Contours of a Resilient Global Future

Abstract

Humanity confronts a daunting double challenge in the 21st century: meeting widely-held aspirations for equitable human development while preserving the bio-physical integrity of Earth systems. Extant scientific attempts to quantify futures that address these sustainability challenges are often not comprehensive across environmental and social drivers of global change, or rely on quantification methods that largely exclude deep social, cultural, economic, and technological shifts, leading to a constrained set of possibilities. In search of a broader set of trajectories, we combine three previously separate streams of inquiry: scenario analysis, planetary boundaries, and targets for human development. Our analysis indicates there are plausible, diverse scenarios that remain within Earth's safe bio-physical operating space and achieve a variety of development targets. However, dramatic social and technological changes are required to avert the social-ecological risks of a conventional development trajectory. One identified narrative, which is predominant in the scenario literature, envisions marginal changes to the social and cultural drivers underlying conventional growth trajectories. As a result, it requires unprecedented levels of international cooperation, alignment of powerful conflicting interests, and political willpower to bend technological change in a sustainable direction. We posit that a more viable and robust scenario might lie in the coupling of transformative social-cultural and technological changes, which set the necessary conditions for a transition to a resilient global future. While clearly a first step, our analysis points to the need for more in-depth exploration of the mechanisms and determinant forces for such unconventional futures.

Thermal Performance of Traditional and New Concept Houses in the Ancient Village of San Pedro De Atacama and Surroundings

“…T comfort = 11.9 + 0.534 T average (1) The adaptive comfort concept assumes that human behavior responds to thermal stress, especially if people are used to living without any environmental conditioning. The formula is recommended for natural ventilated buildings (free-running), and for this reason it appears appropriate to use it in all the analyzed cases.…”

“…Driving future scenarios towards a more inclusive and equitable world without compromise, the ecosystem appears the first objective of OPEN ACCESS the human being [1,2]. This challenge includes a change of vision in many disciplines, with special attention to the built environment related issues [3].…”

Environmental livelihood security in Southeast Asia and Oceania: a water-energy-food-livelihoods nexus approach for spatially assessing change. White paper

“…This is based on the premise that unique environmental conditions during the Holocene provided the opportunity for human societal development and through current anthropogenic activities (often activities within water, energy and food systems), we are altering the state of the environment (Rockström et al 2009a). For livelihoods to be secure, and be sustained in a state of security, good environmental and resource governance should not only focus on the immediate 'local' environment but also address 'global' issues and consider crossscale feedbacks (Gerst et al 2014;Tittonell 2014). This is where 'resilience thinking' or 'systems' approaches to managing livelihoods-environment linkages (aka socioecological systems) can help address the complexities inherent to water, energy and food security (Hoff 2011).…”

An urban approach to planetary boundaries

“…Gerst et al (2013) extend the initial physical boundaries assessment with the addition of hunger, inequity, and water stress. The analysis is at a global scale and supports long-term scenario planning and is sufficiently robust to accommodate dramatic social and technological change.…”

“…In an attempt to develop 'contours of a resilient global future, ' Gerst et al (2013) combined scenario analysis (to 2100), planetary boundaries, and targets for human development. Gerst et al (2013) extend the initial physical boundaries assessment with the addition of hunger, inequity, and water stress.…”