Johan Rockström
| Johan Rockström | |
|---|---|
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| Fields | Global sustainability and water resources |
| Institutions | and the |
| Known for | Leading development on the Planetary Boundaries framework |
| Notable awards | The Woods Hole Research Center's Lawrence Huntington Environmental Prize, November 6, 2014 |
Johan Rockström is executive director of the , and teaches natural resource management at . He is a strategist on how resilience can be built into land regions which are short of water, and has published over 100 papers in fields ranging from practical land and water use to global sustainability. Johan Rockström was Executive Director of the from 2004-2012.
Rockström is internationally recognized on global sustainability issues. In 2009, he led the team which developed the Planetary Boundaries framework, a proposed precondition for facilitating human development at a time when the planet is undergoing rapid change. In recognition of this work, magazine named him "Swede of the Year" for "engaging and exciting work in sustainable development. Rockström is vice-chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and chair of the Earth System Visioning Task Team of International Council for Science. In 2010, the magazine Miljöaktuellt ranked him the second most influential person in Sweden on environmental issues, and Veckans Affärer gave him its "Social Capitalist Award". In 2011 he chaired the third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability in Stockholm.
In 2009, Rockström led an international group of 28 leading academics, who proposed a new Earth system framework for government and management agencies as a precondition for sustainable development. The framework posits that there are Earth system processes on the planet that have boundaries or thresholds which should not be crossed. The extent to which these boundaries are not crossed marks what the group calls the safe operating space for humanity. The group identified nine "planetary life support systems" essential for human survival, and attempted to quantify just how far seven of these systems have been pushed already. They then estimated how much further we can go before our own survival is threatened; beyond these boundaries there is a risk of "irreversible and abrupt environmental change" which could make Earth less habitable. Boundaries can help identify where there is room and define a "safe space for human development", which is an improvement on approaches which aim at just minimizing human impacts on the planet.
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