OECD Environmental Outlook on the Triple Planetary Crisis: Stakes, Evolution and Policy Linkages
SDG 13: Climate Action | SDG 15: Life on Land
Institutions: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) | NITI Aayog
The OECD’s comprehensive Environmental Outlook on the Triple Planetary Crisis offers a strategic roadmap for governments to strengthen policy alignment and deliver more effective environmental strategies to mid-century. The core argument is that policy responses have traditionally operated in silos, ignoring the fundamental interlinkages between the three crises.
The Triple Planetary Crisis is the term adopted by the United Nations and the OECD to describe the three fundamental, interlinked environmental threats facing humanity: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. The report emphasizes that these challenges share common underlying socio-economic drivers and reinforce each other’s impacts, arguing that policy responses have traditionally operated in silos.
Analysis, Roadmap, and Governance
1. Interlinkages and Policy Gaps
The Outlook provides compelling evidence that the crises are mutually reinforcing, with climate change projected to surpass land-use change as the main driver of biodiversity loss by 2050. While policy efforts often address climate change and biodiversity concurrently, interlinkages with pollution—including air and plastic waste—are generally not reflected in national planning documents. The report features a first-of-its-kind stocktake analyzing the extent to which these policy linkages are addressed in national documents across countries, serving as a baseline for future progress.
2. Six Foundational Policy Levers
The report synthesizes its analysis into a portfolio of six foundational policy levers necessary for integrated results:
Rapidly cutting fossil fuel use.
Promoting sustainable, healthy diets and strengthening food systems.
Increasing food productivity and cutting food loss and waste.
Implementing nature-based solutions (NBS).
Advancing circular economy approaches.
Reforming Finance and Pricing Mechanisms, including phasing out environmentally damaging subsidies and aligning financial flows with climate goals.
3. Governance and Social Equity
The report underscores that effective implementation requires scaling up governance responses across multiple levels—local, national, and supra-national—given that the crises manifest differently across various scales and dimensions. Crucially, the Outlook stresses that the transition must be just and equitable. It emphasizes the importance of factoring in social and distributional considerations, particularly ensuring equity in the transformation of food and energy systems, to build social acceptance and support for deep, necessary changes.
Policy Relevance
The report’s central mandate for integrated policy action is highly relevant to India’s regulatory structure, pushing central planning bodies like NITI Aayog to embed climate and biodiversity considerations into all economic policies, moving beyond the current siloed approach. The specific focus on equity in system transformations provides a mandate to ensure India’s energy transition (e.g., green hydrogen) and circular economy efforts actively protect vulnerable populations and generate green jobs, aligning with national development priorities (e.g., lifting people out of poverty).
Follow the full report here: Environmental Outlook on the Triple Planetary Crisis