https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08928-w
"The pressures humanity has been placing on the environment have put Earth’s
stability at risk. The planetary boundaries framework serves as a method to
define a ‘safe operating space for humanity’ and has so far been applied mostly
to highlight the currently prevailing unsustainable environmental conditions.
The ability to evaluate trends over time, however, can help us explore the
consequences of alternative policy decisions and identify pathways for living
within planetary boundaries.
Here we use the Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment to project
control variables for eight out of nine planetary boundaries under alternative
scenarios to 2050, both with and without strong environmental policy measures.
The results show that, with current trends and policies, the situation is
projected to worsen to 2050 for all planetary boundaries, except for ozone
depletion. Targeted interventions, such as implementing the Paris climate
agreement, a shift to a healthier diet, improved food, and water- and
nutrient-use efficiency, can effectively reduce the degree of transgression of
the planetary boundaries, steering humanity towards a more sustainable
trajectory (that is, if they can be implemented based on social and
institutional feasibility considerations).
However, even in this scenario, several planetary boundaries, including climate
change, biogeochemical flows and biodiversity, will remain transgressed in
2050, partly as result of inertia. This means that more-effective policy
measures will be needed to ensure we are living well within the planetary
boundaries."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
