Company strategists often talk about resilience – the ability to withstand a shock without permanent damage. Resilience and vulnerability are related concepts as they both refer to a response to change. Resilient systems tend to withstand changes, while vulnerable systems tend to fail.
The planetary boundaries framework, developed by a team of 28 internationally renowned scientists at the Stockholm Resilience Center at the University of Stockholm in 2009, is a measure of our planet’s resilience.
The team, led by director Johan Rockström set out to identify the safe boundaries within which human activity could flourish while avoiding significant human-induced and dangerous environmental change on a global scale.
This represents a departure from thinking about sustainability in terms of limiting the negative impacts of human activity. Instead, it estimates a safe amount of human development.
The planetary boundaries framework consists of nine processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth system. Using current scientific understanding, the scientists set boundaries for each of them. For example, the boundary for CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is <350 ppm for climate change.
The nine processes are:
- Climate change
- Biosphere Integrity
- Land-system change
- Freshwater use
- Biogeochemical flows
- Ocean Acidification
- Atmospheric Aerosol Loading
- Stratospheric Ozone Depletion
- Novel Entities
Perhaps one of the most familiar processes in this list is climate change. But, it is important to realize that climate change is one of nine essential processes.
The framework’s authors caution that these boundaries should be respected without qualification to prevent the risk of causing an irreversible change from the relatively stable climatic and ecological conditions of the Holocene, the 12,000-year period in which human civilizations have thrived.
New ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) Frameworks and SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) offer companies roadmaps for operationalizing the planetary boundaries.
And, the framework, well-known in scientific circles for over a decade, is gaining traction in the business community. One reason is that investors are increasingly interested in their investments’ long-term resiliency, making the nine processes for stability increasingly relevant for investor decision-making.
By 2015, scientists concluded that society’s activities have already pushed climate change, biodiversity loss, shifts in nutrient cycles (nitrogen and phosphorus), and land use beyond the boundaries. And, in 2022, scientists reported that humanity had exceeded a planetary boundary related to environmental pollutants and other “novel entities,” including plastics.
The combination of investor interest and environmental crises makes this topic ripe for discussion, thought, and progress. Watch this space.
