A good life for all within planetary boundaries. Nature Sustainability, 88 (95).https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0021-4 © 2018, Author(s). This is an author produced version of a paper published in Nature Sustainability. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. TakedownIf you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. Humanity faces the challenge of how to achieve a high quality of life for over seven billion people without destabilising critical planetary processes. Using indicators designed to measure a "safe and just" development space, we quantify the resource use associated with meeting basic human needs, and compare this to downscaled planetary boundaries for close to 150 nations. We find no country meets basic needs for its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use. Physical needs such as nutrition, sanitation, access to electricity, and the elimination of extreme poverty could likely be met for all people without transgressing planetary boundaries. However, the universal achievement of more qualitative goals (e.g. high life satisfaction) would require a level of resource use that is 2-6 times the sustainable level, based on current relationships. Strategies to improve physical and social provisioning systems, with a focus on sufficiency and equity, have the potential to move nations towards sustainability, but the challenge remains substantial. A good life for all within planetary boundariesThis article addresses a key question in sustainability science: What level of biophysical resource use is associated with meeting people's basic needs, and can this level of resource use be extended to all people without exceeding critical planetary boundaries? To answer this question, we analyse the relationships between seven indicators of national environmental pressure (relative to biophysical boundaries) and eleven indicators of social outcomes (relative to sufficiency thresholds) for close to 150 countries. Our study represents the first attempt to measure national performance using a "safe and just space" framework 1,2 for a large number of countries, and provides important findings on the relationships between resource use and human well-being. A Safe and Just SpaceThere have been two recent, complementary advances in defining biophysical processes, pressures, and boundaries at the planetary scale. The first is th...

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This is a repository copy of Provisioning systems for a good life within planetary boundaries.

4We investigate the relationships between carbon-intensive consumption and two dimensions of 5 human wellbeing (physical health and happiness) for ~120 countries over the 2005-2015 period.

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