SCIENCE
Understanding Planetary Boundaries
Video Presentation
by Johan Rockstrom
The new approach to global sustainability defines planetary boundaries within which we expect that humanity can operate safely. Transgressing one or more such boundaries may be catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change on a planetary scale. We can identify nine such planetary boundaries and we know that humanity has already transgressed three of them: climate change, the rate of biodiversity loss, and changes to the global nitrogen cycle.
Planetary boundaries are interdependent. Transgressing one may shift the position of other boundaries or cause them to be transgressed. They define the “planetary playing field” for humanity if we want to avoid major human-induced environmental change on a global scale.