An emerging concept: Planetary Boundaries

After a little break for ten years due to the easter's holidays, we are back in order to talk about a concept we have read few days ago. Furthermore, we announced it in the second last post, this is Planetary Boundaries.

But, what is Planetary Boundaries? According to Steffen, Richardson, Rockström, Cornell et al .(2015), planetary boundaries consists in: 

"The planetary boundaries (PB) approach aims to define a safe operating space for human societies to develop and thrive, based on our evolving understanding of the functioning and resilience of the Earth System"

As everyone can read in this kind of paper, PB is in the line of global researches and studies about human actions around the globe (as Global Health, for instance). The basic premise about PB is that currently, we have overstepped the Holocene time, and now, we are in the Anthropocene time. 

Anthropocene time is featured by the great impact of the human actions on the environment, and because of it, in the last 100-200 years we left the Holocene period; so starting from this assumption, humankind must ensure a sustainable development in the next decades in order to survive. For this, it has been scheduled some parameters considered "prioritaries" that we cannot break in a concrete measure: Chemical Pollution, Climate Crisis, Ocean Acidification, Ozone Depletion, Nitrogen Cycle, Phosporus Cycle, Freshwater Use, Deforestation and Others Land User Changes, Biodiversity Loss and Particle Pollution of the Atmosphere. 

According to this parameters, we must reduce rapidly the Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss, and Biogeochemical (Nitrogen Cycle) levels because we have already "crossed the boundary". PB also provides a "intermedium" level that might alert us we are on the point of cross the level of certain parameter. In order to measure this parameters, it is used some devices like early warning systems in order to pre-empt to the border's crossing. 

Our interest about this question is varied. How people can be aware and alert within the PB logic? Can PB obey to a global-surveillance system? and in this case, what are the political effects over citizenship? A new biopolitics? Could people being watched and, at the same time, be an active watcher??

References: 

 Steffen, W. Richardson, K. Rockström, J. Cornell, S. E. Fetzer, I. Bennet, E. M. Biggs, R. Carpenter, S, R. De Vries, W. De Wit, C. A. Folke, C. Gerten, D. Heinke, J. Mace, G. M. Persson, L M. Ramanathan, V. Reyers, B. Sörling, S. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 

Photo Credit: Flickr, user ILRI