensions worldwide. While the meeting commemorated the historic 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, it aimed to set a vision to accelerate climate action this decade and secure the next 50 years for future generations. The following reflects on the outcomes of Stockholm+50 and what is needed to achieve this ambitious vision.
A reflective dialogue
Stockholm+50 was not a negotiation between countries on implementing programmes or wording of clauses in a treaty. Instead, the meeting served as a compass for action needed in this decade and beyond.
The triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and increasing pollution pose an existential challenge to countries, communities and companies. Navigating these challenges need bold, consistent and value-based international diplomacy, national action, and institutional innovation. Together, this can usher in a new paradigm for sustainable development forged on the ideals of justice, equity, and resilience.
The gap between advanced and vulnerable constituencies needs to be narrowed at scale and pace. Towards this end, the Stockholm+50 process created an inclusive platform that brought together diverse voices from across the globe to deliver a common message of reform.
A call for action
In the Presidents’ final remarks to the plenary, leaders highlighted 10 broad recommendations for the global community. However, they provide only a glimpse of the extensive knowledge creation and consultations that took place in the lead-up to the conference. This includes the independent scientific report co-authored by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) for the meeting, which presented evidence-based recommendations on how to achieve the meeting’s theme – a healthy planet for the prosperity of all – our responsibility, our opportunity.
Based on 18 background research papers and a synthesis of authoritative findings, the report recommends three broad shifts to unlock a better future. It also discusses ways to make sustainable lifestyles more accessible, reduce material consumption while providing function, align national statistics with sustainability goals, and evaluate upstream innovation on sustainability standards.
In addition the report recommends investing in a better future through co-development of technology rather than technology transfer, raising private finance for innovation, and reducing the risk perception of sustainability-related investments. Expanding nature-based education and recognizing indigenous knowledge and the “rights of nature” were among the recommendations to redefine the human-nature relationship. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and UN University Centre for Policy Research also captured voices on alternative human-nature paradigms. Finally, to create conditions for transformative change, the report recommended making policies more coherent, strengthening multilateralism, and enhancing accountability.
The regional multi-stakeholder consultations held in the run-up to Stockholm+50 recommended putting a stop to fossil fuel subsidies and plastic pollution and devising ways to promote healthy diets, reduce food waste, and develop a circular economy. Consultations were also held at the national level. The Business Roundtables Report highlighted eight transformation levers: accountability and transparency, circularity, finance, infrastructure, governance and collaboration, disruption and innovation, decent jobs, education and skills, and resilience.
Charting a youth vision
Any discussion about the future is inadequate without the voices of young people. Stockholm+50 included a large-scale youth consultative process on their vision for the future of the planet.
Early-career researchers at SEI and CEEW co-authored Charting a Youth Vision for a Just and Sustainable Future based on a survey of nearly 1,000 young people from over 90 countries. Almost 90% of the survey participants said that climate change has impacted them in some way. This includes natural disasters, impacts on physical and mental health, economic stress, food supply, etc. In comparison, 68% of respondents said that governments are not doing enough to address climate change, while a fifth were of the opinion that they feel powerless to do anything about it. More than half of the youth surveyed said the young population has inadequate representation in global climate governance.
Based on the survey and scientific evidence, the report provided concrete targets for the global community on zero loss of nature, fostering global citizenship, moving from GDP to well-being, diplomacy for the collective good, and climate education for all. The report also called for meaningful youth representation in governance, setting up a global social security mechanism to make vulnerable communities resilient to climate and economic shocks, and focusing on nature-based solutions to promote jobs, growth, sustainability, and well-being.
The messages of the report resonated strongly with the demands of the Global Youth Policy Paper, drafted by the Stockholm+50 Youth Task Force, which is based on several youth consultations and three global consultations. The paper presented pertinent demands such as including “ecocide”, or large-scale environmental destruction, as a crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, ensuring access to W.A.S.H (water, sanitation and hygiene) for all, safeguarding press freedom and free speech, and protecting youth activists across the world.
What did Stockholm+50 achieve?
Even though the 1972 conference spurred global environmental action, only a tenth of the global environmental and sustainable development targets have been achieved since then. What Stockholm+50 achieves will not be judged by its declarations, but by how the consultative vision it laid out gets implemented.
Several new areas of work will offer an opportunity to transition to a better future. This includes emerging topics such as carbon pricing, finance for nature-based solutions, net-zero frameworks, technology cooperation, delivery of finance and risk management, among others. What we need now is political momentum to act on these recommendations. Tough decisions will be required to reform existing frameworks for finance and decision-making.
During Stockholm+50, we learned that the case for bold action on green recovery and a just transition has never been stronger. While the demands for action are coherent across regions and stakeholders, the global community has never been better equipped for change.
That is why Stockholm+50 has given us hope.