Publications

Gerst, M.D.; Raskin, P.D.; Rockström, J. Contours of a Resilient Global Future. Sustainability 2014, 6, 123-135.

Humanity confronts a daunting double challenge in the 21st century: meeting widely-held aspirations for equitable human development while preserving the bio-physical integrity of Earth systems. Extant scientific attempts to quantify futures that address these sustainability challenges are often not comprehensive across environmental and social drivers of global change, or rely on quantification methods that largely exclude d...

Elmqvist T, Cornell S, Öhman MC, Daw T, Moberg F, Norström A, Persson Å, Peterson G, Rockström J, Schultz M, Hermansson-Török E. 2013. Global sustainability and Human prosperity – contribution to the Post-2015 agenda and the development of Sustainable Development Goals - TemaNord report (Nordic Council of Ministers), pp 50

Hughes,T.P., Carpenter, S., Rockström, J., Scheffer, M., Walker, B. 2013. Trends in ecology & evolution Volume 28, Issue 7, July 2013, Pages 389–395

Life on Earth has repeatedly displayed abrupt and massive changes in the past, and there is no reason to expect that comparable planetary-scale regime shifts will not continue in the future. Different lines of evidence indicate that regime shifts occur when the climate or biosphere transgresses a tipping point. Whether human activities will trigger such a global event in the near future is uncertain, due to critical knowledg...

Gerten, D., Hoff, H., Rockström, J., Jägermeyr, J., Kummu, M., Pastor, A. 2013. Towards a revised planetary boundary for consumptive freshwater use: role of environmental flow requirements. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability Volume 5, Issue 6, December 2013, Pages 551–558

This article advances the assessment of a planetary boundary for human freshwater consumption, and finds that respecting aquatic ecosystem needs yields a lower boundary than previously suggested. The authors review the conceptual and quantitative foundation of the recently suggested ‘planetary boundary’ for freshwater (PB-Water; i.e. tolerable human ‘blue’ water consumption), and propose ways forward to refine and reassess it...

Leach, M., Rockström, J., Raskin, P., Scoones, I., Stirling, A.C., Smith, A., Thompson, J., Millstone, E., Ely, A., Arond, E., Folke, C., Olsson, P. 2012. Transforming innovation for sustainability. Ecology and Society, 17, 11

The urgency of charting pathways to sustainability that keep human societies within a "safe operating space" has now been clarified. Crises in climate, food, biodiversity, and energy are already playing out across local and global scales and are set to increase as we approach critical thresholds. Drawing together recent work from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Tellus Institute, and the STEPS Centre, this commentary artic...

Walker, B.H., Carpenter, S.R., Rockstrom, J., Crépin, A-S., Peterson, G.D. 2012. Drivers, "slow" variables, "fast" variables, shocks, and resilience. Ecology and Society 17(3), 30

Different uses of the terms "drivers," "variables," and "shocks" cause confusion in the literature and in discussions on the dynamics of ecosystems and social—ecological systems. Three main sources of confusion are unclear definition of the system, unclear definition of the role of people, and confusion between variables and drivers. As a contribution to resolving some of the confusion, we offer one interpretation of how the t...

Cornell, S. 2012. On the system properties of the planetary boundaries. Ecology and Society, 17(1): r2

Rockström et al. (2009) identified a set of critical sustainability issues where perturbations resulting from human activities present a risk of unacceptable global environmental change. They attempted to quantify a boundary level for each one, using the range of variability observed during the Holocene as the marker for the safe operating space for humanity. Together, the set of boundaries (Table 1) represents an important co...

Galaz, V. et.al. Planetary boundaries – exploring the challenges for global environmental governance. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain (2012), doi: 10.1016/j.cosust.2012.01.006

Publication review A range of studies from Earth system scientists argue that human activities drive multiple, interacting effects that cascade through the Earth system. Recent contributions state and quantify nine, interacting 'planetary boundaries' with possible threshold effects. This article provides an overview of the global governance challenges that follow from this notion of multiple, interacting and possibly non-li...

Folke, C., Jansson, Å., Rockström, J., Olsson, P., Carpenter, S., Chapin, F., Crépin, A.S., Daily, G., Danell, K., Ebbesson, J., Elmqvist, T., Galaz, V., Moberg, F., Nilsson, M., Österblom, H., Ostrom, E., Persson, Å., Peterson, G., Polasky, S., Steffen, W., Walker, B., Westley, F. (2011) Reconnecting to the Biosphere. AMBIO, 0044-7447. Doi: 10.1007/s13280-011-0184-y

Publication review Humanity has emerged as a major force in the operation of the biosphere, with a significant imprint on the Earth System, challenging social—ecological resilience. This new situation calls for a fundamental shift in perspectives, world views, and institutions. Human development and progress must be reconnected to the capacity of the biosphere and essential ecosystem services to be sustained. Governance cha...

Jonathan A. Foley, Navin Ramankutty, Kate A. Brauman, Emily S. Cassidy, James S. Gerber, Matt Johnston, Nathaniel D. Mueller, Christine O’Connell, Deepak K. Ray, Paul C. West, Christian Balzer, Elena M. Bennett, Stephen R. Carpenter, Jason Hill, Chad Monfreda, Stephen Polasky, Johan Rockström, John Sheehan, Stefan Siebert, David Tilman & David P. M. Zaks. (2011) Solutions for a cultivated planet. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature10452

Publication review Feeding the nine billion people anticipated to live on Earth in 2050 without exhausting the Earth's natural resources is possible, provided that we adopt a more sustainable food production approach. This is the conclusion from a paper just published in Nature by an international team of scientists. The study concludes that we can feed the increasing amount of people on this planet without exhausting the w...