Planetary Boundaries - Introduction

Thomas Robert Malthus was English political economist whom An Essay on the Principle of Population had been written by. This book advocates warning of negative impact on the quality of human life due to surging and overwhelming population in 1798. In detail, population explosion will make carrying capacity of food supply at stake. This prospect could be causal of sixth extinction its reason is not natural event but humanity. In general, major extinction events so far have been brought by natural process like end of the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous which are attributed of fluctuation of sea level, volcanic eruptions, comet shower and so on. (Sachs, 2015). This is the one of the reasons why Anthropocene should have been defined as the era that human beings are giving impact on environmental aspect including biodiversity. Climate change represents phenomena that humanity enforces ecosystem transform into another one. Here is how all species are at stake and well-defined by Johan Rockstrom, Planetary Boundaries. Rockstrom claims the earth has nine boundaries and they are all at stake by humanity as followings.

• First planetary boundary is human induced climate change that GHG emission cause it. And, it requires to control GHG emission in order to prevent worst and worse scenarios.
• Second is ocean acidification relating first one. CO2 concentration cause that oceans are going to be acidic. This rising acid level threatens marine species including corals, shellfish, lobsters, and very small plankton.
• Third one is ozone depletion. I personally remember we considered how to use refrigerator and sprays. From chemical point of view, CFCs rises into the atmosphere and attack O3. The hole made by humanity will be no longer capable to shut down ultraviolet radiation. In last, human gets negative impact such as skin cancer.
• Fourth one is concentration of nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients makes ground water and rivers polluted. This is the byproduct of excessive chemical fertilizer use for farming. All of those chemicals remain on the ground because crops do not take detrimental elements away.
• Fifth boundary is fresh water sources that all species need it to live. It should be consumed by 70% for agricultural use, 20% for industrial use, and 10% for household use. Aquifer gradually lost water sources even though rainfall recharges. Because population increasing helps depletion on amount of water in groundwater aquifer.
• Sixth boundary is land use that deforestation represents. The historical growth of population, technologies, and living standard leads expanding faming, industrial, and living place expanding. Deforestation breaks the balance of proportion on oxygen and CO2 on atmosphere, and it creates relatively massive crisis like a climate change and extinction of other species.
• The seventh we should pay attention to is biodiversity transition. This can be explained by quantifying number of species on terrestrial, marine, freshwater, and all vertebrate species. Variety of those species are decreasing into roughly under 70% based on number of 1970. Humanity massively contribute to break ecosystem by air and water pollution, deforestation, climate change, and freshwater depletion. This will be able to be sixth extinction not by natural event.
• Eighth boundary is called as aerosol leading. While we are burning coal, biomass, diesel fuels, other sources of pollution, much small particles in the air runs air pollution. This is directly giving negative impact for human health like lung disease.
• Last one is chemical pollution. This is causal including manufacturing, mining, and petrochemical need much of land use, water consumption, and pollution. (Sachs, 2015)

In this narrative, field beyond tipping points are to describe uncertain, dynamic, complex, and dangerous area. Boundary is threshold that scientist quantified with scientific proof. Now, four out nine subjects crossed boundary.