Under the floor or above the ceiling
We must avoid overshooting environmental ceilings (climate, biodiversity, etc.) while ensuring we meet social floors (food, education, etc.). But who constitutes “we”? This graph illustrates the average extent to which ceilings are overshot (horizontal axis) and floors are achieved (vertical axis). Ideally, countries would reside in the top left corner, above the floors and below the ceilings. Circles depict performance at the end of the analysis period, with paths indicating their starting points and sizes varying according to population. Global North countries fall into the low social shortfall and high ecological overshoot group, increasing their ecological overshoot to 350% beyond fair shares of the ecological ceiling on average. Meanwhile, global South countries in the high social shortfall and low ecological overshoot group show an ecological overshoot of 19%, on average. Although no countries eliminate shortfalls without overshooting ceilings, the encouraging news is that several countries manage promising trajectories, such as Costa Rica, Jordan, Albania, and Mauritius. How do they achieve this balance?