Science is increasingly able to identify precautionary boundaries for critical Earth system processes, and the business world provides societies with important means for adaptive responses to global environmental risks. In turn, investors provide vital leverage on companies. Here, we report on our transdisciplinary science/business experience in applying the planetary boundaries framework (sensu Rockström et al., Ecol Soc 14, 2009) to define a boundary-compatible investment universe and analyse the environmental compatibility of companies. We translate the planetary boundaries into limits for resource use and emissions per unit of economic value creation, using indicators from the Carnegie Mellon University EIO‑LCA database. The resulting precautionary ‘economic intensities’ can be compared with the current levels of companies’ environmental impact. This necessarily involves simplifying assumptions, for which dialogue between biophysical science, corporate sustainability and investment perspectives is needed. The simplifications mean that our translation is transparent from both biophysical and financial viewpoints, and allow our approach to be responsive to future developments in scientific insights about planetary boundaries. Our approach enables both sub‑industries and individual companies to be screened against the planetary boundaries. Our preliminary application of this screening to the entire background universe of all investable stock‑listed companies gives a selectivity of two orders of magnitude for an investment universe of environmentally attractive stocks. We discuss implications for an expanded role of environmental change science in the development of thematic equity funds.

中文翻译：

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试图在行星边界内定义一个环境投资领域。

科学越来越能够确定关键的地球系统过程的预防界限，商业世界为社会提供了对全球环境风险做出适应性反应的重要手段。反过来，投资者可以为公司提供重要的杠杆作用。在这里，我们报告了我们在运用行星边界框架（sensuRockström等人，Ecol Soc 14，2009）来定义边界兼容的投资领域并分析公司的环境兼容性方面的跨学科科学/商业经验。我们使用卡内基·梅隆大学EIO‑LCA数据库中的指标，将地球边界转化为资源利用和单位经济价值创造的排放量的限制。可以将由此产生的预防性“经济强度”与公司当前对环境的影响水平进行比较。这必然涉及简化假设，为此需要在生物物理科学，公司可持续性和投资观点之间进行对话。简化意味着我们的翻译从生物物理和财务角度而言都是透明的，并使我们的方法能够对有关行星边界的科学见解的未来发展做出响应。我们的方法可以使子行业和单个公司不受星球边界的影响。我们对所有可投资股票上市公司的整个背景范围进行的初步筛选，对具有环境吸引力的股票的投资范围具有两个数量级的选择性。我们讨论了在主题股权基金的发展中扩大环境变化科学作用的含义。