Currently, she is co-chair of the Earth Commission (2019-2023), set up by Future Earth and supported by the Global Challenges Foundation, together with Johan Rockström and Dahe Qin. She is full professor of environment and development in the global south at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research of the University of Amsterdam and IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. She is also the faculty professor on sustainability (2019-2024) and leads the programme group on Governance and Inclusive Development. Finally, she is also the co-convener of the university's Centre for Sustainable Development Studies, for which she coordinates and leads all related activities. 

Joyeeta’s most recent accomplishment is winning the Spinoza Prize, the highest award in Dutch academia. Each year, the Dutch Research Council (NWO) awards the NWO Spinoza Prizes to two researchers working in the Netherlands who according to international standards are amongst the best researchers worldwide. The NWO Spinoza Laureates do outstanding and groundbreaking research with broad impact. 

Read more about her research below.

What is the Earth Commission? 

The Earth Commission was established by Future Earth and the Global Commons Alliance. It is an international team of leading natural and social scientists and has five working groups with additional experts. The Commission is led by three professors, Johan Rockström, Dahe Qin and myself.

Congratulations on receiving the Spinoza Prize. Could you please share a glimpse of the research for which you won the award?

I believe that I have won this prize for the research work I have done over the last thirty years on climate change, other environmental issues, and the related politics and injustices in the way decisions are made on these issues from local to global level. In particular, it is because of the inter and transdisciplinary nature of my research which has gone beyond pure law to cover politics, economics, international relations and where need be also reflects an understanding of the natural science and ecological dimensions of the issues being addressed. International recognition began with my participation in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, then I was invited to Co-Chair UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook-6 - which is a regular global assessment of the scholarship on environmental issues, co-chair the Earth Commission, and presently I am also a Commissioner in the Global Commission on the Economics of Water.

The Earth Commission has been recently in the news. What sort of work do you do there? 

We, at the Earth Commission,  have just completed our research work for the first phase. We have developed a global Earth System Justice framework – which argues that transformative justice from local to global level is necessary to address the challenges of the Anthropocene. We have argued that the Planetary Boundaries framework needs to be extended to include local to global level boundaries and that these boundaries should not just prevent a collapse of the bio-geophysical systems, but also not cause significant harm to people – thus proposing Earth System Boundaries (ESBs). Following this, we have developed a method to propose safe and just ESBs, where the more stringent of the boundaries is used to define the final ESB. Thus, for example, we have argued that the 1.5-2℃ target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change may prevent the climate system from tipping over, but does not prevent significant harm to people. We therefore propose that 1℃ is more than just 1.5℃ and this requires drastically phasing out fossil fuels. On aerosols, even though we have not crossed the global boundary, air pollution kills millions of people annually – and hence we propose a modified WHO standard per cubic metre.

How does this research help us implement more sustainable ways of living? 

By identifying and proposing such stringent boundaries, we are reducing the operating space (or the resources people can use and the pollution they can emit) within which countries and humans can navigate. This might affect the rights of access to resources of people worldwide. As part of our justice narrative, we try to quantify the minimum amount of food, water, energy and infrastructure people need for basic dignity (level 1) and for escape from poverty (level 2). We have then assessed the implications of meeting these needs for those people who are below these levels on climate change, nutrient use, water use and impact on land for the year 2018 as a thought experiment. We do this as the United Nations 2030 Agenda calls for meeting the minimum needs of people worldwide. Our results show that meeting such needs in 2018, a pre-covid year, leads to crossing planetary boundaries. If you add access to health care and education, this further exacerbates the problem. This implies that meeting these minimum needs is only possible if we redistribute resources from over-consumers to under-consumers; technology alone cannot address the problem. Our follow-up work, currently in review, tries to create a safe and just corridor. The ceiling is the ESB and the base is defined by the level of resource use/pollution/ emission caused by a situation when all people worldwide only have access to minimum needs. We show that in some problem areas there is a corridor and some there is no corridor – e.g. climate change. This really implies that we need a just transformation. The European Research Council is funding my research (2.5 million Euros) on how to phase out fossil fuels in our energy systems worldwide. The Earth Commission’s proposed transformation calls for just governance which addresses issues such as addressing over-consumption, technology, and the economic system.  

What is our way forward?

In conclusion, in the context of the Anthropocene, we recognize that we have limited land, water, energy, and biodiversity; and that we are badly degrading our environment to the extent that we are passing tipping points (we are in the midst of the 6th biodiversity extinction event; we are likely to pass 1.5℃ within a few years). We are in danger of destabilising the earth system… while in the meanwhile our pollution is leading to massive mortality, morbidity, displacement and possibly even conflict. We need to recognize the limits and learn to live within those limits. This requires rethinking our political, economic, legal and social systems worldwide. Business-as-usual is not a sustainable option. Transformative justice is critical for the future. I will use the money (1.5 million Euros) of the Netherlands Spinoza prize 2023 for pushing this agenda further.