The Planetary Health Check (PHC) was recently launched as a first-of-its-kind scientific report and tool for monitoring the health of “the Earth’s vital organs.”
Spearheaded by Planetary Boundaries Science (PBScience), a new initiative led by PIK director Johan Rockström and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the report documents the latest scientific information on the diverse Planetary Boundary (PB) processes, identifying the underlying causes and interconnectedness of various processes and connects Planetary Boundary processes to different tipping points.
The report details how the Planetary Boundaries framework—first published in 2009—identifies the nine Earth system processes essential for maintaining global stability, resilience, and life-support functions. These boundaries represent the safe operating limits for each process, beyond which the risk of causing severe and potentially irreversible environmental changes increases.
Staying within these boundaries is key to ensuring that Earth’s system remains stable.
According to the Planetary Health Check, six of nine Planetary Boundaries have been breached, a seventh—ocean acidification—could be imminently breached, and there is a clear trend towards “further transgression.”
The six PB processes that have breached safe PB levels so far include:
- Climate Change
- Change in Biosphere Integrity
- Land System Change
- Freshwater Change
- Modification of Biogeochemical Flows
- Novel Entities
This breach indicates significant environmental stress and the potential for irreversible changes, the report warns. All six are also showing trends of increasing pressure in all control variables.
Ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, and stratospheric ozone depletion are the only three PB processes that remain within the Safe Operating Space.
According to Levke Caesar, PIK Scientist, Co-Lead of PBScience, and one of the lead authors of the Planetary Health Check, this update revealing transgressed boundaries means that the vital organs of the Earth system are weakening, making it less resilient and leading to a rising risk of crossing tipping points.
“This scientific update shows that, irrespective of what scale we operate on, all actions need to consider impacts at the planetary scale,” explained Johan Rockström, PIK Director, Pioneer of the Planetary Boundaries Framework and Co-Founder of the Planetary Guardians.
“Stewardship of the planet is necessary in all sectors of the economy and in societies, for security, prosperity and equity. By quantifying the boundaries for a healthy planet, we provide policy, economics and business with the tools needed to steer away from unmanageable risks,” Rockström added. Read more here.