Understanding the Complementarities of Environmental Footprints and Planetary Boundaries

Abstract

While in recent years both environmental footprints and planetary boundaries have gained tremendous popularity throughout the ecological and environmental sciences, their relationship remains largely unexplored. By investigating the roots and developments of environmental footprints and planetary boundaries, this chapter challenges the isolation of the two research fields and provides novel insights into the complementary use of them. Our analysis demonstrates that knowledge of planetary boundaries improves the policy relevance of environmental footprints by providing a set of consensus-based estimates of the regenerative and absorptive capacity at the global scale and, in reverse, that the planetary boundaries framework (PBF) benefits from well-grounded footprint models which allow for more accurate and reliable estimates of human pressure or impact on the planet’s environment. A framework for integration of environmental footprints and planetary boundaries is thus proposed, which lays the foundation for evolving environmental impact assessment to environmental sustainability assessment aimed at measuring the sustainability gap between current magnitudes of human activities and associated capacity thresholds. This chapter also proposes a research agenda that will further scientific discussions on how to set practical and tangible policy targets for adaptation and mitigation of worldwide environmental unsustainability.