Conference Agenda

The “Triple planetary crisis”, which collectively refers to climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, poses a growing and significant threat to human health, well-being and the environment. These three planetary challenges are closely interlinked. Beyond their direct biophysical connections (e.g., the negative impact of a warmer climate and pollution on biodiversity), they share many common socioeconomic drivers and trends, including land use change, increased fossil fuel demand, and population and economic growth. Additionally, they are interconnected through policy responses. Environmental policies targeting one planetary challenge can have positive and/or negative spillovers on the other two challenges.

While each planetary crisis has been discussed and studied in recent years (and environmental and natural resource economists contributed significantly), few studies examine these three planetary challenges simultaneously. With this background, this session first introduces the analysis of the triple planetary crisis by (i) providing projections of its evolution toward mid-century under current policies (i.e., baseline analysis) and (ii) unpacking the main drivers behind the three planetary crises. Then, the discussions will tackle two main questions. First, how can environmental economics contribute to forming an integrated view on the causes and consequences of the triple planetary crisis and associated policy responses? Where does traditional cost-benefit analysis fall short, and what are promising routes for improving economic research to better support synergetic decision- making? Second, what is required from environmental economics to support policymakers in this domain? What are promising steps to close the gap between research and policy needs at global, national, and local scale?