Let the environment guide our development Human growth has strained the Earth’s resources, but as Johan Rockström reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior.

His research has found nine “planetary boundaries” that can guide us in protecting our planet’s many overlapping ecosystem.

Biographic notes: Johan Rockström leads the Stockholm Resilience Centre, focusing on a new approach to sustainability: the capacity to use change and crisis to spur renewal and innovative thinking. In 2009, working with an international team of scientists, he identified and quantified a set of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come — while crossing them could generate abrupt or irreversible environmental changes.

Since then, the boundaries research has spread among international organizations, governments, NGOs and companies and has been adopted as a new framework to guide the discussion about “sustainable growth”. It is currently debated as a core part of setting the criteria that will follow the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. Rockström also chairs Future Earth, an initiative to advance integrated science for global sustainability.

 Let the environment guide our development (Johan Rockström)