From Science to Action: Meet the Earth Commission
12/11/2024
What is the safe and just space within which humans must learn to manoeuvre?
Which are the Earth System Boundaries that ensure a stable planet and minimises harm to humans and other species?
And how can just access to basic living standards be ensured for all people?
This video from the Earth Commission serves to introduce the work that we are carrying out to quantify Earth System Boundaries – the boundaries that are essential for keeping the planet Safe and Just for all.
>> Learn more about Safe and Just Boundaries
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Video transcript:
Narrator:
Humanity is on a collision course with carefully balanced natural systems that have kept our planet liveable for millennia.
Every day, all of us live in diverse environments, enabled by the complex interconnected systems that support life on Earth. These are the major components of the Earth system and their interlinked processes that, when working together, make our planet habitable. They keep our land fertile, our oceans healthy, our air clean and our climates stable.
These global commons underpin the planet’s life support systems and human well being on Earth. But humans are pushing them out of balance and at risk of coming close to dangerous tipping points in the Earth system. Push them too far, and they could irreversibly shift from supporting life on Earth to undermining it.
So what is our safe and just operating space? What are the boundaries within which us humans must learn to manoeuvre?
Prof. Johan Rockström:
The Earth Commission, as an independent international global science mechanism, is also quite forward leaning. Even though its objective is entirely to synthesise a state of knowledge in published research, it intends to be highly policy and relevant for action, so that it should be able to serve also our ability to go from focusing at best only on climate, but also to take on the broader biosphere, climate, the whole nature climate agenda, which is, as we know, a necessity if we are truly talking about sustainable development.
Prof. Fatima Denton:
The Earth Commission has done fantastic work on understanding aspects related to boundaries and what boundaries should be set, and how we can bring ourselves back into safe and just operating boundary space.
Prof. Johan Rockström:
The vision that we set out was really to have an interdisciplinary, full assessment of the planet for the first time, to be able to get all the physical sciences from oceanography, climate science, ecology, hydrology, land systems, but also invite the social sciences to make an effort of quantifying a safe and just operating space for humanity on Earth.
Narrator:
In 2019, Future Earth brought together a group of leading global scientists from the social and natural sciences to form the Earth Commission. Created as the scientific cornerstone of the Global Commons Alliance, they set out to define safe and just boundaries for planet and people to inform the next generation of sustainability targets.
After three years of research, the Earth Commission published the Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries, which identify the minimum conditions needed for the earth and everything that lives on it to thrive.
Dr David Armstrong McKay:
One of the main things I’ve been working on for the Earth Commission is the problem of climate tipping points. This idea that there could be these self sustaining changes in the climate system beyond certain warming levels, that once they start, they won’t stop, they become irreversible.
And the thing that’s emerged is how close we are to some of those. And what I found really quite eye opening is just how many people are now in harm’s way because of climate change at 1.2 degrees of warming. And as we approach 1.5 degrees of warming, soon hundreds of millions of people are already at risk of significant harm from climate change.
Prof. Joyeeta Gupta:
You can’t treat climate change distinctly and as if it does not relate to biodiversity, as if that does not relate to land, water, oceans, etc. So what we’re trying to give is a message about the interlinkages between all these different environmental issues. And on the other hand, we’re trying to link all these environmental issues to social issues.
How does this massive, interconnected environmental problem – or the poly crisis – affect human health and well being? How does it affect people’s access to clean water, clean air, to resources? And how does it affect the allocation of resources between people worldwide?
Prof. Kristie Ebi:
If you look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change synthesis report, the figure that’s absolutely everywhere shows changes in projected temperature over the century, and it has people on it. It shows the different kinds of exposures people can expect depending on when they’re born.
And that’s really resonated.
It’s different from seeing massive increases in temperature under higher emission pathways, to seeing that it affects me. It affects my family. It affects my children, my grandchildren. And that narrative shift has been really important.
Narrator:
Through its unique cross-disciplinary work, the Earth Commission brought humans to the heart of climate and sustainability action, and justice to the forefront. The safe and just Earth system boundaries is a road map for cities, businesses and other actors to course correct human activities to a safe and just operating space. It’s science for guiding action.
Dr Wendy Broadgate:
We have such a rich team in the Earth Commission from all over the world, bringing together the different disciplines into an understanding of what are the quantitative boundary conditions for a safe and just planet, and getting that knowledge into society to create action and change.
Leaders in government, from countries and cities through to business leaders, need to be setting science based targets to stay within these earth system boundaries, and they also need to be achieving those targets.
Dr David Obura:
The result that we have come up with that I love the most is this 20-25% of semi-natural vegetation of high function habitat in every square kilometre, for people to realise that in every square kilometre, if they really rehabilitate it – one quarter of that landscape under trees and hedgerows and things like that – it would be beautiful, it would be much more productive.
There’d be more varied benefits coming from that land to people just living along the roadsides. So, it’s really seeing that we’re a part of nature, and that even where human population density is high, we still have to work out – and we can work out – how to optimise, how to get the most out of our relationship with nature without damaging it excessively.
Prof. Christopher Gordon:
In the case of water, the question of ‘what should be done and by whom?’, that’s a very interesting question, simply because the answer to the ‘who’ question is ‘everybody’.
Prof. Kristie Ebi:
I’ll talk about health, but it’s true for many sectors. The work that’s been done is relatively stove-piped, and so looking at one earth system boundary at a time, and not thinking about how they integrate. And then also not thinking about how they’re changing over time. And so preparing for today, but not preparing for tomorrow.
And finding ways through the Earth Commission, showing the safe and just boundaries, that can give a narrative of what we need to do, that will give hope. I teach, I’ve got students, they’re very concerned about the future, and we also need these narratives that there are ways to transition and transform so that we can look at a future that will be much brighter than what, certainly, the young people today think might be.
Narrator:
In its next phase, with new commissioners at the helm, the Earth Commission will seek to define Safe and Just boundaries for the ocean and toxic substances called novel entities, and also look at how tipping points interact, as well as the transformations needed so we can step back from the brink of danger and create a future that is safe and just for everyone.
Prof. Fatima Denton:
Beyond the safety and the justice element of the work, there are other elements of the work that are also very important for us to understand. We have to understand the governance systems and structures that would allow us to enable that justice to come through.
We must be able to be more inclusive, more embracing in our knowledge, and be able to kind of delve more into those rounds of governance, economy, political economy, all of those things matter, and if we’re to radically change the systems that are holding us back.
>> Learn more about Safe and Just Boundaries
