Establishing thresholds and indicators for environmental sustainability

The European Commission has repeatedly underlined the need to respect the limits of the planet’s natural resources, including the capacity to provide renewable resources and absorb pollutants. So where are the “danger zones” before the tipping points (thresholds) that lead to potential long-term or irreversible consequences? While numerous indicators of sustainability exist, very few of them suggest or monitor threshold phenomena.

In a consortium with the Ecologic Institute (Berlin) and the Institute for Environmental Studies of the University Amsterdam, SERI conducted a study to help the European Commission (DG Environment) identify a set of thresholds as well as specific indicators useful for monitoring unsustainable trends caused by human activity that could lead to tipping-point phenomena.

Main objectives:

Identify threshold areas. The study identified areas where there is likelihood of unsustainable trends related to environmental issues (including renewable resources) that show threshold phenomena.
Select thresholds and establish indicators. From among these threshold areas, a limited number of thresholds was chosen for which a set of indicators was established, able to alert EU decision-makers when the prevailing trends lead to an increased risk of entering danger zones and/or crossing some critical thresholds.
Ensure policy relevance. These thresholds and indicators should help in planning a better response by environmental policies and instruments at the EU level.

Following an identification of an initial list of 7 areas with known threshold behaviours – human exposure to toxic chemicals, fisheries, freshwater quality (focus on eutrophication), freshwater quantity, land use/land use change and soil erosion, and non-renewable resource use – the team in collaboration with the DG Environment and the EEA selected the following 4 threshold issues for in-depth analysis: