19 March 2013, Guardian Sustainable Blog
Get to know your planetary boundaries
Our planet's boundaries are environmental lines such as ozone depletion, ocean acidification and climate change that we cannot safely cross if we want human life to survive on earth
The planetary boundaries concept refers to nine limits to human impact on the life of the planet. When transgressed, these limits will trigger a cascade of ill effects, putting human life and civilization in peril and irreversibly altering the viability of habitats for virtually every species on Earth. By remaining within these limits, life can go forward.
The Stockholm Resilience Group, a group of academics based at Stockholm University, has quantified the levels at which decline in various processes and systems accelerates precipitously and dangerously: these include climate change, biodiversity loss, bio-geochemical change, ocean acidification, conversion of wilderness to cropland, freshwater consumption and ozone depletion...
Alison Kemper teaches management at York University in Toronto, Canada, and has worked with the Michael Lee-Chin Institute for Corporate Citizenship since 2005
Roger Martin is dean of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and is academic director of the school's Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship. His research work is in integrative thinking, business design, corporate social responsibility and country competitiveness. His most recent book is Fixing the Game.
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