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Reconnecting to the Biosphere

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Abstract

Humanity has emerged as a major force in the operation of the biosphere, with a significant imprint on the Earth System, challenging social–ecological resilience. This new situation calls for a fundamental shift in perspectives, world views, and institutions. Human development and progress must be reconnected to the capacity of the biosphere and essential ecosystem services to be sustained. Governance challenges include a highly interconnected and faster world, cascading social–ecological interactions and planetary boundaries that create vulnerabilities but also opportunities for social–ecological change and transformation. Tipping points and thresholds highlight the importance of understanding and managing resilience. New modes of flexible governance are emerging. A central challenge is to reconnect these efforts to the changing preconditions for societal development as active stewards of the Earth System. We suggest that the Millennium Development Goals need to be reframed in such a planetary stewardship context combined with a call for a new social contract on global sustainability. The ongoing mind shift in human relations with Earth and its boundaries provides exciting opportunities for societal development in collaboration with the biosphere—a global sustainability agenda for humanity.

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Notes

  1. The biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and cryosphere (the Earth’s surface where water is in solid form, including the poles and permafrost regions).

  2. The life-supporting environment has been defined as “that part of the earth that provides the physiological necessities of life, namely food and other energy, mineral nutrients, air and water”, and the life-support system as “the functional term for the environment, organisms, processes, and resources interacting to provide these physical necessities” (Odum 1989).

  3. Complex systems are characterized by multiple pathways of development (multiple states or basins of attraction), interacting periods of gradual and rapid change, feedbacks and non-linear dynamics, thresholds, tipping points and shifts (transitions) between pathways, and how such dynamics interacts across temporal and spatial scales.

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Acknowledgments

The article is based on Folke et al. (2011). Reconnecting to the Biosphere, Working Paper No.1. Prepared for the “3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability: Transforming the World in an Era of Global Change”, in Stockholm, 16–19 May 2011. Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Stockholm Environment Institute, the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact. We acknowledge support from Stiftelsen Futura, Ebba och Sven Schwartz Stiftelse, Kjell and Märta Beijer Foundation, Formas, and Mistra through a core grant to the Stockholm Resilience Centre, a cross-faculty research centre at Stockholm University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden

    Carl Folke, Åsa Jansson, Johan Rockström, Per Olsson, Anne-Sophie Crépin, Jonas Ebbesson, Thomas Elmqvist, Victor Galaz, Fredrik Moberg, Åsa Persson, Garry Peterson, Will Steffen & Brian Walker

  2. The Beijer Institute, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, PO Box 50005, 10405, Stockholm, Sweden

    Carl Folke, Åsa Jansson, Anne-Sophie Crépin, Stephen Polasky & Brian Walker

  3. Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

    Johan Rockström, Måns Nilsson & Åsa Persson

  4. Center for Limnology, University of Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Stephen R. Carpenter

  5. Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    F. Stuart Chapin III

  6. Department Biology and Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Gretchen Daily

  7. Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden

    Kjell Danell

  8. Environmental Law, Stockholm Environmental Law and Policy Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Jonas Ebbesson

  9. Natural Resource Management, Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Thomas Elmqvist

  10. Albaeco, Stockholm, Sweden

    Fredrik Moberg

  11. Stockholm Resilience Centre and Baltic Nest Institute, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Henrik Österblom

  12. Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Elinor Ostrom

  13. Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Elinor Ostrom

  14. Departments of Applied Economics and Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Stephen Polasky

  15. The ANU Climate Change Institute, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Will Steffen

  16. CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Brian Walker

  17. Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Frances Westley

Authors
  1. Carl Folke
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  2. Åsa Jansson
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  3. Johan Rockström
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  4. Per Olsson
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  5. Stephen R. Carpenter
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  6. F. Stuart Chapin III
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  7. Anne-Sophie Crépin
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  8. Gretchen Daily
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  9. Kjell Danell
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  10. Jonas Ebbesson
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  11. Thomas Elmqvist
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  12. Victor Galaz
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  13. Fredrik Moberg
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  14. Måns Nilsson
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  15. Henrik Österblom
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  16. Elinor Ostrom
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  17. Åsa Persson
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  18. Garry Peterson
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  19. Stephen Polasky
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  20. Will Steffen
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  21. Brian Walker
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  22. Frances Westley
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carl Folke.

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Folke, C., Jansson, Å., Rockström, J. et al. Reconnecting to the Biosphere. AMBIO 40, 719–738 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-011-0184-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-011-0184-y

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