Planetary Boundaries

Learning from nature may be the most important step towards improving cities in the context of environmental and climate issues. However, many of the current approaches to make cities greener or more sustainable are still linear and insufficient to deal with these growing challenges. In this scenario, the adoption of regenerative and circular lenses for the built environment may foster a more holistic development based on what is good rather than what is less bad. In this article, we propose that bioconnectivity or bioconnections-a nature-focused approach based on biophilic design, biomimetics, and ecosystem services-may be an important enabler for the regeneration of the ecological and social boundaries of the planetary boundaries and doughnut economics models. We examine the literature to identify in what ways bioconnections could facilitate circular and regenerative processes for the local scale of the built environment domain. We complement the discussion with some real-world examples from selected urban communities or interventions in existing urban areas around the globe that claim a green approach. In the end, we propose a framework of relevant bioconnections for the built environment that could facilitate addressing ecological and social boundaries at the local urban scale and facilitate processes of regenerative transitions towards thriving communities. Keywords circular economy; circularity; nature-based solutions; regenerative design and development; urban bioeconomy; urban green infrastructure; urban sustainability Issue This article is part of the issue "Towards Green(er) Cities: Contextualizing Green Benefits for Urban Spaces and Contemporary Societies" edited by Juaneé Cilliers (University of Technology Sydney, Australia).

Résumé:
Cet article s'intéresse à l'impact du facteur démographique sur la limite planétaire du système climatique. Il adopte une démarche éthique visant à examiner les politiques qui semblent justifiables dans le contexte d'une réflexion démocratique sur les moyens les plus efficaces de lutter contre le changement climatique. Il se place dans le cadre des débats en éthique climatique sur la question des choix procréatifs individuels et se focalise sur les pays développés. Il examine ainsi les principales approches et évalue les politiques de réduction de la croissance démographique en développant les possibles justifications qui accompagneraient certaines mesures incitatives ainsi que les réponses aux objections communément faites à ces dernières.

Abstract:
This article focuses on the impact of population growth on the planetary boundary of the climate system. It develops an ethical approach examining policies that seem justifiable within the context of democratic reflection on the most effective means to combating climate change. It critically engages with climate ethics debates on the issue of individual reproductive choices in the context of developed countries. By doing so, it investigates the main philosophical approaches and evaluates population growth reduction policies. It aims at justifying incentive measures and at defending them against common objections.

It is timely that Green Agenda consider the issue of hope, because the circumstances humanity and the living planet face in 2021 are dire.

At the time of the Glasgow climate summit, the world finds itself facing three types of security crises...

The idea for this book arose in the spring of 2020. It began when one of us, Michael Paulsen, in December 2019 wanted to join the conference “Anthropocene—Reworking the Wound” in Katowice, Poland on June 17 to June 20, 2020, and offered to chair a panel session on “Pedagogies of the Anthropocene (s)”. The conference organizers, Ania Malinowska and Karolina Lebek, then wrote back affirmatively, after which Michael began to look for researchers to join the panel. The interest was indeed great, and already on January 10, 2020, we registered four panel sessions with a total of 20 researchers from around the world. Everyone was very excited to meet in Katowice. However, then COVID-19 pandemic came— the physical version of the conference was canceled, although some panels continued virtually. However, one of the panelists, jan jagodzinski, sug- gested that we “instead” transmute the panels into a book on Pedagogy and the Anthropocene. There seemed to be enough interest to reach the group that was to appear at the conference sessions. ‘I edit a series for Palgrave press called Educational Futures’, jan told Michael. Michael agreed to co-edit and wrote to the panelists to garner interest for such a book project. Most responded with a yes! One panelist, Shé Hawke, had been considering editing a Special Journal Issue on the Anthropocene and Inter-disciplinarity, with Reingard Spannring, and offered to consolidate editing energy into one robust and diverse book. As Reingard was now involved in another book, our editing team of three got to work. We drafted a proposal for Palgrave, which led to the publishing contract for us, for which we are extremely grateful. A huge thank you goes to Milana Vernikova, Antony Sami and everyone at Palgrave who helped with the execution of the book. Many thanks also to both the original panelists and the authors of the 16 chapters of this book. It has been a fantastic journey, with valued commitment from so many good people full of energy and passion for the project. Many of us have yet to meet in person, but we are not strangers to one another’s work, or our shared commitment to a ‘new earth’.

This chapter examines the science of the Anthropocene by exploring three closely related concepts: the Great Acceleration, Planetary Boundaries and the ‘environmental envelope’ of the Holocene. Taken together, they challenge and recast conventional ideas of scarcity and abundance by placing economic development in a planetary
and geological framework. The chapter concludes by considering the ways in which Anthropocene science is producing rival ideological interpretations, including competing concepts of transcendental ingenuity and envelopes of stability. Such a process of appropriation suggests that the Anthropocene framework might become a new battlefield for the long-standing conflict between cornucopian and Malthusian interpretations of the environment.

This poem by Rupert Medd includes some thoughts written on a postcard  from Caroline Alexander, author of "The Endurance - Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition".

The Pierced Veneer " In memories we were rich. We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had 'suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole.' We had seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man."

                                              Sir Ernest Shackleton, entry in his book, 'South'.

Abstract: The environmental space concept illustrates that socially unsustainable underconsumption must be overcome and environmentally unsustainable overconsumption must be phased out. The planetary boundaries help to quantify the “ceiling,” while the social protection floor concept operationalizes the linea de dignidad, the minimal conditions for a dignified life. In order for Western societies to respect these limits, significant institutional change is needed with respect to both orientations and mechanisms. For the ceiling, this article suggests a shift to an orientation of “better but less” for affluent groups, and toward “enough and better” for those still living in poverty. The corresponding mechanisms include a redistribution of income and wealth, a cap on income, an unconditional minimum income, and a strengthening of democracy. The choice of instruments has to take into account that consumption is to a large degree not an individual but a social act and to employ informational, financial, and legal measures that overcome the preference of decision makers for market instruments. Implementing these changes would alter the fabric of our societies. Important first steps can be taken here and now.

Keywords: resource consumption, democracy, financial management, environmental impacts, public policy

In 2001, the four global change research programmes ‘urgently’ called for ‘an ethical framework for global stewardship and strategies for Earth System management’. Yet this notion of ‘earth system management’ remains vaguely defined: It is too elusive for natural scientists, and too ambitious or too normative for social scientists. In this article, I develop an alternative concept that is better grounded in social science theory: ‘earth system governance’. I introduce, first, the concept of earth system governance as a new social phenomenon, a political programme and a crosscutting theme of research in the field of global environmental change. I then sketch the five key problem structures that complicate earth system governance, and derive from these four overarching principles for earth system governance as political practice, namely credibility, stability, adaptiveness, and inclusiveness. In the last part of the article, I identify five research and governance challenges that lie at the core of earth system governance as a crosscutting theme in global change research. These are the problems of the overall architecture of earth system governance, of agency beyond the state, of the adaptiveness of governance mechanisms and of their accountability and legitimacy, and of the modes of allocation in earth system governance—in short, the five A’s of earth system governance research.

The Anthropocene has emerged as the dominant conceptualization of the current geological epoch and, more significantly, of Humanity's relation to nature. By its proponents the Anthropocene is espoused as a "solution formulation", an analytical tool that clarifies Humanity's multifarious impacts on nature and nature's subsequent crises, and further as a conceptual apparatus from which to launch mitigation and adaption strategies, promising deliverance from or at least engagement with ecological crises. However, the Anthropocene is not a neutral concept, merely illuminating transition within ecological conditions and connections between human activities and nature; rather, it is a particular prism from which to understand humanity's relation to nature. And, as the Anthropocene becomes ascendant both analytically and politically, it becomes vital to question its imaginary, how it constructs nature and Humanity, how it influences and constrains responses to ecological crises, and what the long-term implications of operating within this imaginary are. I argue that the Anthropocene as a political/analytical prism rests upon flawed conceptions of nature, history, and humanity, rending it an impotent construct from which to respond to ecological crises; offering only partial and presumptive "solutions" in the form of intensified governmental regulation and the application of manifold technological "fixes" through the geoengineering of Earth's systems in an attempt to address isolated aspects of ecological destruction.

The new Sustainable Development Goals require higher education institutions to contribute to the universal task of making the Agenda 2030 successful. The article discusses the characteristics of global responsibility, dignity, development policy and sustainable development especially in the context of higher education institutions. The political road towards the Agenda 2030 is explained, and the Planerary Boundaries and Doughnut Economics models are presented as feasible tools for universities of applied sciences. The author was project manager in the GLORE project (2014-2016)  coordinated by Diaconia University of Applied Sciences in Finland.

This paper examines the theory of sustainable development presented by Jeffrey Sachs in The Age of Sustainable Development. While Sustainable Development ostensibly seeks to harmonise the conflict between ecological sustainability and human development the paper argues this is impossible because of the conceptual frame it employs. Rather than allowing for a re-conceptualisation of the human-nature relation Sustainable Development is simply the latest and possibly last attempt to advance the core idea of western modernity-the notion of self-determination. Drawing upon Hegel's account of historical development it is argued that Sustainable Development and the notion of planetary boundaries cannot break out of a dualism of nature and self-determining agents.

Charisma and positive messages about world development made Hans Rosling (1948– 2017), a former professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, an international star. His posthumous gospel, Factfulness (1), which contains a collection of illustrative statistics and imaginative insights, has reached a global audience. In the United States, Bill Gates recently announced that he will hand out the book to all graduating university students, and 32 more translations are in the pipeline. An article in the science journal Nature praised the book in glowing terms: " This magnificent book ends with a plea for a factual world view. …Like his famous presentations, it throws down a gauntlet to doom-and-gloomers in global health by challenging preconceptions and misconceptions. " (2) However, Factfulness actually employs a biased selection of variables, avoids analysis of negative trends, and does not discuss any of the serious challenges related to continual population growth. A policy based on the simplistic worldview presented in Factfulness could have serious consequences.

Capitalism and Climate Change: History, Society, and Literature
HIST 43203/ENG 43204

The new science of the Anthropocene imagines the human species as a geological agent, capable of altering the life supporting system of the planet through anthropogenic climate change and other environmental processes triggered by exponential economic growth and intensive energy use. The aim of this course is to investigate the concept of the Anthropocene from the perspective of historical accounts of energy use. Our main priority will be to trace the development of the fossil fuel economy from its British origins to the present day. We will consider the social life of energy in its full sense, ranging over questions of ecology, history, technology, political economy, literature, and ethics.

This paper will attempt to explain more about planetary boundaries, to find out changes to be made if we are to develop within planetary boundaries and safe operating space for humanity, and to list kinds of transformation necessary to achieve development within planetary boundaries applicable to the Philippine context.

Concerns have been raised regarding the ability of international environmental law to respond to potentially irreversible earth system transformations in the Anthropocene. We argue that in order for international environmental law to have the capacity to respond to the socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene, it should embrace an earth system perspective. Earth system law, which is grounded in an earth system perspective, has been proposed as a new epistemic framework to facilitate the legal transformations necessary to respond to such socio-ecological challenges. With reference to recent developments in the international environmental law domain, we discuss the ways in which international environmental law currently fails to align with such a perspective and the types of considerations that international environmental law should reflect in order to be more responsive to a transforming earth system and, thus, better fit-for-purpose in the Anthropocene.

A model for enhancing natural intelligence to increase probability of success in any project. Part 2-Application of the model towards integral developmental projects that alleviate rural poverty and violence. Presented at the UNVEN-WSU 1st International Research Conference 2015-09-02, East London, South Africa. Paper in preparation.

The objective is to provide an interpretive reading of the literature in resource scarcity and sustainability theory from the nineteenth century to the present time, focusing on shifts that have occurred in problem definition, conceptual framing, research tools applied, findings, and their
implications. My reading shows, as one would expect, that the discourse has become more technical and the analysis more sophisticated; special cases have been incorporated into the mainstream of theory; and, where relevant, dynamic formulations have largely supplanted static analysis. However, that is barely scratching the surface. Here, I focus on more fundamental shifts. Exhaustible and renewable resource analyses were incorporated into the mainstream theory of financial and capital markets. Parallels between the resources and environmental spheres were discovered: market failure concepts, fundamental to environmental policy, found applications in the resources sector (e.g., fisheries), and renewable resource management concepts and approaches (e.g., waste assimilation
capacity) were adopted in environmental policy. To motivate sustainability theory and assessment, there has been a foundational problem shift from restraining human greed to dealing with risk viewed as chance of harm, and a newfound willingness to look beyond stochastic risk to uncertainty,
ambiguity, and gross ignorance. Newtonian dynamics, which seeks a stable equilibrium following a shock, gave way to a new dynamics of complexity that valued resilience in the face of shocks, warned of potential for regime shifts, and focused on the possibility of systemic collapse and recovery,
perhaps incomplete. New concepts of sustainability (a safe minimum standard of conservation, the precautionary principle, and planetary boundaries) emerged, along with hybrid approaches such as WS-plus which treats weak sustainability (WS) as the default but may impose strong sustainabilityrestrictions on a few essential but threatened resources. The strong sustainability objective has evolved from maintaining baseline flows of resource services to safety defined as minimizing the chance of irreversible collapse. New tools for management and policy (sustainability indicators and downscaled planetary boundaries) have proliferated, and still struggle to keep up with the emerging understanding of complex systems.

The Circular Economy (CE) is gaining increasing attention among businesses, policymakers and academia, and across research disciplines. While the concept’s strong diffusion may be considered its main strength, it has also contributed to the emergence of many different understandings and definitions, which may hinder or slow down its success. Specifically, despite growing attention, the role of the consumption side in the CE remains a largely under-researched topic. In the present review, we first search the literature by means of snowball mapping and a systematic key-word strategy, and then critically analyze the identified sources in order to elucidate the fundamental elements that should characterize consumption in a CE. We extract two pillars, directly from definition, that should be at the nucleus of future research on consumption in the CE: (1) the hierarchical nature of circular strategies, with “reduce” being preferred to all other strategies; and (2) the inadequacy of defining the CE only through its loops or strategies without considering its goal of attaining sustainable development. Moreover, the discussion is placed within the extant consumer research streams deemed relevant, in order to bridge these with the context of the CE. We highlight limitations of said research streams regarding their typical focus on the quality (and not the quantity) of consumption, the lack of heterogeneity in the theories and data collection methods employed, and the non-impact-based instruments typically used to measure consumption behaviors. We show how these limitations have contributed to the emergence of the intention–behavior gap, a phenomenon extant studies identify as key to overcome for encouraging sustainable consumption practices. In particular, we focus the analysis on the intention–behavior gap in order to: (1) establish the state-of-the-art; and (2) uncover avenues for future research addressing extant limitations.

There is an ongoing debate on what constitutes sustainable intensification of agriculture (SIA). In this paper, we propose that a paradigm for sustainable intensification can be defined and translated into an operational framework for agricultural development. We argue that this paradigm must now be defined—at all scales—in the context of rapidly rising global environmental changes in the Anthropocene, while focusing on eradicating poverty and hunger and contributing to human wellbeing. The criteria and approach we propose, for a paradigm shift towards sustainable intensification of agriculture, integrates the dual and interdependent goals of using sustainable practices to meet rising human needs while contributing to resilience and sustainability of landscapes, the biosphere, and the Earth system. Both of these, in turn, are required to sustain the future viability of agriculture. This paradigm shift aims at repositioning world agriculture from its current role as the world's single largest driver of global environmental change, to becoming a key contributor of a global transition to a sustainable world within a safe operating space on Earth.

Whereas most of the chapters go ‘down’ to the micro-practices of climate governance, this chapter aims to take a step ‘up’ to elucidate a clearer picture or model of what a global climate polity is in terms of its totality: how are the elements of a global polity structured and what makes a polity a polity? In this chapter, first the question of whether analysis of localized governmental techniques needs an accompanying consideration of a bigger picture or context is considered. Next the global climate polity is theorised beyond the models of hierarchy and anarchy using a generic theory of what constitutes a polity via an elaboration of Foucault’s ideas about how changing objects of governance become central to political entities. The third part looks back briefly asking when a global climate polity thus conceived could be said to have evolved. The final section peers forwards to consider differing visions of the demise of the global climate polity as we know it: will it be superseded by a more encompassing ‘Earth System polity’ centered on governing not only the climate but also other interrelated geophysical systems? Or could it splinter as it is recognized that the climate is too complex and feral to be a governable object?

Hundreds of human rights and environmental cases against corporations have been launched in countries around the world in the past two decades. This body of counter corporate litigation-legal actions that involve attempts to enforce legal or normative standards against business entities-forms a significant part of the legal struggles shaping the transition to a sustainable economy. However, the question remains-how does litigation against companies fit with the larger patterns of reform? In this paper, I draw on a taxonomy of sustainability litigation to describe three functions of counter corporate litigation: remedy, the search for justice through legal action; regulation, the enforcement of legal standards through the courts; and repression, the proscription of predatory business models. I argue that research into counter corporate litigation helps to illuminate the priorities for legal reform, including the integration of human rights and the environment into legal instruments governing corporate activities, transnational approaches to corporate accountability, and a willingness to challenge unsustainable business models.

Justice and planetary boundaries: what lessons can be drawn from the failure of climate justice?

Planetary boundaries governance shall not only take effectiveness, but also justice into account. What approach of justice should then be adopted for planetary boundaries? In order to answer this question, we can base our reasoning on a particularly informative precedent: climate justice. After having shown that climate justice has failed to be fulfilled since its first claims in the 1990s, we will see that this failure can be blamed on a particular approach of justice, mostly based on the global scale and on international burden-sharing. This analysis allows to suggest a new approach of justice for planetary boundaries. This new framework is characterized by multiscalarity, non-ideality, and cosmopolitanism.

The article discusses the political results of the Copenhagen Conference and evolutions in the international climate arena including geopolitical shifts, new issues on the agenda and a changing cartography of the main actors. As recent attacks on the climate regime concern both its political governance and the peculiar relationship between science and  politics that developed through its main institutions (IPCC and the Conference of the Parties), we retrace in a first part the construction of the climate arena and in a second  part the framing of the problem between climate science, expertise, and politics. Drawing on this historical sketch, we suggest the years 2000 were characterized by a convergence of top-down approaches in climate expertise and policies, structuring action and discourse around quantified reduction targets, temperature and concentration thresholds, and carbon budgets. The bottom-up character of the voluntary reduction commitments in the Copenhagen Accord is a serious setback to this approach. A central figure in this context is the threshold of “dangerous warming” of two degrees. The Copenhagen Accord – endorsed in the Cancun compromise – elevates this figure to an official target of the UN negotiation process, thereby accentuating the tension between a newly assumed « Realpolitik » and an alarming expertise. The article analyzes the construction of the two degrees target and the role it plays in the climate regime. We conclude by discussing several contributions to the Post-Copenhagen debate.

The planetary boundaries framework defines a safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes that regulate the stability of the Earth system based on many researches. Four core boundaries-Atmospheric Aerosol loading, Ocean Acidification, Ozone Depletion and Freshwater use-have been identified, each of which has the potential on its own to drive the Earth system into a new state should they be substantially and persistently transgressed. Global planetary boundary for atmospheric aerosol is not defined because the effect of aerosols are mostly local. For instance, regional atmospheric aerosol loading PB for south Asian part is defined as 0.25 AOD and the current situation in this region is 0.3 AOD .Boundary of ocean acidification is defined by saturation level of aragonite (Ω) and it should be more than 2.75; The current level of Ω is 2.9, it is still in the safe area but not with good safety margin so the world must be more cautious about acidity of oceans. For the ozone depletion the boundary is 275 DU (Dobson units) and other than Antarctica in the austral spring with DU equal to 200 other places are in safe zone. About freshwater use which has consumptive use of blue water as its indicator, considered limit is 4000 km3 per year, having 2500 km3 per year as current state puts the earth system below the limit.

This paper considers the science of the Anthropocene as a geological model of economic growth. Much has been said about the merits of the Anthropocene as a stratigraphical concept and category of geological agency, but the connection between Anthropocene science and the so called Planetary Boundaries framework remains relatively unexplored. According to this theory, the stable  "environmental envelope" of the Holocene made possible the rise of complex society and the "extensive civilization" of Homo Sapiens. My paper examines how geological periodization is emerging as a new battlefield between cornucopian and Neo-Malthusian interpretations of the Pleistocene, Holocene and Anthropocene.

DRAFT paper for Workshop on “Rethinking Economic History in the Anthropocene,” organized by Prasannan Parthasarathi and Julia Adeney Thomas, Boston College, March 23-25, 2017.

The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. We bring a critical social science perspective to this framework through the notion of societal boundaries and aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of the social nature of thresholds. We start by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of planetary boundaries from a social science perspective. We then focus on capitalist societies as a heuristic for discussing the expansionary dynamics, power relations, and lock-ins of modern societies that impel highly unsustainable societal relations with nature. While formulating societal boundaries implies a controversial processbased on normative judgments, ethical concerns, and socio-political strugglesit has the potential to offer guidelines for a just, social-ecological transformation. Collective autonomy and the politics of self-limitation are key elements of societal boundaries and are linked to important propo...

La Economía como ciencia social se ha desarrollado desde Adam Smith en un marco de referencia en el que los sistemas naturales no establecen límites estructurales. En el siglo XXI ese marco de referencia ya no es válido. Existen límites ecológicos en el sistema Tierra, en especial el sistema climático y la integridad de la biosfera. La Economía ha de reformular su visión analítica, avanzando hacia una nueva síntesis con la Ecología científica.

La question des « limites » trouve son origine dans l’assertion – ou l’intuition – de l’existence d’une forme d’altérité matérielle ou physique qui serait appelée à borner le développement des sociétés humaines, et dont la non prise en compte aurait des conséquences potentiellement catastrophiques. Dans leur formulation la plus récente, ces « limites » sont conceptualisées sous forme de seuils critiques ou tipping points qui ne devraient pas être dépassés en termes de réchauffement global, de perte de la biodiversité, d’acidification des océans, de perturbation des cycles biogéochimiques globaux ou de mise en circulation de produits chimiques. 

Cet article vise à replacer le débat actuel sur les « limites » dans son contexte historique et d’en établir une généalogie. La perspective adoptée permettra de montrer que si la problématique du climat a été le vecteur d’un retour des « limites » dans les débats globaux, elle a aussi contribué à renouveler et à transformer ce débat. Par ailleurs, nous verrons que construction des « limites » et construction du « sans limites », se sont répondues à différents moments de l’histoire. Apparaît alors une histoire de transgressions successives des « limites », préparées et facilitées discursivement par des formes spécifiques de construction de l’abondance.