Take-Home

In this section of the course you’ve been introduced to the planetary boundaries concept. You should have also gotten a good idea about: how humanity has become the driving force on the planet, how this has created new challenges for sustainability as we face increased population size as well as per capita pressure on the planetary resources and finally how ecosystems are in peril of having reduced capacity to provide the necessary services that we humans need. Furthermore, climate change is real and the impacts are becoming more evident. Together, these pressures create a planetary system which is unpredictable due to reduced resilience and increases in indirect feedbacks. We can expect many surprises in the future.

This calls for understanding the main limits of the planetary system that human activities need to be scaled within, if we want to be able to sustain human development. Those planetary boundaries provide a unique opportunity for change. For the first time in the history of humanity, we are on a scientific level aware of them, we have become stewards of the entire planet and thus governance needs to shift to the planetary level for these crucial targets.

Lastly, you should have gained an understanding that human globalization has created long-distance feedbacks, called “teleconnections”, between social and ecological system. Examples of such feedbacks include, changes in preferences in urban systems that drive global markets which can change local exploitation patterns, and climate feedbacks, such as deforestation leading to changed precipitation patterns that may change vegetation patterns in other parts of the world.