Planetary Boundary Constraints and a Sustainable Future
It is disclosed that if life on this planet is to be able to evolve in response to changing planetary environmental conditions mainly induced by human activities, then the rapidity and amplitude of those changes must be kept within tolerable and survivable ranges by the human imposition of planetary-scale boundary constraints upon those environmental conditions, thus creating a safe operating space within which human activities may transpire.
Planetary Boundary Constraints and a Sustainable Future
Life is characterized by evolving complexity contingent upon environmental conditions. That capacity to evolve, however, is predicated upon environmental conditions not changing too rapidly or breaching thresholds with which life is unable to adjust and evolve with. Boundary constraints upon environmental conditions are therefore imperative if the continuance of life is to be possible. However, present human activities are threatening to breach those boundary constraints on a planetary scale, thus threatening the tenure of life on this planet.
Accordingly, a recent study (See: Steffen, Will; Rockström, Johan; and Costanza, Robert. 2011. “How Defining Planetary Boundaries Can Transform Our Approach to Growth.” Solutions, Volume 2: Issue 3: May 20.) has proposed that humans impose planetary-scale boundary constraints (or planetary boundaries, in short) upon their activities with respect to certain environmental conditions. That is to say, with respect to those environmental conditions, points or thresholds beyond which we should not venture should be determined. Human activities are to transpire within the determined thresholds. The implication is that regional-scale and national-scale boundary constraints on environmental conditions are to be instructed by the planetary boundaries.
The environmental conditions named in need of planetary boundary constraints deliberately imposed by humans are the following: climate change; biodiversity loss; excess nitrogen and phosphorus production; stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean acidification; global consumption of fresh water; change in land use for agriculture; air pollution; and chemical pollution. These environmental conditions are not necessarily exhaustive; more might well be needed. The study estimates that humans have already breached planetary boundaries with respect to climate change, biodiversity loss, and phosphorus production. (These three, therefore, need immediate address.)
Operating within planetary boundaries, the study cautions, does not guarantee “that humanity will thrive, or even survive, but straying outside the playing field will make it very difficult for humanity to thrive under any circumstances.” Nor do the planetary boundaries, since they are largely biophysical in nature, have much to say on the nature of the human societies that will evolve within them. Clearly, if we wish those societies to be just and to afford their citizens quality of life, then the biophysical planetary boundaries must be supplemented by socio-ethical boundary constraints at least at national scales. As the authors of the study explicitly state, planetary boundaries are “a necessary—but not sufficient—condition for a bright future for humanity.”
Planetary boundaries will ultimately require a social institution (or institutions) operating, with authority, above the level of individual nations. Such an institution, effectively acting on behalf of humanity as a whole, would act as “the ultimate arbiter of the myriad trade-offs that need to be managed as nations and groups of people jockey for economic and social advantage.” In this regard, a proposed institution that could serve as the prototype for the institutions required is the “Earth Atmospheric Trust.” This institution “would treat the atmosphere as a global common property asset managed as a trust for the benefit of current and future generations.”
The example of the proposed Earth Atmospheric Trust stresses that the institutions required must act “to greatly expand the ‘commons sector’ of the global economy” so that humanity may be kept “within a safe operating space.” Further, the expansion of the commons sector will probably have to be effected “at multiple scales, from local to global, with participation of the affected stakeholders.”
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