Integrating the Planetary Boundaries and Global Catastrophic Risk Paradigms

* Article: Integrating the Planetary Boundaries and Global Catastrophic Risk Paradigms. By Seth D. Baum and Itsuki C. Handoh. Ecological Economics, Volume 107, November 2014, Pages 13-21

URL = https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800914002262

Description

1. Abstract:

"Planetary boundaries (PBs) and global catastrophic risk (GCR) have emerged in recent years as important paradigms for understanding and addressing global threats to humanity and the environment. This article compares the PBs and GCR paradigms and integrates them into a unified PBs-GCR conceptual framework, which we call Boundary Risk for Humanity and Nature (BRIHN). PBs emphasizes global environmental threats, whereas GCR emphasizes threats to human civilization. Both paradigms rate their global threats as top priorities for humanity but lack precision on key aspects of the impacts of the threats. Our integrated BRIHN framework combines elements from both paradigms' treatments of uncertainty and impacts. The BRIHN framework offers PBs a means of handling human impacts and offers GCR a theoretically precise definition of global catastrophe. The BRIHN framework also offers a concise stage for telling a stylized version of the story of humanity and nature co-evolving from the distant past to the present to multiple possible futures."

2.

"This article integrates the PBs and GCR paradigms into a unified PBs–GCR conceptual framework, which we call Boundary Risk for Humanity and Nature (BRIHN).1 The integrated BRIHN framework jointly considers global boundaries to both human and environmental systems. Crossing boundaries for one system does not necessarily imply crossing boundaries for the other, though the two will often be interconnected. The BRIHN framework also considers the probabilities of crossing boundaries—or, more precisely, probabilities of crossing thresholds. The distinction between boundaries and thresholds is explained below. BRIHN thus integrates the system resilience perspective of PBs with the probabilistic risk perspective of GCR, yielding new insights about global-scale threats that cannot be obtained using either paradigm alone.

The integrated BRIHN framework can be applied to system threats at any scale, but it is especially helpful for the global-scale threats considered in PBs and GCR research. The integrated perspective offers the PBs paradigm a straightforward means of evaluating the human impacts of crossing the biogeophysical planetary boundaries, and it offers the GCR paradigm a perspective on the nature of global catastrophe. In addition, the integrated framework offers an elegant stage for telling a stylized version of the story of humanity and nature co-evolving from the distant past through the present and on into multiple possible futures. The net effect is an understanding of how global human and environmental systems reached their present states and how they could be affected by the decisions humanity now faces."