Reconciling safe planetary targets and planetary justice: Why should social scientists engage with planetary targets?

As human activity threatens to make the planet unsafe for humanity and other life forms, scholars are identifying planetary targets set at a safe distance from biophysical thresholds beyond which critical Earth systems may collapse. Yet despite the profound implications that both meeting and transgressing such targets may have for human wellbeing, including the potential for negative trade-offs, there is limited social science analysis that systematically considers the justice dimensions of such targets. Here we assess a range of views on planetary justice and present three arguments associated with why social scientists should engage with the scholarship on safe targets. We argue that complementing safe targets with just targets offers a fruitful approach for considering synergies and trade-offs between environmental and social aspirations and can inform inclusive deliberation on these important issues

Earth system justice needed to identify and live within Earth system boundaries

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

Beyond climate-smart agriculture: toward safe operating spaces for global food systems

Agriculture is considered to be “climate-smart” when it contributes to increasing food security, adaptation and mitigation in a sustainable way. This new concept now dominates current discussions in agricultural development because of its capacity to unite the agendas of the agriculture, development and climate change communities under one brand. In this opinion piece authored by scientists from a variety of international agricultural and climate research communities, we argue that the concept needs to be evaluated critically because the relationship between the three dimensions is poorly understood, such that practically any improved agricultural practice can be considered climate-smart. This lack of clarity may have contributed to the broad appeal of the concept. From the understanding that we must hold ourselves accountable to demonstrably better meet human needs in the short and long term within foreseeable local and planetary limits, we develop a conceptualization of climate-smart agriculture as agriculture that can be shown to bring us closer to safe operating spaces for agricultural and food systems across spatial and temporal scales. Improvements in the management of agricultural systems that bring us significantly closer to safe operating spaces will require transformations in governance and use of our natural resources, underpinned by enabling political, social and economic conditions beyond incremental changes. Establishing scientifically credible indicators and metrics of long-term safe operating spaces in the context of a changing climate and growing social-ecological challenges is critical to creating the societal demand and political will required to motivate deep transformations. Answering questions on how the needed transformational change can be achieved will require actively setting and testing hypotheses to refine and characterize our concepts of safer spaces for social-ecological systems across scales. This effort will demand prioritizing key areas of innovation, such as (1) improved adaptive management and governance of social-ecological systems; (2) development of meaningful and relevant integrated indicators of social-ecological systems; (3) gathering of quality integrated data, information, knowledge and analytical tools for improved models and scenarios in time frames and at scales relevant for decision-making; and (4) establishment of legitimate and empowered science policy dialogues on local to international scales to facilitate decision making informed by metrics and indicators of safe operating spaces

Transcending unsustainable dichotomies in management: lessons from Sustainability-Oriented Hybrid Organisations in Barcelona

Transformations towards more sustainable consumption and production cannot be achieved through mainstream organisational management rationales and practices. These management rationales and practices tend to impose rigid, fictitious dichotomies between what occurs internally within the organisation and what occurs ‘out there’ in biophysical systems, economies, and the broader social world. Such abstract divides not only create strong limitations on organisations’ responsibilities to address the complexity of accelerated global change, but also further exacerbate unintended negative consequences on environmental sustainability. However, new organisational forms are emerging aimed at overcoming such split rationalities with the overall goal to couple in a more sustainable manner their daily organisational practices in relation to biophysical systems. In this inductive research, we ask how Sustainability-Oriented Hybrid Organisations (SOHOs) can successfully promote positive transformations towards sustainability. We analysed nine SOHOs in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona and found that their transformative abilities relate to how they: (1) promote and apply complex socio-ecological worldviews where individuals and organisations are seen as integral components of socio-ecological systems; and (2) create enabling collaborative environments which include synergetic connections and substantive relationships ‘beyond’ the organisation. We found that the complexity of socio-ecological worldviews varies within the organisations which impacts the consistency to which they implement sustainability-related activities and experience mission drift

Transcending unsustainable dichotomies in management: lessons from Sustainability-Oriented Hybrid Organisations in Barcelona

Transformations towards more sustainable consumption and production cannot be achieved through mainstream organisational management rationales and practices. These management rationales and practices tend to impose rigid, fictitious dichotomies between what occurs internally within the organisation and what occurs ‘out there’ in biophysical systems, economies, and the broader social world. Such abstract divides not only create strong limitations on organisations’ responsibilities to address the complexity of accelerated global change, but also further exacerbate unintended negative consequences on environmental sustainability. However, new organisational forms are emerging aimed at overcoming such split rationalities with the overall goal to couple in a more sustainable manner their daily organisational practices in relation to biophysical systems. In this inductive research, we ask how Sustainability-Oriented Hybrid Organisations (SOHOs) can successfully promote positive transformations towards sustainability. We analysed nine SOHOs in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona and found that their transformative abilities relate to how they: (1) promote and apply complex socio-ecological worldviews where individuals and organisations are seen as integral components of socio-ecological systems; and (2) create enabling collaborative environments which include synergetic connections and substantive relationships ‘beyond’ the organisation. We found that the complexity of socio-ecological worldviews varies within the organisations which impacts the consistency to which they implement sustainability-related activities and experience mission drift