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Living within planetary limits requires attention to justice as biophysical boundaries are not inherently just. Through collaboration between natural and social scientists, the Earth Commission defines and operationalizes Earth system justice to ensure that boundaries reduce harm, increase well-being, and reflect substantive and procedural justice. Such stringent boundaries may also affect ‘just access’ to food, water, energy and infrastructure. We show how boundaries may need to be adjusted to reduce harm and increase access, and challenge inequality to ensure a safe and just future for people, other species and the planet. Earth system justice may enable living justly within boundaries.

Environmental assessments increasingly call for just transformations, yet do not offer concrete visions of what these might be. This paper conceptualizes and operationalizes Earth system justice (ESJ) through articulating just ends which minimize significant harm to humans from Earth system change while ensuring access to needed resources for all and just means which involve reallocation of resources, responsibilities, and risks. We argue that Earth system justice is underpinned by recognition and epistemic justice, inclusivity and procedural justice, and corrective and distributive justice with a scope that encompasses intragenerational, intergenerational, and interspecies justice concerns. This Earth system justice framework provides the theoretical underpinning for assessing proposals for international environmental policy based on Earth System Boundaries (ESBs) and for proposing just approaches to sustainability transformations.

A global agenda-setting opportunity to reverse ongoing planetary destruction is coming in 2022 with Stockholm+50. The independent Earth Commission will propose a safe and just corridor for humanity to spearhead its transformative agenda, defining goals for a stable Earth integrating justice.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on climate are the key international agreements to deliver a sustainable future. They are a compromise between the scientifically necessary and politically possible to achieve global sustainability. Agreed in 2015, they constitute a radical departure for international policy with no precedents and are beginning to shape national policy, civil society and business decisions. We argue that these new frameworks represent the most important institutional innovation to emerge in recent years. They mark a shift away from international rule-making towards a system based on goal setting. This reflects a theory of societal steering or what we commonly think of as governance that differs sharply from mainstream regulatory systems by Pauwelyn et al. (Eur J Int Law 24:733–763, 2014). Given that achieving the Paris Agreement and the SDGs will require transformation of societies at all levels, it remains unclear how existing instruments, policies, and even institutions will adapt to this new global governance strategy. The key to success, we argue, will be “action coherence”, whereby actions initiated to fulfill individual SDGs are coherent across efforts to achieve the full set of SDGs over the long run.

Fil: Díaz, Sandra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Departamento de Diversidad Biológica y Ecología. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina. Fil: Díaz, Sandra. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnica. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina. Fil: Zafra Calvo, Noelia. Future Earth; España. Fil: Purvis, Andy. Natural History Museum; Reino Unido. Fil: Verburg, Peter H. VU University Amsterdam. Institute for Environmental Studies: Países Bajos. Fil: Obura, David. Coastal Oceans Research and Development Indian Ocean; Kenia. Fil: Leadley, Paul. Université Paris-Sud. Ecologie Systématique Evolution; Francia. Fil: Chaplin Kramer, Rebecca. Stanford University. Natural Capital Project; Estados Unidos. Fil: De Meester, Luc. Leibniz Institut für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei; Alemania. Fil: Dulloo, Ehsan. Bioversity International; Mauricio. Fil: Martín- López, Berta. Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Faculty of Sustainability; Alemania. Fil: Shaw, Rebecca. The World Wide Fund for Nature; Estados Unidos. Fil: Visconti, Piero. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. Ecosystem Services and Management Program; Austria. Fil: Broadgate, Wendy. Future Earth; Suecia. Fil: Bruford, Michael W. Cardiff University. School of Biosciences and Sustainable Places Institute; Reino Unido. Fil: Burgess, Neil D. UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre; Reino Unido. Fil: Cavender Bares, Jeannine. University of Minnesota. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior; Estados Unidos. Fil: DeClerck, Fabrice. EAT Foundation; Noruega. Fil: Fernández Palacios, José María. Universidad de La Laguna. Instituto Universitario de Enfermedades Tropicales y Salud Pública de Canarias; España. Fil: Garibaldi, Lucas A. Universidad Nacional de Río Negro. Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural. Río Negro, Argentina. Fil: Garibaldi, Lucas A. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural. Río Negro, Argentina. Fil: Hill, Samantha L. L. UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre; Reino Unido. Fil: Isbell, Forest. University of Minnesota. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior; Estados Unidos. Fil: Khoury, Colin K. International Center for Tropical Agriculture; Colombia. Fil: Krug, Cornelia B. University of Zurich. Department of Geography; Suiza. Fil: Liu, Jianguo. Michigan State University; Estados Unidos. Fil: Maron, Martine. The University of Queensland; Australia. Fil: McGowan, Philip J. K. Newcastle University. School of Natural and Environmental Sciences; Reino Unido. Fil: Pereira, Henrique M. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research; Alemania. Fil: Reyes García, Victoria. Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies; España. Fil: Rocha, Juan. Future Earth; Suecia. Fil: Rondinini, Carlo. Sapienza University of Rome. Department of Biology and Biotechnologies. Global Mammal Assessment Program; Italia. Fil: Shannon, Lynne. University of Cape Town. Department of Biological Sciences; Sudáfrica. Fil: Shin, Yunne-Jai. University of Cape Town. Department of Biological Sciences; Sudáfrica. Fil: Snelgrove, Paul V. R. Memorial University of Newfoundland. Departments of Ocean Sciences and Biology; Canada. Fil: Spehn, Eva M. Swiss Academy of Sciences. Swiss Biodiversity Forum; Suiza. Fil: Strassburg, Bernardo. Pontifical Catholic University. Department of Geography and the Environment. Rio Conservation and Sustainability Science Centre; Brasil. Fil: Subramanian, Suneetha M. United Nations University. Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability; Japón. Fil: Tewksbury, Joshua J. University of Colorado; Estados Unidos. Fil: Watson, James E. M. Wildlife Conservation Society; Estados Unidos. Fil: Zanne, Amy E. George Washington University. Department of Biological Sciences; Estados Unidos. Global biodiversity policy is at a crossroads. Recent global assessments of living nature (1, 2) and climate (3) show worsening trends and a rapidly narrowing window for action. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has recently announced that none of the 20 Aichi targets for biodiversity it set in 2010 has been reached and only six have been partially achieved (4). Against this backdrop, nations are now negotiating the next generation of the CBD's global goals [see supplementary materials (SM)], due for adoption in 2021, which will frame actions of governments and other actors for decades to come. In response to the goals proposed in the draft post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) made public by the CBD (5), we urge negotiators to consider three points that are critical if the agreed goals are to stabilize or reverse nature's decline. First, multiple goals are required because of nature's complexity, with different facets—genes, populations, species, deep evolutionary history, ecosystems, and their contributions to people—having markedly different geographic distributions and responses to human drivers. Second, interlinkages among these facets mean that goals must be defined and developed holistically rather than in isolation, with potential to advance multiple goals simultaneously and minimize trade-offs between them. Third, only the highest level of ambition in setting each goal, and implementing all goals in an integrated manner, will give a realistic chance of stopping—and beginning to reverse—biodiversity loss by 2050.

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.

The first symposium on ``The Ocean in a High-CO2 World'' in 2004 proved to be a landmark event in our understanding of the seriousness of ocean acidification, as reported in Oceanography (Cicerone et al., 2004). The scientific community reunited in 2008 for a second symposium on ``The Ocean in a High-CO2 World.'' During the four years between the two symposia, more scientific papers were published on the topic of ocean acidification than during the preceding 55 years. Ocean acidification is now widely cited in the press and is familiar to many nonscientists. Participants at the 2008 symposium identified new research priorities and stressed the importance of improving international coordination to facilitate agreements on protocols, methods, and data reporting in order to optimize limited resources by greater sharing of materials, facilities, expertise, and data. Despite major uncertainties, the research community must find ways to scale up understanding of individual organisms' responses to provide meaningful predictions of ocean acidification's effects on food webs, fisheries, marine ecosystems, coastal erosion, and tourism. Easy-to-understand information, such as simple indicators of change and of thresholds beyond which marine ecosystems will not recover, is also needed for management and policymaking.

Non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHCs) are produced naturally in the ocean and by terrestrial vegetation. Owing to its high reactivity and flux, isoprene (2-methyl-1,3-butadiene) is important in controlling the balance of atmospheric oxidants, and altering air quality on both local and global scales. Here we show, for the first time, that macroalgae (seaweeds) emit isoprene and a number of other non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHCs). We observed NMHC concentrations in rockpools containing macroalgae and estimated fluxes to the atmosphere over a full diurnal cycle. Emissions at our temperate coastal site (Mace Head, Ireland) in autumn are intermediate in magnitude between terrestrial and ocean fluxes (on a unit area basis), and may contribute significant concentrations to the local atmosphere. We also carried out a series of controlled laboratory experiments focusing on isoprene, in natural and artificial light, and under different temperature conditions involving red (Chondrus crispus, Asparagopsis armata), green (Ulva intestinalis, formerly known as Enteromorpha intestinalis) and brown (Laminaria digitata, Ascophyllum nodosum, Pelvetia canaliculata, Fucus vesiculosus, Fucus serratus, Halidrys siliquosa and Laminaria saccharina) macroalgae commonly found on the west coast of Ireland. We observed NMHC emissions from all the algae investigated and emissions were dominated by alkenes. Production is species-dependent, temperature-dependent and related to light availability. We discuss our observations in the context of what is known about the production of isoprene and ethene in higher plants.

A number of atmospherically important trace gases (dimethyl sulphide (DMS), methyl iodide (CH3I), and nonmethane hydrocarbons (NMHCs)) were measured simultaneously in the eastern Atlantic Ocean during May 1997. This investigation was part of the U.K. Atmospheric Chemistry Studies in the Oceanic Environment (ACSOE) Community Research Program and covered a 200 by 200 nautical mile (1 nautical mile is 1.852 km) area to the west of the Mace Head Atmospheric Research Station on the coast of Ireland. Different spatial and temporal patterns were observed for each of the gases, showing that distinct sources dominate their production in this region: specific species of phytoplankton (DMS), macroalgae (CH3I), total phytoplankton biomass (isoprene), and photochemistry (ethene). Sea-to-air fluxes of the gases are calculated for near and offshore domains, and their temporal variations are discussed. A simple photochemical box model has been used to assess the contributions of the gas fluxes to the levels of the gases observed at Mace Head, Results show that the area studied may constitute a substantial source of DMS, a weak source of CH 3 I, a small source of ethene at night, and an insignificant source of isoprene to atmospheric levels of these gases measured at Mace Head in western Ireland.

In this paper we show evidence that isoprene emission from the oceans is strongly seasonally dependent and is correlated with the chlorophyll content of the water from measurements in the North Sea and Southern Ocean. We estimate the seasonally averaged flux of isoprene to the atmosphere to be 1.7 × 107 molecules cm−2 s−1, which may be significant for atmospheric chemistry in locations remote from land as it is the only known source of atmospheric isoprene in these regions. We observe a strong seasonal cycle of several other NMHCs in seawater at high latitudes, with a maximum in summer. This will distort current estimates of the annual marine flux of NMHCs to the atmosphere which may need to be reduced by up to an order of magnitude to account for lower emissions in winter.

Dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and particulate and dissolved fractions of dimethylsulphoniopropionate (DMSPp and DMSPd) were measured on two simultaneous cruises through the Drake Passage to the Bellingshausen Sea, Antarctica, during October to December 1992. Overall, average surface water concentrations for DMS and DMSPp were 2 nM (0.15–27 nM) and 25.6 nM (2–69 nM), respectively. Higher concentrations (DMS 5.8 and DMSPp 41.2 nM) were observed in a phytoplankton bloom forming a band between 67.2° and 68.2°S, associated with the Southern Polar Front. Concentrations of DMS + DMSP in ice were very high (up to 546 nM) but in the underlying water were 20 to 500 times lower. Comparison of sulphur data, pigments and phytoplankton species counts showed correlation of DMSPp with 19'-hexanoyloxyfucoxanthin (Hex) and Phaeocystis sp. A seasonal cycle for DMS in Antarctic surface waters, based on all available literature data, is discussed in terms of the probable Antarctic Ocean contribution to the global ocean DMS flux.

Measurements of a variety of biogenic trace gases have been made in several European coastal, shelf and deep waters. Gases examined include dimethyl sulfide and its biochemical precursor dimethyl sulfoniopropionate, organohalogens, and non-methane hydrocarbons. These measurements have been used to estimate the fluxes of these gases from the sea to the atmosphere. Complementary measurements of sulfur isotopic ratios on atmospheric aerosols have been used to assess the relative importance of man-made versus marine biogenic sources of non-sea-salt sulfur to the aerosols.

Jickells, T.D. ... et. al.-- 34 pages, 6 tables, 10 figures We report the results of an experiment in the Northeast Atlantic in which sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) was released within an eddy and the behaviour of trace gases, nutrients and productivity followed within a Lagrangian framework over a period of 24 days. Measurements were also made in the air above the eddy in order to estimate air–sea exchange rates for some components. The physical, biological and biogeochemical properties of the eddy resemble those of other eddies studied in this area, suggesting that the results we report may be applicable beyond the specific eddy studied. During a period of low wind speed at the start of the experiment, we are able to quantitatively describe and balance the nutrient and carbon budgets for the eddy. We also report concentrations of various trace gases in the region which are similar to those observed in other studies and we estimate exchange rates for several trace gases. We show that the importance of gas exchange over other loss terms varies with time and also varies for the different gases. We show that the various trace gases considered (CO2, dimethyl sulphide (DMS), N2O, CH4, non-methane-hydrocarbons, methyl bromide, methyl iodide and volatile selenium species) are all influenced by physical and biological processes, but the overall distribution and temporal variability of individual gases are different to one another. A storm disrupted the stratification in the eddy during the experiment, resulting in enhanced nutrient supply to surface waters, enhanced gas exchange rates and a change in plankton community, which we quantify, although overall productivity was little changed. Emphasis is placed on the regularity of storms in the temperate ocean and the importance of these stochastic processes in such systems This is contribution no. ACP175 of the NERC ACSOE Thematic Programme. NERC grants GST/02/1276 supported the work of Jickells and Spokes, GST/02/1278 the work of Liss and Nightingale together with core funding to the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) while the ACSOE core programme supported Broadgate and the shiptime costs, NERC grant GR9/3467 to G.S. supported Moncoiffé and Gilpin. Steinke was supported by NERC grant GR3/10956. The University of Newcastle upon Tyne Research Committee provided funding to support T. Frost. The work of Simó and Pedrós-Alió was supported by the Spanish McyT grant MAR97-1885-E