Planetary boundaries
Planetary boundaries
Topic: Environment
About:
The concept of planetary boundaries was first proposed by a team of international scientists in 2009 to articulate key natural processes that, when kept in balance, support biodiversity.
Nine planetary boundaries beyond which we can’t push Earth Systems without putting our societies at risk:
- climate change,
- biodiversity loss,
- ocean acidification,
- ozone depletion,
- atmospheric aerosol pollution,
- freshwater use,
- biogeochemical flows of nitrogen and phosphorus,
- land-system change, and
- Release of novel chemicals.
Humanity already exists outside the safe operating space for at least four of the nine boundaries:
- climate change,
- biodiversity,
- land-system change, and
- biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus imbalance).
The best way to prevent overshoot, researchers say, is to revamp our energy and food systems.
The nine planetary boundaries, counter clockwise from top: climate change, biosphere integrity (functional and genetic), land-system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus), ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol pollution, stratospheric ozone depletion, and release of novel chemicals (including heavy metals, radioactive materials, plastics, and more).
- Earth Trajectories: Think of the Earth’s climate taking different trajectories through time — pathways weaving between different climate states.
- Different paths through all the possible climates can be influenced by distinct tipping points.
- Self-reinforcing feedback processes can lock the planet into a particular trajectory for centuries or millennia.
- There is no evidence that modern societies can exist, let alone thrive, in conditions substantially different from the Holocene.