Name Johan Rockstrom | Role University Professor | |
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Fields Global sustainability and water resources Institutions Stockholm University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre Known for Leading development on the Planetary Boundaries framework Notable awards The Woods Hole Research Center's Lawrence Huntington Environmental Prize, November 6, 2014 Books Bankrupting Nature: Denying our Planetary Boundaries | ||
Are we bankrupting nature johan rockstrom at tedxuppsalauniversity
Johan Rockstrom is executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and teaches natural resource management at Stockholm University. He is a strategist on how resilience can be built into land regions which are short of water, and has published over 100 papers in fields ranging from practical land and water use to global sustainability. Johan Rockstrom was Executive Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute from 2004-2012.
Contents
- Are we bankrupting nature johan rockstrom at tedxuppsalauniversity
- Planetary boundaries
- Some recent publications
- References
Rockstrom is internationally recognized on global sustainability issues. In 2009, he led the team which developed the Planetary Boundaries framework, a proposed precondition for facilitating human development at a time when the planet is undergoing rapid change. In recognition of this work, Fokus magazine named him "Swede of the Year" for "engaging and exciting work in sustainable development. Rockstrom is vice-chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and chair of the Earth System Visioning Task Team of International Council for Science. In 2010, the magazine Miljoaktuellt ranked him the second most influential person in Sweden on environmental issues, and Veckans Affarer gave him its "Social Capitalist Award". In 2011 he chaired the third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability in Stockholm.
Planetary boundaries
In 2009, Rockstrom led an international group of 28 leading academics, who proposed a new Earth system framework for government and management agencies as a precondition for sustainable development. The framework posits that there are Earth system processes on the planet that have boundaries or thresholds which should not be crossed. The extent to which these boundaries are not crossed marks what the group calls the safe operating space for humanity. The group identified nine "planetary life support systems" essential for human survival, and attempted to quantify just how far seven of these systems have been pushed already. They then estimated how much further we can go before our own survival is threatened; beyond these boundaries there is a risk of "irreversible and abrupt environmental change" which could make Earth less habitable. Boundaries can help identify where there is room and define a "safe space for human development", which is an improvement on approaches which aim at just minimizing human impacts on the planet.
According to critics, the exact location of six of these "planetary boundaries" are not proven but arbitrary, such as the 15% limit of earth use to cropland. It is claimed that increased earth use has increased global well-being. They are also connected to local rather than global consequences.