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Keeping the Earth system in a stable and resilient state, to safeguard Earth's life support systems while ensuring that Earth's benefits, risks, and related responsibilities are equitably shared, constitutes the grand challenge for human development in the Anthropocene. Here, we describe a framework that the recently formed Earth Commission will use to define and quantify target ranges for a “safe and just corridor” that meets these goals. Although “safe” and “just” Earth system targets are interrelated, we see safe as primarily referring to a stable Earth system and just targets as being associated with meeting human needs and reducing exposure to risks. To align safe and just dimensions, we propose to address the equity dimensions of each safe target for Earth system regulating systems and processes. The more stringent of the safe or just target ranges then defines the corridor. Identifying levers of social transformation aimed at meeting the safe and just targets and challenges associated with translating the corridor to actors at multiple scales present scope for future work.

The maturing of Earth system science as a discipline has underpinned the development of concepts such as the Anthropocene and planetary boundaries. The International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme’s (IGBP) scientific and institutional history is deeply intertwined with the development of the concept of the Earth as a system as well as the discipline of Earth system science. Here we frame the broader programme of IGBP through its core projects and programme-level activities and illustrate this co-evolution. We identify and discuss three phases in the programme’s history. In its first phase beginning in 1986, IGBP focused on building international networks and global databases that were key to understanding Earth system component processes. In the early 2000s IGBP’s first major synthesis and associated activities promoted a more integrated view of the Earth system informed by greater emphasis on interdisciplinarity. Human actions were seen as an integral part of the Earth system and the concept of the Anthropocene came to the fore. In recent years IGBP has increased focus on sustainability and multifaceted engagement with policy processes. IGBP closed at the end of 2015 after three decades of coordinating international research on global change. The programme’s longevity points to its capacity to adapt its scientific and institutional structures to changing scientific and societal realities. Its history may offer lessons for the emerging Future Earth initiative as it seeks to rally international collaborative research around sustainability and solutions., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs, originally published in 2004 to show socio-economic and Earth System trends from 1750 to 2000, have now been updated to 2010. In the graphs of socio-economic trends, where the data permit, the activity of the wealthy (OECD) countries, those countries with emerging economies, and the rest of the world have now been differentiated. The dominant feature of the socio-economic trends is that the economic activity of the human enterprise continues to grow at a rapid rate. However, the differentiated graphs clearly show that strong equity issues are masked by considering global aggregates only. Most of the population growth since 1950 has been in the non-OECD world but the world’s economy (GDP), and hence consumption, is still strongly dominated by the OECD world. The Earth System indicators, in general, continued their long-term, post-industrial rise, although a few, such as atmospheric methane concentration and stratospheric ozone loss, showed a slowing or apparent stabilisation over the past decade. The post-1950 acceleration in the Earth System indicators remains clear. Only beyond the mid-20th century is there clear evidence for fundamental shifts in the state and functioning of the Earth System that are beyond the range of variability of the Holocene and driven by human activities. Thus, of all the candidates for a start date for the Anthropocene, the beginning of the Great Acceleration is by far the most convincing from an Earth System science perspective.

Cities are rapidly increasing in importance as a major factor shaping the Earth system, and therefore, must take corresponding responsibility. With currently over half the world's population, cities are supported by resources originating from primarily rural regions often located around the world far distant from the urban loci of use. The sustainability of a city can no longer be considered in isolation from the sustainability of human and natural resources it uses from proximal or distant regions, or the combined resource use and impacts of cities globally. The world's multiple and complex environmental and social challenges require interconnected solutions and coordinated governance approaches to planetary stewardship. We suggest that a key component of planetary stewardship is a global system of cities that develop sustainable processes and policies in concert with its non-urban areas. The potential for cities to cooperate as a system and with rural connectivity could increase their capacity to effect change and foster stewardship at the planetary scale and also increase their resource security. © Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2012.