Policy Design for the Anthropocene
Recent literature on the Anthropocene suggests multiple threats to the resilience of the Earth system. Exceeding the ‘planetary boundaries’ could lead to rapidly increasing risks of catastrophic and/or irreversible environmental change.
Today, more than ever, ‘Spaceship Earth’ is an apt metaphor as we chart the boundaries for a safe planet. Social scientists both analyse why society courts disaster by approaching or even overstepping these boundaries and try to design suitable policies to avoid these perils. Because the threats of transgressing planetary boundaries are global, long-run, uncertain and interconnected, they must be analysed together to avoid conflicts and take advantage of synergies. To obtain policies that are effective at both international and local levels requires careful analysis of the underlying mechanisms across scientific disciplines and approaches, and must take politics into account. In this Perspective, we examine the complexities of designing policies that can keep Earth within the biophysical limits favourable to human life.
Authors
Edward Barbier
Ian Bateman
Ottmar Edenhofer
Inge van den Bijgaart
Anne-Sophie Crépin
Ottmar Edenhofer
Wolfgang Habla
John Hassler
Olof Johansson-Stenman
Andreas Lange
Stephen Polasky
Johan Rockström
Henrik G. Smith
Will Steffen
Gernot Wagner
James Wilen
Francisco Alpízar
Christian Azar
Donna Carless
Carlos Chávez
Jessica Coria
Gustav Engström
Sverker C. Jagers
Håkan Pleijel
Amanda Robinson
