Jheng Guang Li, Professor, Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering, National Taiwan University.

Ma Hwong Wen, Professor, Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering, National Taiwan University.

Environmental issues in climate change, depletion of natural resources and energy crisis have posed great challenges on sustaining human beings. Many countries have come to realized that technology alone is not sufficient in dealing with the environmental problems. What we need is the fundamental transformation in industrial structure, economic system and living style towards sustainability.

In 1987, the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development issued a report on "Our Common Future". In this report, the concept of sustainable development was defined "to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This concept includes three dimensions: social justice, economic prosperity and environmental protection. The pathway toward a social and economic sustainability is called "sustainable transformation," which aimes to achieve all three dimensions in sustainable development. The key to sustainable transformation is to adjust production and consumption system, design and chose products through their life cycle analyses. Finally, our society could be transformed into renewable resources in consumption in order to replenish natural capitals to improve environmental living capacity.

Scientific revolutions had improved the material and energy efficiency significantly, which then led to the population growth and increased minerals and fossil fuels production and consumption. According to Sustainable Europe Research Institute, the GDP grew by 125% from 1980 to 2011 while world population increased by more than 50% and the global resource extraction grew 79% (SERI, 2014), demonstrating economic growth and resource extraction was interlinked. Technology development has lowered the needs for raw material but the resource extraction and consumption has not decreased accordingly. Furthermore, environmental impacts brought by industrial revolution remain significant.

Life style change and sustainable transformation are interlinked. Taking the urbanization pattern for example, the United Nations estimates that the world urban population is 54% in 2014; the number would increase to 6.4 billion in 2050, about 66% of world population. Cities attract people who would like to seek economic opportunities and cultural diversity; however, growing population accompanies with environmental issues such as waste disposals, pollutions, energy shortage, and water resources depletion. According to the International Energy Agency, the consumption of energy in cities accounts for 60% to80% of world consumption. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also indicates that urbanization is the main driving force of global warming gas emissions. In addition, the shortage of food supply and limited access to sanitary facilities and clean water are the immediate crises in mega cities of developing countries.

According to Nature, the theories of Earth System Process and Resilience help to identify adaptive capacity in nine "planetary boundaries": 1) climate change; 2) rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial and marine); 3) interference with the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; 4) stratospheric ozone depletion; 5) ocean acidification; 6) global freshwater use; 7) land use change; 8) chemical pollution; 9) atmospheric aerosol loading. Some of these processes have reached earth capacities such as climate change, biodiversity loss and nitrogen cycle; others are approaching the capacity such as phosphorus cycle, ocean acidification and land use change. If current development pattern continues, we are going to reach the living capacity on earth. Therefore, this is a critical time for human beings to shift our paradigm in development pattern and transform our systems into sustainable development.

Although many countries have recognized the importance of sustainable development, several challenges exist. One of the key challenges is the tradeoffs among environmental protection, economic development and social justice. Many countries take economic growth as their priority over the environmental and equity goals. Sustainable transformation relies on transdisciplinary collaboration between the public and private sectors to reach consensus in various policies.

In the report "Toward a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication" published by UNEP in 2001, the Threshold 21 models (T21) were identified to evaluate the impacts of green economy on economic, social and environmental development. T21 is a dynamic simulation tool designed to support comprehensive and integrative long-term national development planning, which includes natural capitals as the key variable. Natural capital is both a limiting factor and a stimuli for economic growth. In the long run, GDP will decrease along with the depletion of natural capital (e.g., energy, forest land, soil, fish and water). If we increase investment in protecting natural capital (e.g., to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and lower carbon emissions), we could sustain the use of natural resources and subsequently sustain our economic growth.

UNEP began to propose a Green Economy Initiative in 2008 and posed a Green New Deal in 20009. In 2011, UNEP suggested that 2% of global GDP should be reallocated from "brown" investment to "green" investment in order to overcome environmental impacts from economic development. The Green New Deal has made alliance in countries such as United States, Great Britain, EU and South Korea. The success from the top-down implementation for sustainable transformation is valuable at the international level. The bottom-up approach is needed to achieve integrative transformation in sustainable cities and economy.

In order to achieve our vision in sustainable transformation, we need more supportive policies and information in the decision-making process such as integrative assessment tools. For example, the Integrated Environmental Assessment Model for Public Policy in Taiwan integrates inputs from economy, technological dynamics, energy substitution and multiple environmental impacts to evaluate the sustainability of policy scenarios (Chao et al., 2013). Continuing efforts are needed to establish basic information and evaluation tools in order to assist decision-making process among various stakeholders and public and private sectors in the decision-making process. Finally, we can develop a transdisciplinary mechanism to communicate across institutional and organizational boundaries on the path toward sustainable transformation.

Reference:

1. SERI (Sustainable Europe Research Institute), Trends in global resource extraction, GDP and material intensity 1980-2011, 2014.
2. UN, World Urbanization Prospects, 2014.
3. Worldwatch, State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future, W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.
4. UN, Trends in sustainable development towards sustainable consumption and production, 2010.
5. Rockström, J.; Steffen, W.; Noone, K.; Persson, A.; Chapin, F. S.; Lambin, E. F.; Lenton, T. M.; Scheffer, M.; Folke, C.; Schellnhuber, H. J.; et al. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 2009, 461, 472−475.
6. UNEP, Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication, 2011.
7. Chao , C. W., Heijungs, R., and Ma, H. W., Development and Application of Dynamic Hybrid Multi-Region Inventory Analysis for Macro-level Environmental Policy Analysis: A Case Study on Climate Policy in Taiwan, Environmental Science & Technology. 2013, 47, 2512−2519.