What businesses and cities must do to stay within ‘safe and just’ environmental limits for carbon, water, nutrients, land and other natural resources is the subject of a new set of recommendations from Earth Commission experts.
What businesses and cities must do to stay within ‘safe and just’ environmental limits for carbon, water, nutrients, land and other natural resources is the subject of a new set of recommendations from Earth Commission experts.
The authors, from academic institutions including the University of Exeter Business School, have published key knowledge gaps for researchers to help cities and businesses to operate within Earth system limits in the journal Nature.
It comes ahead of an Earth Commission report due out next year that will outline a range of ‘Earth system boundaries’ (ESBs) based on the latest science, modelling and literature assessments.
A decade ago, scientists defined a set of planetary boundaries within which humanity can operate ‘safely’ in nine areas – climate change, the biosphere, nutrients, water, land use, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, aerosols and novel entities – and the soon-to-be-defined ESBs will add a social justice dimension, to ensure quantified boundaries are ‘just’ as well as ‘safe’.
Read more at University of Exeter
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