1260. Finding a Path for Global Development Within the Limits of the Planet

May 22 is the International Day for Biological Diversity, a commemorative day established by the United Nations to raise public awareness of the loss of biodiversity and the associated problems. This year's theme is "Harmony with nature and sustainable development."

In 2015, governments around the world adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), setting an ambitious agenda to promote human well-being, eradicate poverty, and maintain the health of the planet's ecosystems by 2030. The Planetary Boundaries framework plays an important role in assessing the feasibility of achieving the SDGs. A paper recently published in Nature discusses exploring pathways for world development within planetary boundaries.

The pressures that humanity has imposed on the environment are endangering the stability of the planet. The Planetary Boundaries analytical framework has been applied to define a "safe operating space for humanity" and highlight the current state of unsustainable environmental conditions. By combining this analytical framework with model-based future projections, the Nature paper predicted sustainable development pathways within the planet's boundaries and compared them with achievable goals such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving fertilizer use efficiency.

The analysis showed that status-quo policies would worsen the situation by 2050 for all boundaries except ozone depletion. First, most global boundaries (except air pollution in some regions), especially climate change, biogeochemical flows, and biodiversity, are clearly worse by 2015 compared to 1970, and almost all indicators are expected to worsen further toward 2030 and 2050 under the business-as-usual scenario.

Without specific countermeasures, five processes are expected to exceed the global boundaries in 2030 and 2050, with climate change and biogeochemical flows expected to fall into the high-risk zone, and freshwater and ocean acidification values are expected to be very close to exceedance. In contrast, the trend of stratospheric ozone concentrations is expected to improve slightly, and for air pollution, the values are estimated to remain almost constant as a net effect of improved air pollution control regulations and increased energy consumption. Looking at longer-term trends (until 2100), further deterioration is expected, except for stratospheric ozone (O₃) concentrations and air pollution. Overall, the analysis of the paper indicates that if the status-quo trends are not reconsidered, important Earth system processes may be degraded, especially by overshooting the boundaries of climate change, biosphere health, and biogeochemical flows (nitrogen N and phosphorus P). At the same time, the analysis also indicates that ambitious actions may allow humanity to return to safe operating areas and avoid overshooting the planetary boundaries.

The paper lists effective policy measures required for humanity to live well within the planetary limits as: implementing ambitious climate policies, moving to the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet, halving food waste, improving water-use efficiency based on the best available technologies, and maximizing nutrient-use efficiency. While such measures are considered technically feasible in the literature, it is an open question whether they can be implemented with social or institutional feasibility in mind. It is important to explore this further in future research.

Most of the policy measures mentioned above require responses in the food system. It can be said that the transformation of the food system holds the key to reconciling nature and sustainable development.

(Reference)
van Vuuren, D.P., Doelman, J.C., Schmidt Tagomori, I. et al. Exploring pathways for world development within planetary boundaries. Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08928-w

Contributor: IIYAMA Miyuki, Information Program