Safe Operating Space For Humanity Research Articles

Offline: Progress towards planetary health

2014 was the world's hottest year since records began in 1880—0·69°C higher than the 20th-century average, and 0·04°C higher than previous peaks. NASA's Gavin Schmidt was reported last week as saying that these latest findings do “not bode well for a civilisation that is continuing to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere”. The news came just as Johan Rockström's team at the Stockholm Resilience Centre updated their now famous idea of “planetary boundaries”. In 2009, Rockström proposed the notion of a safe operating space for humanity. A zone of sustainable life was surrounded by nine boundaries—climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles (now called biogeochemical flows), global freshwater use, land-system change, biodiversity loss, atmospheric aerosol loading, and chemical pollution. As these boundaries were crossed, Rockström argued, the sustainability of our planet would become eroded, reducing the safe operating space we inhabit. The planetary boundary concept has become a powerful lever in debates about the meaning and measurement of sustainable development. In 2013, Rockström, together with Jeff Sachs and others, wrote an influential submission for the High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. That paper concluded that, “The science of planetary boundaries makes clear that we are on an unsustainable trajectory…Planetary boundaries define a planetary playing field that guide humanity on how to avoid environmental changes on a global scale.” The latest iteration of the planetary boundary approach, published in Science, includes important modifications. First, two core boundaries are identified—climate change and biosphere integrity. Adverse movements towards either boundary would likely have the necessary force to take us out of the Earth's safe operating space. Second, boundaries are given regional context. The integrity of the biosphere, biogeochemical flows, land-system change, freshwater use, and atmospheric aerosol loading all have considerable sub-global heterogeneity. Third, progress towards protecting our safe operating space is described, incorporating regional as well as global metrics. Finally, the concept of planetary boundaries is refined. For example, a boundary is not a tipping point. Instead, the gap between the boundary and the true threshold for catastrophic change not only indicates uncertainty as to where that threshold actually lies, but also provides an opportunity for early warning and action to reduce the risk of irreversible transition. Revision of the planetary boundary approach will surely continue. Most importantly, they are not yet integrated into the practical politics of sustainable development, the SDGs, or post-2015 planning. They should be. But come back to Gavin Schmidt's word—civilisation. The history of civilisations (our societies and our cultures) tells us that what often seems secure in our lives can collapse and disappear surprisingly easily. There are many well-documented examples of civilisations that have been born, grow, thrive, and then die. The time course is long—over many hundreds of years. There is an abundance of evidence chronicling the precarity of human civilisations. It is not unreasonable to suggest that it is at best complacent and at worst dangerous to think that our societies and cultures are somehow different (better and smarter) today compared with the past—that we are now immune from the forces that challenged and overcame our ancestors. History and science, to the contrary, suggest that we should take our intrinsic fragility very seriously. The planetary boundaries approach is powerful. But it repeats the mistake of saying that it is something outside of us that should be the object of our concern—carbon dioxide, acidified oceans, and so on. Not so. The object of our concern should be us. The seeds of our vulnerability lie within ourselves, not the disturbed natural systems around us. Do we have the right governance, institutions, and decision-making processes to address the predicaments we face? There is reasonable evidence to suggest that we might not. If we accept that our civilisations are fragile and if we agree that the principal threats to our species are deficiencies in human political, economic, social, and knowledge systems, surely the conclusion is that we must redefine health. Health is not only the health of individuals and populations. It is also the health of our civilisations too—what we might come to call planetary health.

Transformational change: creating a safe operating space for humanity

McAlpine, C. A., L. M. Seabrook, J. G. Ryan, B. J. Feeney, W. J. Ripple, A. H. Ehrlich, and P. R. Ehrlich. 2015. Transformational change: creating a safe operating space for humanity. Ecology and Society 20(1): 56. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07181-200156

Approaches to defining a planetary boundary for biodiversity

The idea that there is an identifiable set of boundaries, beyond which anthropogenic change will put the Earth system outside a safe operating space for humanity, is attracting interest in the scientific community and gaining support in the environmental policy world. Rockstrom et al. (2009) identify nine such boundaries and highlight biodiversity loss as being the single boundary where current rates of extinction put the Earth system furthest outside the safe operating space. Here we review the evidence to support a boundary based on extinction rates and identify weaknesses with this metric and its bearing on humanity's needs. While changes to biodiversity are of undisputed importance, we show that both extinction rate and species richness are weak metrics for this purpose, and they do not scale well from local to regional or global levels. We develop alternative approaches to determine biodiversity loss boundaries and extend our analysis to consider large-scale responses in the Earth system that could affect its suitability for complex human societies which in turn are mediated by the biosphere. We suggest three facets of biodiversity on which a boundary could be based: the genetic library of life; functional type diversity; and biome condition and extent. For each of these we explore the science needed to indicate how it might be measured and how changes would affect human societies. In addition to these three facets, we show how biodiversity's role in supporting a safe operating space for humanity may lie primarily in its interactions with other boundaries, suggesting an immediate area of focus for scientists and policymakers.

Telling Time: Chemistry Education in the Anthropocene Epoch

An International Union of Geological Sciences working group is expected to soon formalize a determination that we have moved from the Holocene to the Anthropocene Epoch on the geologic time scale. In addition to reaching consensus on the scientific evidence for this change, this initiative is meant to raise awareness in other scientific communities of the effects of large-scale human activity on fundamental earth system parameters. In parallel, work is being done to understand the resiliency of our planet to the large human footprint, and to define and quantify the planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity. Many of these planetary boundaries are quantified by chemical measurements. We explore the implications of these parallel developments for chemistry educators.

The Rule of Ecological Law: The Legal Complement to Degrowth Economics

The rule of ecological law is a fitting complement to degrowth. Planetary boundaries of safe operating space for humanity, along with complementary measures and principles, provide scientific and ethical foundations of the rule of ecological law, which should have several reinforcing features. First, it should recognize humans are part of Earth’s life systems. Second, ecological limits must have primacy over social and economic regimes. Third, the rule of ecological law must permeate all areas of law. Fourth, it should focus on radically reducing material and energy throughput. Fifth, it must be global, but distributed, using the principle of subsidiarity. Sixth, it must ensure fair sharing of resources among present and future generations of humans and other life. Seventh, it must be binding and supranational, with supremacy over sub-global legal regimes as necessary. Eighth, it requires a greatly expanded program of research and monitoring. Ninth, it requires precaution about crossing global ecological boundaries. Tenth, it must be adaptive. Although the transition from a growth-insistent economy headed toward ecological collapse to an economy based on the rule of ecological law is elusive, the European Union may be a useful structural model.

Sistema internacional de hegemonia conservadora: o fracasso da Rio + 20 na governança dos limites planetários

Em um artigo seminal, Rockström et al. (2009) inauguraram uma nova forma de abordar os problemas ambientais. A abordagem das fronteiras planetárias aparece como um instrumento analítico fundamental para avaliar a governança global do ambiente e, em um sentido mais profundo, para refletir sobre o rumo civilizatório da humanidade. O nosso objetivo nesse artigo, é fazer uma avaliação da Rio+20 utilizando como critério a governança global das fronteiras planetárias. No caminho, fazemos especial referência ao papel do Brasil na Cúpula. Nossa conclusão principal é que a Rio+20 foi um fracasso desde o ponto de vista da definição de um espaço de operação segura para a humanidade e que ele é expressão de um sistema internacional bloqueado e dominado por forças conservadoras. Nesse cenário, o Brasil aparece como uma potência ambiental subdesenvolvida (underachiever environmental power): a combinação de um enorme capital ambiental físico com um deficiente capital ambiental social.

Os limiares planetários, a Rio+20 e o papel do Brasil

Neste artigo consideramos os problemas ambientais globais dentro do conceito de limiares planetários, em convergência com os últimos avanços das ciências naturais. Nesse contexto, nosso objetivo é explorar o papel do Brasil na governança do espaço de operação seguro para a humanidade, avaliando como o país complementa o enorme capital ambiental físico que possui com ações políticas específicas orientadas para uma economia verde de baixo carbono (EVBC), tanto no âmbito doméstico quanto no internacional. Para atingir essa meta, em primeiro lugar discutimos conceitualmente a economia verde de baixo carbono como paradigma de desenvolvimento compatível com um espaço de operação seguro para a humanidade; em segundo lugar, analisamos a Rio+20 pelo prisma da governança global dos limiares planetários e pela atuação brasileira na Cúpula; e finalmente fazemos um diagnóstico da situação do Brasil em relação ao novo paradigma de desenvolvimento. Como conclusões da análise, destacamos a crescente distância entre a aceleração dos problemas da interdependência - especialmente a definição de um espaço seguro de operação para a humanidade - e os mecanismos globais de governança existentes, derivada de um sistema internacional bloqueado e dominado por forças conservadoras. O resultado frustrante da Rio+20 é evidência clara dessa defasagem. Nessa dinâmica, o Brasil tem o potencial para ser um ator central da governança dos limiares planetários, por seu vasto capital ambiental físico. No entanto, o mínimo avanço da EVBC no país degrada essa capacidade de agência, e o torna uma potência ambiental subdesenvolvida (underachiever environmental power).

Greening the United Nations Charter: World Politics in the Anthropocene

A revised version of this working paper has been published as: Biermann, Frank. 2012. Greening the United Nations Charter: World Politics in the Anthropocene. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development. May / June 2012. A constitutional turn is needed to bring the UN system in line with the urgent needs of planetary stewardship and earth system governance in the 21st century. Yet how this could be organized in practice remains a challenge and subject to political and scholarly debate. This paper contributes to this debate by outlining four reforms of the UN system that would advance global decision-making by addressing major shortcomings in the current system: Lack of integration of economic and environmental policies in the UN system; institutional fragmentation and weakness of the environmental pillar of sustainable development; lack of high-level regulatory competence and oversight regarding areas beyond national jurisdiction; and insufficient integration of scientific insights into political decision-making. The reforms proposed would together create an Earth Alliance in the UN system, consisting of a high-level UN Sustainable Development Council, a World Environment Organization, a UN Trusteeship Council for Areas beyond National Jurisdiction, and an UN Global Environmental Assessment Commission.

DESIGNING THE GREEN CLIMATE FUND: HOW TO SPEND $100 BILLION SENSIBLY

Confronting and responding to climate change is one of the foremost issues of our time, with the burden of response spread unequally around the globe. In general, climate impacts are hitting, and w...

A safe operating space for humanity

Identifying and quantifying planetary boundaries that must not be transgressed could help prevent human activities from causing unacceptable environmental change, argue Johan Rockstrom and colleagues.

Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity

Anthropogenic pressures on the Earth System have reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. We propose a new approach to global sustainability in which we define within which we expect that humanity can operate safely. Transgressing one or more may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental- to planetary-scale systems. We have identified nine and, drawing upon current scientific understanding, we propose quantifications for seven of them. These seven are climate change (CO2 concentration in the atmosphere <350 ppm and/or a maximum change of +1 W m-2 in radiative forcing); ocean acidification (mean surface seawater saturation state with respect to aragonite ≥ 80% of pre-industrial levels); stratospheric ozone (<5% reduction in O3 concentration from pre-industrial level of 290 Dobson Units); biogeochemical nitrogen (N) cycle (limit industrial and agricultural fixation of N2 to 35 Tg N yr-1) and phosphorus (P) cycle (annual P inflow to oceans not to exceed 10 times the natural background weathering of P); global freshwater use (<4000 km3 yr-1 of consumptive use of runoff resources); land system change (<15% of the ice-free land surface under cropland); and the rate at which biological diversity is lost (annual rate of <10 extinctions per million species). The two additional for which we have not yet been able to determine a boundary level are chemical pollution and atmospheric aerosol loading. We estimate that humanity has already transgressed three boundaries: for climate change, rate of biodiversity loss, and changes to the global nitrogen cycle. Planetary are interdependent, because transgressing one may both shift the position of other or cause them to be transgressed. The social impacts of transgressing will be a function of the social-ecological resilience of the affected societies. Our proposed are rough, first estimates only, surrounded by large uncertainties and knowledge gaps. Filling these gaps will require major advancements in Earth System and resilience science. The proposed concept of planetary boundaries lays the groundwork for shifting our approach to governance and management, away from the essentially sectoral analyses of limits to growth aimed at minimizing negative externalities, toward the estimation of the safe space for human development. Planetary define, as it were, the of the planetary playing field for humanity if we want to be sure of avoiding major human-induced environmental change on a global scale.