Event Details

Talk Title: Planetary Boundaries: A tool to guide management of Human-Earth interactions

The climate and biodiversity witness that our societies cannot continue to flourish unless we actively manage our relationship with the Earth and its resources. Such management requires guardrails to identify how much perturbation of critical Earth system processes is “too much”. The planetary boundaries framework, first introduced in 2009, and since twice updated, identifies science-based limits for human perturbation of Earth system processes. The most recent update shows that 6 of 9 boundaries are transgressed and that transgression is increasing. It also shows, however, that human perturbation of the ozone layer – a boundary transgressed or nearly transgressed in the 1900s - is now in back within a “safe operating space”. The framework and how it can be used for management of the Human-Earth relationship are presented here.

Biography

Katherine Richardson is a professor in biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen and, for more than 3 decades, has actively contributed to the development of Earth system science. She is one of the main architects behind the “planetary boundaries” and led the 2023 update that now has been downloaded over half a million times. She is extremely active at the science-policy and science-society interfaces and chaired the Commission that produced a plan for how Denmark can be independent of fossil fuels. She was a member of the Independent Group of Scientists that prepared the 2019 UN Global Sustainable Development Report and currently chairs the High-level EU Expert group on the economic and societal impact of research and innovation (ESIR).