What’s a “safe operating space within the planetary boundaries”…for companies? Global ones? How can they do it?
[Johan Rockstrom’s lecture begins at 9.03, ends at 58.38, followed by questions]
A useful and practical lecture from Johan Rockstrom above. Rockstrom is part of the team that proposed a range of “planetary boundaries” - the essential components of a global eco-system, arranged so that they may sustainably support human societies. And the importance that societies and economies should find a “safe operating space” within those boundaries - and that much of our climate crisis is about those boundaries being breached.
The research, and its imagery, is powerful - Kate Raworth used as the basis of her Doughnut Economics, and we have examined all angles of it on this blog over these years.
But can this reduce from the big-picture, to the level of the operating company or enterprise? Particularly those who currently have a global footprint, and who would want the boundaries to help them make practical decisions that could sit them within the “safe operating space”.
The lecture above (starting here) is Rockstrom’s attempt to lay out what the planetary boundaries might mean for big companies. It’s based on a paper and research (“The Challenges of Applying Planetary Boundaries as a Basis for Strategic Decision-Making in Companies with Global Supply Chains” - see original page here, PDF download here) that was partly funded by Unilever, to help them begin to establish the metrics, the focuses and the scenarios that could shape their operations in this direction.
From the paper - but much more enjoyably told in the video above - Rockstrom and the authors focus on four of their planetary boundaries (climate change, freshwater use, biosphere integrity and chemical pollution). And from studying these, they identify four new business standards that need to be invented:
ONE: Development of a common system of metrics that can be applied consistently at and across different scales
Only climate change is a truly global phenomenon - the other planetary boundaries operate at different levels - local, regional and planetary - which are “defined by natural phenomena rather than political boundaries”. So a solid system of measurement = which lets lower levels know how they’re affecting the boundary - needs to be established.
TWO: Setting ‘distance from boundary’ measures that can be applied at different scales
One way to achieve the preceding would be to establish a “distance from boundary” measurement. And this would have to be robust in measuring planetary impact at local and regional levels - for example, water usage often happens locally for enterprises and companies, but must “recognise planetary targets”.
THREE: Development of global, preferably open-source, databases and models
These will be needed “to evaluate the current status of the earth’s systems relative to local, regional and global thresholds and to project future responses to pressures from human activities. This will underpin development of decision-making tools which can be used by companies and other organisations recognising the need to respect absolute sustainability”.
And open-source means none of this can be proprietary knowledge - all operators will benefit from shared and coordinated understanding.
FOUR: Advancing understanding of the interactions between the different planetary boundaries
There’s still much work to be done analysing how the planetary boundaries interact and interrelate. For example, if the use of land changes because of agricultural productivity, or water use, chemical pollution and biosphere integrity are affecting each other, then companies need to clearly see these dynamics, and shape strategy accordingly.
Yet it’s not as if companies need to wait until all this is set up to act. As the authors conclude:
Part of the motivation for this paper is to identify the challenges and needs of the Planetary Boundaries concept from a business perspective and to provoke discussion… A further indispensable task is to relate the definition of a humanitarian ‘just space’ to the social foundations approach outlined by Kate Raworth. and to the global Sustainable Development Goals agreed by the UN.
…We recognise that this task is even more complex than allocating the environmental space, and requires clear and widely accepted normative principles.
Even so, there is a clear need for commercial organisations to act now to recognize the existence of absolute planetary boundaries and to incorporate them into their planning and corporate values and reporting, even if the metrics have not yet achieved universal consensus.
For example, if sectors commit to ‘no net deforestation’, they will contribute to maintaining aspects of biosphere integrity - even in the absence of comprehensive measures of biodiversity. This commitment, however, carries some risk that pressure may be increased on the critical area thresholds of other biomes.
Such risk represents a difficult potential trade-off. It also highlights the importance of maintaining a systems-level perspective. And the need for a science and knowledge base that is as complete and comprehensive as possible.