World development within Planetary Boundaries

Lecture by Johan Rockström
Thursday, 2 November 2017

The advent of the Anthropocene, the scientific recognition of the remarkably stable state of the Earth system during the Holocene Inter-glacial, the rising evidence of global risks of crossing Earth tipping points and the signs of a gradual decline in Earth resilience, constitute overwhelming evidence for the need of a deep mind-shift. Societies, business, Nations and the world at large, need to reconnect to the biosphere, and transform to world development within the safe operating space of a stable and resilient planet. This is nothing less than a global sustainability revolution, where prosperity and equity evolves within biophysical Earth system boundaries. Circular economic principles, novel system innovations and transformations, planetary stewardship and universal values of equity and shared responsibility, thereby naturally form important cornerstones in Humanity’s future on Earth.

LINKS

The video recording of the event can be watched above via Youtube. A podcast version is available on our Mixcloud account. Photos from the evening can be accessed on our Facebook page.

ABOUT

Johan Rockström is the director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and a professor of environmental science at Stockholm University. He was the lead author of “Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity”—generally considered to provide a new basis for exploring the science and practice of sustainability.

Rockström’s Planetary Boundaries framework represents a significant advance in specifying the ecological constraints on human development. CUSP/CES researchers, in association with Unilever, and a cast of internationally recognised sustainability practitioners including Rockström is researching into practical applications of the framework to enable decision-makers in business and public policy to respect these constraints in strategic planning.  The results to date are brought together in a paper entitled:The Challenges of Applying Planetary Boundaries as a Basis for Strategic Decision-Making in Companies with Global Supply Chains.

Further Reading

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