Publication archive

Aiming higher to bend the curve of biodiversity loss

Mace, G. M., Barrett, M. Burgess, N. D., Cornell, S.E., Freeman, R., Grooten, M., Purvis, A. 2018. Aiming higher to bend the curve of biodiversity loss. Nature Sustainability DOI: 10.1038/s41893-018-0130-0

2018 - Journal / article

Operationalizing the concept of a safe operating space at the EU level – first steps and explorations

Häyhä, T., Cornell, S.E., Hoff, H., Lucas, P., van Vuuren, D., 2018. Operationalizing the concept of a safe operating space at the EU level – first steps and explorations. Stockholm Resilience Centre Technical Report, prepared in collaboration with Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden.

2018 - Report

This study has made an initial disaggregation, allocation and benchmarking analysis to the EU-28 level, for the planetary boundaries for climate change, biosphere integrity, land systems change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus), and novel entities (chemical pollution). The following overarching insights relate to all PBs: Based on equal-per capita allocation of the global safe operating space, ...

Analytically tractable climate–carbon cycle feedbacks under 21st century anthropogenic forcing

Lade, S. J., Donges, J. F., Fetzer, I., Anderies, J. M., Beer, C., Cornell, S. E., Gasser, T., Norberg, J., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., and Steffen, W. 2018. Analytically tractable climate–carbon cycle feedbacks under 21st century anthropogenic forcing, Earth Syst. Dynam., 9, 507-523, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-507-2018, 2018.

2018 - Journal / article

Changes to climate–carbon cycle feedbacks may significantly affect the Earth system’s response to greenhouse gas emissions. These feedbacks are usually analysed from numerical output of complex and arguably opaque Earth system models. Here, we construct a stylised global climate–carbon cycle model, test its output against comprehensive Earth system models, and investigate the strengths of its climate–carbon cycle feedbacks ...

Defining tipping points for social-ecological systems scholarship – an interdisciplinary literature review

Milkoreit, M., Hodbod, J., Baggio, J. Benessaiah, K. et. al. 2018. Defining tipping points for social-ecological systems scholarship – an interdisciplinary literature review. doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaaa75

2018 - Journal / article

The term tipping point has experienced explosive popularity across multiple disciplines over the last decade. Research on social-ecological systems (SES) has contributed to the growth and diversity of the term's use. The diverse uses of the term obscure potential differences between tipping behavior in natural and social systems, and issues of causality across natural and social system components in SES. This paper aims to cre...

Bringing EU policy into line with the Planetary Boundaries

Hoff, H., Häyhä, T., Cornell, S., Lucas, P. 2017. Bringing EU policy into line with the Planetary Boundaries. Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) Discussion Brief. Stockholm, Sweden. https://www.sei-international.org/publications?pid=3128

2017 - Policy brief or report

The Challenges of Applying Planetary Boundaries as a Basis for Strategic Decision-Making in Companies with Global Supply Chains

Clift, R., S. Sim, H. King, J.L. Chenoweth, I. Christie, J. Clavreul, C. Mueller, L. Posthuma, A-M. Boulay, R. Chaplin-Kramer, J. Chatterton, F. DeClerck, A. Druckman, C. France, A. Franco, D. Gerten, M. Goedkoop, M.Z. Hauschild, M.A.J. Huijbregts, T. Koellner, E.F. Lambin, J. Lee, S. Mair, S. Marshall, M.S. McLachlan, L.M.I. Canals, C. Mitchell, E. Price, J. Rockström, J. Suckling, R. Murphy. 2017. The challenges of applying planetary boundaries as a basis for strategic decision-making in companies with global supply chains. Sustainability 9(2): 279

2017 - Journal / article

The Planetary Boundaries (PB) framework represents a significant advance in specifying the ecological constraints on human development. However, to enable decision-makers in business and public policy to respect these constraints in strategic planning, the PB framework needs to be developed to generate practical tools. With this objective in mind, we analyse the recent literature and highlight three major scientific and techni...

Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries

Campbell, B. M., D. J. Beare, E. M. Bennett, J. M. Hall-Spencer, J. S. I. Ingram, F. Jaramillo, R. Ortiz, N. Ramankutty, J. A. Sayer, and D. Shindell. 2017. Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries. Ecology and Society 22(4):8.https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09595-220408

2017 - Journal / article

 We explore the role of agriculture in destabilizing the Earth system at the planetary scale, through examining nine planetary boundaries, or “safe limits”: land-system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, biosphere integrity, climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, and introduction of novel entities. Two planetary boundaries have been fully transgressed, i.e., ...

Closing the loop: Reconnecting human dynamics to Earth System science

Donges, J., Winkelmann, R., Cornell, S. E., Lucht, W., Dyke, J. G., Rockström, J., Heitzig, J., Schellnhuber, H-J. 2017. Closing the loop: reconnecting human dynamics to Earth system science. Anthropocene Review 4 (2): 151-157

2017 - Journal / article

International commitment to the appropriately ambitious Paris climate agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 has pulled into the limelight the urgent need for major scientific progress in understanding and modelling the Anthropocene, the tightly intertwined social-environmental planetary system that humanity now inhabits. The Anthropocene qualitatively differs from previous eras in Earth’s histo...

From Planetary Boundaries to national fair shares of the global safe operating space — How can the scales be bridged?

Häyhä, T., Lucas, P.L., van Vuuren, D.P., Cornell, S.E. and Hoff, H. 2016. From Planetary Boundaries to national fair shares of the global safe operating space—How can the scales be bridged?. Global Environmental Change 40: 60-72.

2016 - Journal / article

The planetary boundaries framework proposes quantitative global limits to the anthropogenic perturbation of crucial Earth system processes, and thus marks out a planetary safe operating space for human activities. Yet, decisions regarding resource use and emissions are mostly made at less aggregated scales, by national and sub-national governments, businesses, and other local actors. To operationalize the planetary boundaries ...

Collateral transgression of planetary boundaries due to climate engineering by terrestrial carbon dioxide removal

Heck, V., Donges, J. F., and Lucht, W. 2016. Collateral transgression of planetary boundaries due to climate engineering by terrestrial carbon dioxide removal, Earth Syst. Dynam. Discuss., doi:10.5194/esd-2016-22, in review, 2016.

2016 - Journal / article

The planetary boundaries framework as proposed by Rockström et al. (2009) provides guidelines for defining thresholds in environmental variables. Their transgression is likely to result in a shift in Earth system functioning away from the relatively stable Holocene state. As the climate change boundary is already transgressed, several climate engineering methods are discussed, aiming at a reduction of atmospheric carbon concen...