Climate For Change: The economic opportunity of ‘One Planet Prosperity’

He came up with the notion of ecological debt to illustrate the degree to which various economies are operating beyond environmental thresholds. Earth Overshoot Day was originally called Ecological Debt Day. 

Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by adding up the totality of the demand that every country makes on the Earth’s resources in a year, then calculating what the Earth can sustainably produce each year, known as Earth’s biocapacity. From here, simple arithmetic shows what the shortfall is, if there is one. This deficit figure is then translated into a calendar date that marks the point in time each year when we go into deficit.  

The actual calculation is, of course, hugely complex. The organisation responsible for crunching the data behind Earth Overshoot Day is the Global Footprint Network, a charity that has some 70 partner organisations, including WWF International. 

The calculations are based on up to 15,000 data points per country per year, with the data coming from over 200 countries. 

According to the figures produced by the Global Footprint Network, we are now in the position of requiring the resources of three Earths to live as we do. Unfortunately, we have just the one planet, so Earth Overshoot Day is a way of reminding everyone that we are not on a sustainable path.

By coming up with a precise day each year when humanity’s ecological footprint – it’s annual demand on nature – exceeds what Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate in that year, the Global Footprint Network has succeeded in focusing attention on the fact that things have been getting steadily worse, not better. 

We are now going into deficit on August 1st. In the late 1990s this did not happen until near the end of September. The Global Footprint Network also calculates results on a per country basis as well as for the planet as a whole. This means it can show, for example, how many Earths would be required if everyone on the planet lived like the United States. 

This would require the annual regenerative capacity of five Earths. The UK benchmark is four Earths. Scotland’s is three Earths. 
There have been some criticisms of the way Earth Overshoot Day is measured. It does not, for example, take into account agricultural output, which is currently running at sustainable levels on a global basis.

This is because crop output figures do not figure in the various data sources used in the Earth Overshoot day calculations. 

However, Terry A’Hearn, the Chief Executive of SEPA, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, says that while there may well be a small margin of error in the calculation it is not sufficient to negate the value of the work done by the Global Footprint Network.

“We might find that more exact calculations would show that living as we do now in Scotland on a planet wide basis would use the annual resources of 2.9 Earths or 3.2 Earths, but it would still be very much in that ballpark,” he says.

As Scotland’s EPA, the organisation has a clear mandate to take the alarm bells sounded by Earth Overshoot Day, seriously. As A’Hearn notes, the role of EPAs around the world is undergoing a fundamental change as governments look to grapple with the difficulties of bringing major economies back onto a sustainable path. 

“SEPA has been going for 21 years and is regarded as one of the leading EPAs in the world. When EPAs first began to be set up their mandate was to enforce compliance with environmental laws. This was all about compelling businesses to behave and prosecuting them for dumping waste illegally and polluting rivers, for example. That was what I regard as Phase One for EPAs. 

“We are now in the process of moving to Phase Two,” A’Hearn explains. 
The year before A’Hearn took up his position at SEPA in 2015, the Scottish Parliament published a new Statutory Purpose for SEPA which profoundly enhanced the regulator’s mission. 

“The Scottish Parliament set a very ambitious agenda for SEPA when they assigned to us the role of delivering environmental protection and improvement in ways that, as far as possible, also create health and well-being benefits and sustainable growth,” A’Hearn says. 

That gave SEPA three distinct measures of success, environmental success, social success and economic success.“The Scottish Government has set globally ambitious climate change targets. Working together, we’ll push back on earth overshoot and build a more sustainable Scotland in which we all flourish,” he concludes. 

Innovate to help us lower our environmental impact

IN February this year SEPA reported a six-year high the number of Scottish businesses having their compliance with environmental laws assessed as “excellent”, “good” or “broadly compliant”. Some 91.7% of Scottish regulated businesses achieved these ratings. 

There was also considerable improvement among sites that had been assesses as non-compliant or “very poor”. 

Some 46.6 per cent of sites that had been assessed as non-compliant for two or more years achieved a compliant rating, while 66 per cent of sites classified as “very poor” improved their compliance rating. 11 sites made the leap from “very poor” to “excellent”. 

In all, just over 5,300 businesses and organisations are regulated by SEPA. 

SEPA CEO Terry A’Hearn points out that while 91.6% is considerably higher than most of the world’s EPAs achieve from their universe of regulated businesses, SEPA continues to set itself the goal of achieving 100 per cent compliance. 

“I have said all along that environmental regulation should be easy, cheap and painless if you are complying with the legislation, and it should be difficult, expensive and painful if you are persistently failing to comply,” he says.

However, A’Hearn stresses that mere compliance should not be the goal. SEPA is very keen to encourage companies of all sizes to take a very innovative approach to reducing their environmental impact. 
In keeping with its updated Statutory Purpose, as set by the Scottish Parliament, SEPA sees its mission as helping to lower Scotland’s overall environmental footprint. 

“We want people to continue to enjoy a high quality of life, while going about things in a way that means we can start pushing back Earth Overshoot day. There are lots of ways to achieve this and we can already see where the greatest gains can be made.

“For example, the construction sector contributes about 50 per cent towards Scotland’s “three Earths” rating, while transport’s impact only contributes around five percent. 

“Improving the way the construction industry works holds out the promise of significant gains,” he says.

Sepa is talking to businesses across Scotland to encourage them to come up with innovative solutions to lower their carbon footprint and environmental impact. 

“A lot of regulators do not do enough to support businesses that are really innovative. There are clear initiatives we can take. For example, a distillery might have a number of supermarket and other retail customers who insist on environmental audits. 

“Rather than having 10 different audits for 10 different customers it makes sense to try and agree a common audit standard that satisfies everyone,” A’Hearn says. 

With the regulator taking an active part in such discussions an agreed standard is likely to be much easier to reach. 

At the same time, he points out that SEPA itself has an innovation agenda. “We recognise that if we are asking businesses to be innovative, we have to be innovative ourselves. One of our initiatives here involves Entrepreneurial Scotland, and we are in the process of signing a sustainable growth agreement with them.”

Entrepreneurial Scotland sends some 20 to 40 young entrepreneurs to Babson College in Boston each year. 

As part of this year’s agreement, the entrepreneurs will focus on the challenge of problem plastics. 

A’Hearn explained: “The world needs to create hundreds of ways of replacing plastics, extending the life of plastics and capturing plastic waste. The project will help Scotland invent and deploy some of these new products.”

Last year’s project, which informed the forthcoming tyre sector plan, looked at solutions to enable legitimate businesses to earn more from handling and processing waste tyres than criminals make from offering cheap illegal disposal solutions.

“The idea was for the entrepreneurs to come up with solutions that will enable legitimate businesses to earn more from handling or processing waste tyres than criminals make from offering cheap illegal disposal solutions,” said A’Hearn. 

“We are working actively with other EPAs around the world on the problem of the illegal dumping of waste tyres. Once governments started imposing much higher charges for sending these types of waste streams to landfill, it opened the way for organised criminal activity.

“If you want to solve a problem that has some criminal involvement, you need to find a way for legitimate business to make more money out of it than criminals can.”

James Stuart, Managing Director of Entrepreneurial Scotland comments: “Partnering with SEPA is a fantastic example of how collaboration can solve real challenges and support Scotland in becoming the most entrepreneurial society in the world. 

“Our Saltire Fellows are without a doubt the right candidates to take on this challenge. In the coming months this year’s cohort will spend time at Babson College in Boston and be immersed in entrepreneurial thinking.”