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How to define unjust planetary change

Biophysical and sociopolitical factors have been integrated into a set of measures of planetary change that aim to pinpoint safe and just thresholds for all living things. The exercise is immensely ambitious and inevitably challenging.
  1. Stephen Humphreys

    1. Stephen Humphreys is in the LSE Law School, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, UK.

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Climate change is chief among several environmental pressures rendering Earth unsafe for many forms of life. A 2009 proposal put forward nine ‘planetary boundaries’ that define the safe space in which humanity can develop without jeopardizing the relative stability of the current Earth system1,2. But the impact of planetary-level change varies depending on the group or community affected. Now, members of the team that proposed the original boundaries supplement them with a set that aims to take these differences into account. Writing in Nature, Rockström et al.3 report a suite of eight ‘safe and just Earth system boundaries’ — limits whose transgression, they say, is not only unsafe for humanity and other living species, but also unjust.

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Nature 619, 35-36 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01743-1

References

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  3. Rockström, J. et al. Nature 619, 102–111 (2023).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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