Facts about sustainable phosphorus management

Sustainable Phosphorus Management

Reducing nutrient pollution, including from phosphorus, is key to preserving and restoring biodiversity, achieving ambitious climate targets and protecting human health.
The challenge is to ensure the long-term availability, accessibility, and affordability of phosphorus to attain food security whilst minimizing pollution.
It is vital to optimize how phosphorus is used, maximizing efficiency while minimizing losses to the environment.

What is sustainable phosphorus management and why do we need it?

Phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) are indispensable macronutrients that help plants grow and are important ingredients for making synthetic fertilizers.
Due to unsustainable management of these nutrients, there are devastating effects when they seep into lakes, rivers, and the ocean.
Sustainable phosphorus management requires further innovation and investment, designing circular approaches through phosphorus recovery and reuse from waste streams.

In Chemicals & pollution action

Phosphorus compounds come from phosphate-containing rock.
Phosphorus is a nutrient found in and required by all living things, including humans.
Plants require phosphorus for photosynthesis and growth.
The natural cycle of phosphorus is slow, playing out over millions of years.
Phosphorus is an essential macronutrient alongside nitrogen and potassium.
Phosphorus underpins global food systems and food security. Food production is undermined by the lack of available and accessible phosphorus.

When phosphorus is not adequately managed, it leads to an imbalance in nutrient ratios.
Too much phosphorus cause problems, but too little phosphorus can also be detrimental.
The global cost of phosphorus pollution is estimated to be US$265 billion per year.
Changes to the phosphorous cycle and the rate that phosphorus is moving through parts of this cycle has now reached a point where there is a high risk of fundamental changes to the earth’s systems.

A deficiency of phosphorus can cause health problems for humans, animals and plants.
Plants need phosphorus to photosynthesize.
Crops that do not have enough phosphorus will not grow to their fullest extent, take longer to mature, and have lower yields.
Equitable access to phosphorus and its appropriate use is an important part of achieving long-term food security.

Pollution from excess phosphorus is one of the main direct drivers of biodiversity loss.
It undermines ecosystem function and ecosystem services in soils, lakes, rivers streams and coasts, disrupting the balance of nutrient availability, leading to eutrophication.
In freshwater and coastal ecosystems, this causes a rapid acceleration of algal growth which can block light and deplete oxygen.
In extreme cases, it can result in areas known as dead zones.
In the Caribbean, eutrophication has been linked to vast quantities of sargassum washing up on the beaches, causing social, environmental and economic problems.
The response of ecosystems to pollution can be compounded by the impacts of climate change and the other way around.
Warmer water carries less oxygen, it can augment algal blooms and/or amplify the toxic cocktail of pollutants.

Humanity’s interference in the phosphorus cycle

Human demand for phosphorus, such as the need for fertilizer to produce food, has led to a disruption of the phosphorus cycle.
The extraction of phosphorus from mineral deposits to feed this demand has tripled the natural rate of flow of phosphorus from phosphate rock deposits to water bodies.
Human-induced habitat disturbance and habitat loss impact the rates of erosion and soil quality.
Climate change impacts are another factor affecting the rate of phosphorus flows through the cycle.
Changes in temperatures, rainfall, wind patterns and CO₂ concentrations change the availability of phosphorus to organisms and how it is used.
This has implications on agricultural production.

What are the sources of anthropogenic phosphorus losses?

Agriculture is a major source of phosphorus loss.
This loss occurs both in production of crops and livestock, and through food waste, our sewage, municipal waste and other waste streams.

What is being done to address the phosphorus imbalance?

The management of phosphorus is vital for achieving several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG-2 (Zero hunger), SDG-6 (Clean water and sanitation) and SDG-14 (Life underwater).
Nutrient management has been the subject of previous commitments for environmental action by the United Nations Environment Assembly, including two specific resolutions adopted to address sustainable nitrogen management (UNEA Resolutions 4/14 and 5/2).
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) tackles phosphorus in Target 7, which addresses reducing excess nutrients lost to the environment as well as reducing the risk from pesticides.

Integrated approaches such as “source to sea” are needed to ensure actions are coherent across sectors and are meaningful from an ecological perspective.
Changes to agricultural and livestock management practices are needed to optimize phosphorus use.
Progressing towards SDG 6 to increase access to sanitation and reduce the proportion of wastewater being released untreated, will contribute significantly to reducing phosphorus pollution from wastewater and increase opportunities for recovery and reuse.
Our behaviors and dietary choices as consumers play an important role in determining phosphorus demand and losses.
- The demand for phosphorus has increased 38% per capita in the last 50 years due to dietary changes towards increasing consumption of meat and animal products and increased food waste.
- Around 17% of food is wasted each year at the household and retail level.

$265

USD per year

is the global cost of phosphorus pollution as a result of unsustainable management.