Planetary Boundaries

The Stockholm Resilience Center has established the concept of Planetary Boundaries that is used in the Doughnut. The planetary boundary model is shown below:

Planetary Boundaries model from the Stockholm Resilience Centre

The diagram above includes the latest names for the boundary areas. The corresponding names in the Doughnut reflect the original planetary boundary names.

Selection of Planetary Boundaries

Ten Years of using planetary boundaries

The original Planetary Boundaries used the same number of boundaries however some of the names of the boundaries have taken on new names.

Here are some of the changes:

  • Novel Entities relates to Chemical Pollution
  • Biogeochemical processes relates to nitrogen and phosphorus loading
  • Biosphere integrity relates to Biodiversity Loss
  • Aerosol Loading relates to Air Pollution

In addition, there are three boundaries that represent planetary tipping points (using doughnut names):

  • Climate Change
  • Ocean Acidification
  • Ozone Layer Depletion

The other 6 areas are part of the regulation processes or operate at an ecosystem scale. Any of these other 6 can influence or increase the chance of tipping points in the other areas.

There is a short course on Edx to learn about the Planetary Boundaries.