Student Worksheet - Planetary Boundaries and Resilience 1

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Student Worksheet - Planetary Boundaries and Resilience 1

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Planetary Boundaries and Resilience

Student Worksheet

Introduction

The methods of analysis and the related debates about the limits to human growth and
consumption have become more focused on providing information to support global policy
decisions in the last decade or so.

One of the most often cited approach was developed in Sweden by NGOs like The Natural
Step and more recently by scholars at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

A paper in the prestigious British science journal, Nature in 2009 summarizes this
approach. It is closely related to analysis presented in The Limits to Growth but advances
the discussion by combining resource and ecosystem limits in the selection and evaluation
of the 9 critical planetary boundaries. The Planetary Boundaries approach points to 3 key
areas where rapid policy initiatives are needed.

Assignment

Watch the TED Talk video and use the article linked below for additional detail and
explanation:

Steffen, W. Rockström, J. Costanza, R. 2011. How Defining Planetary Boundaries Can

Transform Our Approach to Growth . Solutions. Vol 2, No. 3. pp. - -
http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/935

A TED Talk video presentation of provides a similar presentation of this information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgqtrlixYR4#t=37

Questions:

1. What is the Halocene? Why do the authors and TED presenter refer to that period of
geological history as the time when our “ecosystem capital accumulated”?
The Holocene is the current epoch of time and is around 11,700 years old. During this time,
humans accumulated resources from ecosystems over time, developing agriculture and hunting
animals, eventually creating vast amounts of villages, societies, and eventually cities, all thanks to
environmental resources.

Created by The North Carolina School of Science and Math.

Copyright 2012. North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. . 1
2. What is the quadruple squeeze that Dr. Rockstrom describes?
There are four factors we as humans are applying to the earth that are putting great pressure on
it: Population growth, climate change, ecosystem decline, and surprise, which is abrupt change in
systems.

3. What is the Anthropocene? What evidence does Dr. Rockstrom offer for the
Anthropocene? When does he claim the Anthropocene begins?
The Anthropocene is a proposed period of time where humans are the primary contributor of
change at a planetary level. He claims the Anthropocene began around the mid-1950s, after a
sharp increase in environmental effects brought about by humans once enterprise boomed after
World War II.

4. Explain system tipping points (and also thresholds) and resilience using the diagrams
below:

When a state is stable, it has resilience, and the

“ball” in the state is protected in the state and has no chance of tipping over. This is shown in the
top diagram, as the ball is relatively secure in its position. In the bottom picture however, the ball
is unstable and there is little resilience to keep it in one spot. If it tips over, it may fall into a new
system which has high resilience but may be undesirable and unable to change.
Image credit: L. Schmalbeck

Created by The North Carolina School of Science and Math.

Copyright 2012. North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. . 2
5. What does Rockstrom claim is sustainable development and why is “redundancy” part of
the solution?
Rockstrom claims that the solution to sustainable development is operating on planetary
boundaries, where the limits of wear on the environment are not exceeded. Redundancy is key to
the solution because when the “ball” in a state starts to rise from its state of resilience, a plan
must be made so the ball can rise over a hump and return to a new state of stability, creating a
redundant cycle that ensures proper sustainable development.

6. What is the planetary boundary framework? What are the components in the framework?
The planetary boundary framework is a strategy to return several environmental factors to a safe
limit approximately around the value that existed before the Industrial Revolution. The
components in the framework include climate change, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol load,
ocean acidity, freshwater consumption, chemical consumption, agricultural land use, loss of
biodiversity, nitrogen flow, and phosphorus flow

7. How does the planetary framework blend the approaches used in World3 and the
Ecological Footprint?

The planetary framework uses a blend of applications used by World3 and the Ecological
Footprint. Like World3, the planetary framework takes different variables into account,
such as pollution and the availability of certain natural resources, as well as the
magnitude of these effects. Like the Ecological Footprint, the planetary framework
applies boundaries for countries based on what their biocapacity can handle. Both will
reveal that countries often surpass their boundaries and live with an amount of use like
there is more than 1 Earth to harvest and expend resources on.