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“Degradation of the natural world is undermining efforts to reduce poverty,” scientists warn in a new article published in the journal
Nature on Wednesday.

The only way we can achieve a “thriving global society” and mitigate the combined effects of environmental destruction and global poverty, the authors write in Policy: Sustainable Development Goals for People and Planet, is for international policymakers to adopt new targets that combine the need for planetary stability with poverty alleviation goals.

“Humans are transforming the planet in ways that could undermine any development gains,” says lead author Professor David Griggs of Australia’s Monash University.

“Mounting research shows that the stable functioning of Earth systems – including the atmosphere, oceans, forests, waterways, biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles – is a prerequisite for a thriving global society,” added co-author Professor Johan Rockström, director of the Stockholm Resilience Center.

This call comes in the wake of a meeting last week of the United Nations’ working group on sustainable development to discuss new international targets to implement after the internationally agreed-upon poverty alleviation targets, millennium development goals (MDG), run out in 2015.

The researchers argue that, in the face of increasing global degradation, the “classic model” of sustainable development as three integrated pillars-economic, social and environmental-does not reflect reality and jeopardizes any potential progress that could be made.

“As the global population increases towards nine billion people, sustainable development should be seen as an economy serving society within Earth’s life support system, not as three pillars,” says co-author Dr. Priya Shyamsundar from the South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics in Nepal.

Rather, they propose, a set of global environmental targets should be combined with the UN’s MDGs to create new “sustainable development goals” (SDGs). Focusing on a set of six goals, the researchers urge policymakers to “embrace a unified environmental and social framework […] so that today’s advances in development are not lost as our planet ceases to function for the benefit of a global population.”