News

Earlier this week, the IPCC released its latest Working Group 1 report on physical science that assesses the state of knowledge about climate change. While some conclusions strengthened key findings from earlier reports, others are more alarming. The extreme heat, heavy rainfall, drought and other extreme weather and climate events in the past decade — all of […]

The Earth Commission has been asked to provide a scientific comment on Nature Positive, specifically with regard to high level targets as defined by Locke et al. (2021). Below is a succinct summary of the key elements we see that underpin what ‘nature positive’ entails, in accordance with ongoing and previously published syntheses from the Earth Commission […]

Water and air are key to just about every process on planet Earth, from the physical to the biological. For humans, we need tens of liters of clean water a day, and unpolluted air to breathe that is free of health-threatening particulate matter. How do these basic needs for people and planet translate to guidelines […]

Last year, the Earth Commission’s Working Group on Biosphere Interactions determined that a “safety net” needed to be woven to protect Earth’s life and ecosystems. Now, under new leadership, Working Group 2 aims to specify the extent and integrity of biomes and ecosystems needed to stay within a “safe and just corridor” for people and […]

For the first time, the Earth Commission has brought together the complexity of humans living on Earth in a framework that defines a challenging and fundamental core pillar for their work: how to determine what’s “safe and just” for Earth’s systems and the people who rely on them.

(Position filled) The Earth Commission Scientific Secretariat seeks a full-time or part-time research scientist with deep expertise in biodiversity science and international collaboration. Flexible physical location. The successful candidate will join the team of the Earth Commission Secretariat from Future Earth, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the International Institute for Applied Systems […]

This novel Online Discussion Series on Tipping Elements, Irreversibility and Abrupt Change aims to advance knowledge about tipping elements, irreversibility, and abrupt changes in the Earth system. It supports efforts to increase consistency in treatment of tipping elements in the scientific community, develop a research agenda, and design joint experiments and ideas for a Tipping […]

The Earth Commission is a scientific commission synthesizing the latest research to define the conditions for a healthy planet, informing the setting of science-based targets to help maintain Earth’s life support systems: climate, land, biodiversity, freshwater and oceans. The scientists are also identifying just distribution of these global commons resources and levers of transformation including new governance […]

“The fundamental departure point of this working group is that there are missing links between the planetary level targets and local actors such as business and cities. There is a need to conduct a systematic review on some of the challenges and methodologies of cross-scale translation,” explained Xuemei Bai, who is an expert on cities […]

A ‘safety net’ made up of multiple, interlinked and ambitious goals is needed to tackle nature’s alarming decline. No single goal can capture the broad range of characteristics that need to be sustained, concludes a large international team of researchers analysing the new goals for nature being drafted by the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity. […]