Abstract
Human perturbations to Earth system processes now present a risk of abrupt and undesirable environmental change at the global scale. Rockström et al. (2009) proposed that the ?safe operating space? for humanity could be marked out by quantifying nine fundamental processes, known as the Planetary Boundaries. This conceptualisation of global sustainability already has very great appeal to policy-makers, but making it operational requires a more detailed understanding of the interactions between the processes. This project will identify, test and apply approaches for characterising the links and interactions; contribute to the further development of integrated global models to better address the dynamics of biogeochemical and ecological processes and of social-ecological interactions; collate and test empirical measures of the global and long-term dynamics of social-ecological systems that can serve as the evidence base for benchmarking these models while also providing global change research resources in their own right; and analyse the institutional and political leadership context in which the Planetary Boundaries concept has found traction to date, in order to illuminate the conditions in which actors may best be equipped to deal with the risks and opportunities of global change.
Sweden