Planetary Boundaries for Business
Planetary Boundaries science provides a comprehensive framework to mitigate risks, future proof businesses, and drive innovation, that helps bring us back to a safe operating space.
There are many companies that are already working toward integrating the Planetary Boundaries into their ESG strategies.
Latest Resources
The Planetary Guardians are working with a variety of partners to operationalize planetary boundaries for businesses. The following resources are two of the first outputs from this work.
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Supporting companies to make Planetary Boundaries operational
Working with the Planetary Guardians, Systemiq has developed the Risk, Opportunities, and Resilience approach to support companies towards building integrated business strategies based on most material risks and aligned with the Planetary Boundaries. The pragmatic 4-step risk, opportunity and resilience approach helps business to build integrated environment strategies. The approach leverages existing frameworks, notably TNFD (LEAP), SBTi, SBTN, as well as CSRD and other regulatory standards and can accelerate uptake of these. The approach also aims to leverage suite of open-source data, especially physical risk filter, transition risk filter and transition intervention filters.
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Climate and Nature-Based Interventions in Livestock
The FAIRR Initiative's report introduces an integrated climate-nature assessment framework grounded in the Planetary Boundaries concept, specifically addressing the livestock sector's impact on Earth's critical thresholds. The report emphasizes that nature-based interventions offer greater long-term emissions reductions and biodiversity benefits than technology-based solutions. This underscores the urgent need for investors and stakeholders to prioritize sustainable practices within the livestock industry to restore and maintain the planet's ecological balance.
Existing Initiatives
A growing number of initiatives are in place that translate the Planetary Boundaries framework for business strategy and operations. This reflects a growing recognition of the importance of sustainable practices across sectors for both resilience and competitiveness. Some of these initiatives are below.
The B Team
CDP
Science Based Targets Network
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development
Business for Nature
Tools in Development
To operationalize PBs for businesses, SYSTEMIQ and the Planetary Guardians are developing a Planetary Risk and Opportunities tool that will assess exposure to physical and transition risks related to PBs.
The tool will assist companies in expanding climate strategies into comprehensive planetary risk and opportunities strategies, including partnering with existing business standards like the Science Based Targets Network.
Additionally, cost abatement curves across all PBs will be provided for various sectors to illustrate the costs and benefits of different interventions to align business and economic development with global sustainability. You can view their early work in the Food, Green Steel and aviation industries here.
For the Finance Sector
The growing recognition of the role of the financial sector in the transition towards a more sustainable economy is represented by:
The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)
Now integrated into the IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB)
The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)
The TNFD has developed a set of disclosure recommendations and guidance that encourage and enable business and finance to assess, report and act on their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities.
These initiatives work on shifting capital markets towards practices that recognize and respect Planetary Boundaries, and guide investments to maintain the planet's natural systems.
This is an exciting time for companies to create a new curve, one that creates benefits for the bottom line and helps create a world where we can all thrive within Planetary Boundaries. Ultimately this will demand an evolution of our economic model to one that truly values humanity and a living nature.
Are you a business already incorporating the Boundaries into your decision making?
Or are you interested in applying Planetary Boundaries science? We would love to hear from you.