In September 2023, a team of scientists quantified, for the first time, all nine processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth system.

These nine planetary boundaries were first proposed by former centre director Johan Rockström and a group of 28 internationally renowned scientists in 2009.

Since then, their framework has been revised several times.

Now the latest update not only quantified all boundaries, it also concludes that six of the nine boundaries have been transgressed.

Crossing boundaries increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes. Drastic changes will not necessarily happen overnight, but together the boundaries mark a critical threshold for increasing risks to people and the ecosystems we are part of.

Boundaries are interrelated processes within the complex biophysical Earth system. This means that a global focus on climate change alone is not sufficient for increased sustainability. Instead, understanding the interplay of boundaries, especially climate, and loss of biodiversity, is key in science and practice.

Since its first conceptualization, the planetary boundaries framework has generated enormous interest within science, policy, and practice.

The 2023 update to the Planetary boundaries. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Credit: "Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Richardson et al 2023". Download the illustration here.

Key publications

2023

All boundaries are finally assessed in the third major update to the framework which is published in Science Advances. Six boundaries are now transgressed and pressure is increasing on all boundary processes except ozone depletion.

New scientific evidence now enabled the team to quantify the boundary of Atmospheric Aerosol Loading, which according to the study is not transgressed yet despite rising pressures.

The team behind this paper used a new approach to assess Biosphere integrity and concluded that this boundary was transgressed during the late 19th century.

Read "Earth beyond six of nine Planetary Boundaries" here »

2022

In January 2022, 14 scientists concluded in the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology that humanity has exceeded a planetary boundary related to environmental pollutants and other “novel entities” including plastics.

In April 2022, a reassessment of the planetary boundary for freshwater indicated that it has now been transgressed. This conclusion is due to the inclusion of “green water” – the water available to plants - into the boundary assessment for the first time.

The assessment, published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, is based on evidence of widespread changes in soil moisture relative to mid-Holocene and pre-industrial conditions and green-water driven destabilization of ecological, atmospheric, and biogeochemical processes.

2017

Since 2017, Johan Rockström’s ERC Advanced Grant Earth Resilience in the Anthropocene funded a new phase in this work. Centre researchers including Sarah Cornell, Tiina Häyhä, Ingo Fetzer, Steve Lade, Andrea Downing, Jonathan Donges, and Avit Bhowmik have all been actively involved in advancing these frontier areas, and building collaborative research links among a growing international community of scientists.

2015

The second update of the whole framework was published in Science. It stated that society’s activities have pushed climate change, biodiversity loss, shifts in nutrient cycles (nitrogen and phosphorus), and land use beyond the boundaries into unprecedented territory.

Read "Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet" here »

2009

The orignial conceptualisation of the Planetary Boundaries was first published in Ecology & Society and late in Nature.

Ecology & Society: Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity

Nature: A safe operating space for humanity