The Earth is approaching planetary limits that undermine resilience

The scientific updates and analyses presented here confirm that humanity is today placing unprecedented pressure on Earth system. Perhaps most worrying in terms of maintaining Earth system in a Holocene-like interglacial state is that all the biosphere-related planetary boundary processes providing the resilience (capacity to dampen disturbance) of Earth system are at or close to a high-risk level of transgression. In a recent study (18), it was shown that several regional climate tipping points, relevant for stabilizing the global system, have already been or are close to being transgressed, thus weakening global resilience capacity. This implies low/falling resilience precisely when planetary resilience is needed more than ever to cope with increasing anthropogenic disturbances. There is an urgent need for more powerful scientific and policy tools for analyzing the whole of the integrated Earth system with reliability and regularity and guiding political processes to prevent altering the state of Earth system beyond levels tolerable for today’s societies. In addition to more consistent collection and collation of relevant global environmental data, this will require the development of Earth system models that more completely capture geosphere-biosphere-anthroposphere interactions than is the case today. The known interdependence of planetary boundaries is confirmed by Earth system science understanding (14, 22) of the planet as an integrated, partially self-regulating, system. To better understand the risk to this system and the critical boundaries that humankind should consider in its economic and social activities, Earth system analysis now has to continue advancing a planetary boundaries framework. In addition, it must substantially increase the ecological realism of simulation and analyses of the biosphere as an adaptive core entity of Earth system. These initiatives are underway but have to be further developed into a coherent process of integrated Earth system analysis across the physical, chemical, and biological domains not focused just on climate.