Written by John Lounsbury
This week Johan Rockstrom, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Stockholm, delivers a lecture describing the current understanding of the limits for sustaining the planet in the range of operation that has existed for the recent history of modern man (homo sapiens).
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The concept of planetary boundaries was first defined in 2009 by a group of 28 internationally renowned scientists led by Prof. Rockstrom. They identified the nine systemic process areas that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth system. These nine process areas as currently identified are:
- Climate change
- Biosphere integrity
- Land-system change
- Freshwater use
- Biogeochemical flows
- Ocean acidification
- Atmospheric aerosol loading
- Stratospheric ozone depletion
- Novel entities (not yet identified)
The initial Planetary Boundaries Diagram from 2009:
Note that the description of the nine systems has changed since 2009. The original diagram can be compared to the latest diagram which can be seen at the end of this article. In the Wikipedia article, clicking on the boundaries diagram accesses a series of slides that accompanied the initial report.
From Wikipedia:
Johan Rockström (born 31 December 1965) is a Swedish professor who served as executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. He is a strategist on how resilience can be built into land regions short of water, and has published over 100 papers in fields ranging from practical land and water use to global sustainability.[3] Johan Rockström was Executive Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute from 2004 – 2012.
Rockström is internationally recognized on global sustainability issues. In 2009, he led the team that developed the Planetary Boundaries framework, a proposed precondition for facilitating human development at a time when the planet is undergoing rapid change.[4] In recognition of this work, Fokus magazine named him “Swede of the Year” for “engaging and exciting work in sustainable development.[5] Rockström is vice-chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research[6] and chair of the Earth System Visioning Task Team of the International Council for Science (ICSU).[7]
After 12 years as director of Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), he became the 2018 joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), based in Germany, with PIK’s current deputy director Professor Ottmar Edenhofer.
In 2009, Rockström led an international group of 28 leading academics, who proposed a new Earth system framework for government and management agencies as a precondition for sustainable development. The framework posits that Earth system processes on the planet have boundaries or thresholds that should not be crossed. The extent to which these boundaries are not crossed marks what the group calls the safe operating space for humanity.[11] The group identified nine “planetary life support systems” essential for human survival and attempted to quantify just how far seven of these systems have been pushed already. They then estimated how much further we could go before our survival is threatened; beyond these boundaries, there is a risk of “irreversible and abrupt environmental change” which could make Earth less habitable.[4] Boundaries can help identify where there is room and define a “safe space for human development”, which is an improvement on approaches that aim to minimize human impacts on the planet.[4]
According to critics, the exact location of six of these “planetary boundaries” are not proven but arbitrary, such as the 15% limit of earth use to cropland. It is claimed that increased earth use has increased global well-being. They are also connected to local rather than global consequences.[12][13]
This presentation is 38 minutes long followed by 20 minutes Q&A.
Source: YouTube
There is a new Sir David Attenborough documentary (2021) on planetary boundaries prominently featuring Prof. Rockstrom available on Netflix (subscription required). I have seen the film and highly recommend it. Here is a 10-minute trailer:
Further reading
Ten years of nine planetary boundaries (Stockholm Resilience Center, November, 2019)
Caption image credit: From Status of the nine planetary boundaries (European Environmental Agency, 15 December 2020, Graphic last modified 23 November 2020). Large image:
Click for larger image, back arrow to return to this page.
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