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Man changes the earth. This is not only about the resounding climate change, but about different systems that allow us to safely inhabit it. In fact, in 2009 a group of scientists led by the Center for Resilience in Stockholm, Sweden, created a kind of checklist to find out what those essential survival limits were and if we had crossed their safety thresholds. They went down in history as the nine planetary boundaries. The concept of justice was added to these limits. Last week, another group of scientists from different parts of the world, grouped under the Earth Commission, published a similar study in Nature, but added the equity variable to each of these domains. They called them the boundaries of the Earth system. Incidentally, they found that seven of the eight thresholds assessed, including justice, exceeded the limits of the earth.
Among the 50 authors are two Colombians: Daniel Ospina and Juan Rocha. América Futura spoke to the first researcher (Bogotá, 37 years old) to find out if crossing these thresholds can be understood in terms of human survival and what role Latin America plays within planetary justice.
Questions. What does it mean in practice to go beyond the limits of the earth system?
Answer. There are several of these areas that are having an impact in the form of increased premature mortality rates, chronic disease and loss of livelihoods. In the water sector, for example, not only is the viability of aquatic ecosystems lost, but it also affects agriculture and access to water for human consumption. There are problems with the weather, maybe more dramatic. For example, the number of days that certain regions are exposed to conditions of temperature and humidity—a measurement they call the “wet bulb”—where body temperature cannot be lowered by sweating, and which can even lead to death, is growing longer and longer .
Q Would you then fit it into a narrative about the extinction of the human species?
R I wouldn’t say it in terms of human extinction, especially if we’re talking about a time frame of the next few decades. To me, crossing those boundaries is more like stepping into completely uncharted territory: one with conditions where we don’t know how the planet will behave, so there’s a lot of uncertainty. All of this is also tied to events that, while only having a low probability of occurring for now, could reach a “critical tipping point” where, rather than helping us, Earth’s systems would accelerate change. And then existential risks begin to arise deliberately. Not necessarily for the entire species, but for ever larger parts of humanity.
Q Unlike the planetary boundaries, these Earth system boundaries are called justice. What role does it play?
R It is one thing to define the limit at which the earth system, or any part of it, becomes unstable and loses its resilience (safe limit). And another thing is to define a point at which there are significant implications for large segments of the human population. This second limit (fair limit) can even be far ahead of the safe limit, where the resilience of the system decreases. I will give an example with the weather domain. We know that if we avoid a global temperature rise of 1.5°C above the average global temperature compared to the pre-industrial period, we stay below the safe limit. Because we know that above 1.5° there is a great danger of the onset of climate destabilization. But long before we reach that 1.5°, we are already seeing far-reaching impacts of climate change on large parts of the human population. Taking into account this criterion, which we understand as fairness, we establish that the limit for the climate is 1°C.
P. I mean is it over?
A. Yes, this is also true for seven of the eight borders we examined.
P. In fact, one of the limits that has not been exceeded is air pollution (particulate matter emissions)…
R. Yes, it hasn’t been surpassed on a global scale, but it has in some regions, and that’s another reason why it’s important to look at justice. In many parts of the world, in regions, in cities, the amount of particulate matter exceeds the level permitted or recommended by the World Health Organization. This is important to keep in mind as the message cannot be that there is no cause for concern or that there is no need for stricter regulation as we have not surpassed it globally. Actually, it is urgent and requires attention.
Q Here, too, the term fair applies to the entire investigation. How does Latin America fare on this level, considering that it is not necessarily an emissions region but has had various resources siphoned from it to ship to the Global North?
R Well, it’s not something that was developed in this particular inquiry, but as the Earth Commission, we’ve seen that it’s very clear that many of the effects of environmental damage aren’t felt where emissions have been generated in the past. And there are other types of global connections as well. For example, there is a lot of deforestation and intensive agriculture in the region, but that is also because Latin America produces many things for the world. Global trade has enabled those channels where a consumption decision in one part of the world leads to changes in another part.