Planetary Boundaries
The planetary boundaries framework identifies nine Earth-system processes that regulate biosphere stability and, for each, a boundary marking the threshold beyond which the risk of triggering abrupt or irreversible environmental change increases sharply. The nine boundaries are climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus), ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, stratospheric ozone depletion, and novel entities (chemical pollution and synthetic compounds).
In The You On AI Field Guide
The framework was first published in Nature in 2009 by a team led by Rockström at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. It has been updated in major assessments in 2015 and 2023. The 2023 assessment found that humanity has transgressed six of the nine boundaries — climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, biogeochemical flows, novel entities, and freshwater change — with the remaining three (ocean acidification, aerosol loading, ozone) approaching but not yet crossed.
Raworth adopted the framework as the outer ring of her doughnut, translating