Cerac's first project is to downscale the global planetary boundaries framework to the Belgian level and assess the social impact of crossing these boundaries.
The first phase of this project aimed to define what a ‘safe and just operating space within the planetary boundaries’ concretely means for Belgium. In collaboration with Cerac, Climact undertook the complex task of defining these boundaries at the Belgian scale and assessing their related environmental footprints.
For the second phase, CEESE (ULB) and Ramboll have supported Cerac on the question of the social impacts of exceeding planetary boundaries, assessing the impact on health, employment and access to essential services.
The analysis revealed that most planetary boundaries were crossed at the Belgian scale, as shown in the figure below. This confirms the relevance for Cerac to focus on climate and biodiversity-related risks in their first risk assessment and underscores the importance of addressing other sectors in the future. Crossing those boundaries are expected to have the most direct impacts on health, but also on households, access to good and services and labour and working conditions.
On the links below, you can find the full report of the study, its appendix, the executive summary of the first and second phase, and the factsheets for each planetary boundaries.
Cerac has organized 2 webinars for each part of this analysis. The record for phase 1 can be seen here, and the one for phase 2 is here.
