This International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) brief notes that climate change, conflict, and COVID-19 are forcing a reassessment of how we eradicate poverty while addressing a planetary emergency. Its author argues that Governments should adjust their communications on economic indicators away from messages focused on gross domestic product (GDP) and jobs numbers to indices of national well-being that include the historically marginalized and the environment.
Eradicating poverty is directly linked to how we manage ecosystems and the goods and services they provide. Thus, policymakers must see environmental sustainability as a central objective in eradicating poverty.
In this context of merging the poverty and environment agendas, this Brief outlines lessons from 50 years of UN sustainable development policy, including key messages, recommendations, inter-linkages between poverty-environment and global negotiations, new and continuing challenges, and the way forward regarding the triple-planetary crises.