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This idea of “planetary boundaries” has become a reference and is even mentioned in IPCC reports.
Published on September 14, 2023 8:04 p.m. Updated on September 14, 2023 8:27 p.m
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Deforestation impacts the water cycle, which is one of the nine boundaries of our planet. Colombia has therefore lost 10% of its Amazon forest. (JUANCHO TORRES / ANADOLU AGENCY / AFP)
The earth reaches saturation. Six of nine “planetary boundaries” have now been exceeded, the Stockholm Resilience Center announced on Wednesday, September 13th. These nine “planetary boundaries” are thresholds that must not be exceeded in order for ecosystems to remain in a “safe operating zone,” the Swedish center behind the concept adds in its latest report. Two other indicators are approaching the alarm threshold: ocean acidification and the concentration of fine pollutant particles in the atmosphere.
Pollution and humanity’s exploitation of natural resources have already led to the transgression of frontiers such as climate change, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, levels of synthetic chemicals, scarcity of fresh water and the balance of the nitrogen cycle. This is twice as much as in a previous assessment by the Stockholm Resilience Center from 2019. Only the state of the ozone layer remains below these alarm thresholds by a certain margin.
This idea of “planetary boundaries” has become a reference and is even mentioned in IPCC reports. However, this latest study suggests that the situation for these nine planetary boundaries may fall back below the alarm thresholds, especially provided that the amounts of waste released and the extraction of natural resources are limited.
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