Cornell

Biographic Data

ID28737
NAMECornell
FAMILY NAMECornell
SIGNATURECORNELL
AFFILIATIONSStockholm Resilience Centre
ORCID0000-0003-4367-1296
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS39
TOTAL CITATIONS329
AUTHOR COUNT39
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1984
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2024
H-INDEX10

  • Plastics pollution exacerbates the impacts of all planetary boundaries

    Open AccessPatricia Villarrubia-Gómez, Bethanie Carney Almroth et al.ARTICLEOne Earth2024

  • Climate change critically affects the status of the land-system change planetary boundary

    Open AccessArne Tobian, Dieter Gerten et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2024

    The planetary boundaries framework defines a safe operating space for humanity. To date, these boundaries have mostly been investigated separately, and it is unclear whether breaching one boundary can lead to the transgression of another. By employing a dynamic global vegetation model, we systematically simulate the strength and direction of the effects of different transgression levels of the climate change boundary (using climate output from te…

  • Multiple pathways towards sustainable development goals and climate targets

    Open AccessBjoern Soergel, Sebastian Rauner et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2024

    The UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the Paris climate target require a holistic transformation towards human well-being within planetary boundaries. However, there are growing debates on how to best pursue these targets. Proposed transformation strategies include market- and technology-driven green-growth, shifting towards a sufficiency-oriented post-growth economy, and a transformation driven primarily by strong government action. He…

  • Re-imagining the use of integrated assessment models from a social science perspective—lessons from the Sustainable Development Pathways (SDP)

    Open AccessAriel Macaspac Hernandez, Cornell et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2024

    Socio-political factors in Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), and their scenario narratives often lack transparency for policymakers and interdisciplinary scholars. As these tools increasingly support sustainable development goals, their assumptions and methodologies require scrutiny, particularly from social scientists. We address critiques of climate isolationism, overemphasis on technological transitions, and insufficient inter- and transdis…

  • Translating Earth system boundaries for cities and businesses

    Open AccessXuemei Bai, Syezlin Hasan et al.ARTICLENature Sustainability2024Cited by: 4References: 12

  • Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries

    Open AccessKatherine Richardson, Will Steffen et al.ARTICLEScience Advances2023

    This planetary boundaries framework update finds that six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity. Ocean acidification is close to being breached, while aerosol loading regionally exceeds the boundary. Stratospheric ozone levels have slightly recovered. The transgression level has increased for all boundaries earlier identified as overstepped. As primary productio…

  • Framing science-based targets: Reformist and radical discourses in an Earth system governance initiative

    Open AccessSasha Quahe, Cornell et al.ARTICLEEarth System Governance2023Cited by: 1References: 32

    Science-Based Targets (SBTs) are being developed for companies to contribute to global sustainability goals, including for ‘nature’. The literature has not yet explored multiple understandings of SBTs. We adopt an interpretive approach, using Q methodology to explore framings of SBTs amongst 22 scientists and practitioners engaged in SBT development. Results show two distinct framings: ‘we need science-based targets to help economic systems move …

  • Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points

    Open AccessDavid I Armstrong Mckay, Arie Staal et al.ARTICLEScience2022

    Climate tipping points occur when change in a part of the climate system becomes self-perpetuating beyond a warming threshold, leading to substantial Earth system impacts. Synthesizing paleoclimate, observational, and model-based studies, we provide a revised shortlist of global “core” tipping elements and regional “impact” tipping elements and their temperature thresholds. Current global warming of ~1.1°C above preindustrial temperatures already…

  • Outside the Safe Operating Space of the Planetary Boundary for Novel Entities

    Open AccessLinn Persson, Bethanie Carney Almroth et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Science & Technology2022

    We submit that the safe operating space of the planetary boundary of novel entities is exceeded since annual production and releases are increasing at a pace that outstrips the global capacity for assessment and monitoring. The novel entities boundary in the planetary boundaries framework refers to entities that are novel in a geological sense and that could have large-scale impacts that threaten the integrity of Earth system processes. We review…

  • The lure of novel biological and chemical entities in food-system transformations

    Open AccessPeter Søgaard Jørgensen, Daniel Itzamna Avila-Ortega et al.ARTICLEOne Earth2022

    Synthetic chemicals and biologically engineered materials are major forces in today's food systems, but they are also major drivers of the global environmental changes and health challenges that characterize the Anthropocene. To address these challenges, we will need to increase assessment activity, promote alternative production practices with less reliance on such technologies, and regulate social campaigns and experiments

  • Defining a sustainable development target space for 2030 and 2050

    Open AccessDetlef P Van Vuuren, Caroline Zimm et al.ARTICLEOne Earth2022

    With the establishment of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), countries worldwide agreed to a prosperous, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable future for all. This ambition, however, exposes a critical gap in science-based insights, namely on how to achieve the 17 SDGs simultaneously. Quantitative goal-seeking scenario studies could help explore the needed systems' transformations. This requires a clear definition of the "tar…

  • Understanding and addressing the planetary crisis of chemicals and plastics

    Open AccessBethanie Carney Almroth, Cornell et al.ARTICLEOne Earth2022

  • A prototype Earth system impact metric that accounts for cross-scale interactions

    Open AccessSteven J Lade, Ingo Fetzer et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2021

    Human activities are disrupting the Earth system’s biophysical processes, which underlie human wellbeing. The planetary boundary framework sets ‘safe’ global limits on these pressures, but a sub-global assessment of these pressures, their interactions and subsequent systemic effects is needed to enable corporate and public entities to assess the systemic environmental impacts of their decisions. Here, we developed a prototype Earth system impact …

  • Bending the curve of terrestrial biodiversity needs an integrated strategy

    Open AccessDavid Leclère, Michael Obersteiner et al.ARTICLENature2020

    Increased efforts are required to prevent further losses to terrestrial biodiversity and the ecosystem services that it provides1,2. Ambitious targets have been proposed, such as reversing the declining trends in biodiversity3; however, just feeding the growing human population will make this a challenge4. Here we use an ensemble of land-use and biodiversity models to assess whether—and how—humanity can reverse the declines in terrestrial biodive…

  • The Water Planetary Boundary: Interrogation and Revision

    Open AccessTom Gleeson, Lan Wang‐Erlandsson et al.ARTICLEOne Earth2020

  • Learning from generations of sustainability concepts

    Open AccessAndrea S Downing, Manqi Chang et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2020

    The environment does not exist as a sphere separate from human actions, ambitions, and needs, and attempts to defend it in isolation from human concerns have given the very word "environment" a connotation of naivety in some political circles. The word "development" has also been narrowed by some into a very limited focus, along the lines of "what poor nations should do to become richer", and thus again is automatically dismissed by many in the i…

  • Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems

    Open AccessWalter Willett, Johan Rockström et al.ARTICLEThe Lancet2019

  • Matching scope, purpose and uses of planetary boundaries science

    Open AccessAndrea S Downing, Avit Kumar Bhowmik et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2019

    Background: The Planetary Boundaries concept (PBc) has emerged as a key global sustainability concept in international sustainable development arenas. Initially presented as an agenda for global sustainability research, it now shows potential for sustainability governance. We use the fact that it is widely cited in scientific literature (>3500 citations) and an extensively studied concept to analyse how it has been used and developed since its fi…

  • Anthropocene risk

    Open AccessPatrick Keys, Victor Galaz et al.ARTICLENature Sustainability2019Cited by: 11References: 12

  • Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene

    Open AccessWill Steffen, Johan Rockström et al.ARTICLEProceedings of the National…2018

    We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels sig…

  • Aiming higher to bend the curve of biodiversity loss

    Open AccessGeorgina M Mace, Mike Barrett et al.ARTICLENature Sustainability2018Cited by: 20References: 1

  • Towards defining an environmental investment universe within planetary boundaries

    Open AccessChristoph Butz, Jürg Liechti et al.ARTICLESustainability Science2018Cited by: 1References: 6

    Science is increasingly able to identify precautionary boundaries for critical Earth system processes, and the business world provides societies with important means for adaptive responses to global environmental risks. In turn, investors provide vital leverage on companies. Here, we report on our transdisciplinary science/business experience in applying the planetary boundaries framework (sensu Rockström et al., Ecol Soc 14, 2009) to define a bo…

  • Policy coherence to achieve the SDGs: Using integrated simulation models to assess effective policies

    Open AccessDavid Collste, Matteo Pedercini et al.ARTICLESustainability Science2017Cited by: 31References: 4

    Coherently addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals requires planning tools that guide policy makers. Given the integrative nature of the SDGs, we believe that integrative modelling techniques are especially useful for this purpose. In this paper, we present and demonstrate the use of the new System Dynamics based iSDG family of models. We use a national model for Tanzania to analyse impacts of substantial investments in photovoltaic capac…

  • Closing the loop: Reconnecting human dynamics to Earth System science

    Open AccessJonathan F Donges, Rainer Winkelmann et al.ARTICLEThe Anthropocene Review2017Cited by: 12References: 17

    International commitment to the appropriately ambitious Paris climate agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 has pulled into the limelight the urgent need for major scientific progress in understanding and modelling the Anthropocene, the tightly intertwined social-environmental planetary system that humanity now inhabits. The Anthropocene qualitatively differs from previous eras in Earth's history in three key char…

  • From Planetary Boundaries to national fair shares of the global safe operating space — How can the scales be bridged

    Open AccessTiina Häyhä, Patrick Lucas et al.ARTICLEGlobal Environmental Change2016Cited by: 36References: 10

    The planetary boundaries framework proposes quantitative global limits to the anthropogenic perturbation of crucial Earth system processes, and thus marks out a planetary safe operating space for human activities. Yet, decisions regarding resource use and emissions are mostly made at less aggregated scales, by national and sub-national governments, businesses, and other local actors. To operationalize the planetary boundaries concept, the boundar…