Scientists: Humanity Has Crossed 7 of 9 Planetary Safety Boundaries

An international team of scientists, including researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has found in a new report that humanity has crossed seven of the nine safe planetary boundaries — including climate, land use and biodiversity. According to the researchers, only two of the nine indicators remain within the safe zone, while the natural mechanisms that have so far cushioned the effects of the climate crisis are weakening faster than expected.

Seven of Nine Boundaries Crossed

The concept of planetary boundaries was introduced in 2009 by a research group led by Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Scientists identified nine key ecological limits: climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, biogeochemical flows of phosphorus and nitrogen, freshwater depletion, land-use change, loss of biodiversity, atmospheric aerosol loading and chemical pollution.

As early as 2009, the report's authors found that three boundaries had already been crossed — the nitrogen cycle, biodiversity loss and climate change. By 2023 the number of breached boundaries had risen to six, and last year a seventh was added — ocean acidification, driven by the mass absorption of carbon dioxide. Thus, over a decade and a half, the number of critical limits that have been crossed has more than doubled.

Nature's Weakening Shields

The main finding of the new report is a warning that the planet's natural "protective shields" are weakening, while the risk of a domino effect between boundaries is rising sharply. Land and ocean are gradually losing their capacity to absorb humanity's carbon emissions: due to extreme droughts and wildfires, some forest ecosystems are already turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources. The world's oceans, which have so far absorbed excess heat from the burning of fossil fuels, are ceasing to cushion atmospheric warming and are themselves becoming a risk factor.

Scientists note that planetary boundaries are interconnected: crossing one of them — land use, for example — sharply accelerates the breakdown of others, including climate and biodiversity. Crossing a boundary does not in itself mean immediate catastrophe, but it sharply raises the risk of irreversible change — much like a patient with breathing problems whose illness is compounded by circulatory disorders and excess weight, so that the overall risk to the body grows exponentially.

Only two of the nine boundaries remain within the safe zone — atmospheric aerosol pollution and ozone layer depletion. But even here there are worrying signs: recovery of the ozone layer has recently slowed, and the average global aerosol figure masks extremely dangerous air pollution in certain regions, such as South Asia.

A Year of Climate Disasters and a Record El Niño

The report was published after 12 months marked by climate catastrophes on land and at sea. Monsoon floods in Pakistan in 2025 affected more than 6.9 million people, and this year a similar disaster threatens millions of residents of Bangladesh and the Philippines. In August and September 2026, devastating floods and landslides in Nepal and Tibet were triggered by glacier collapses.

Summer 2026 was the hottest on record for Western Europe — the region faced extreme drought in France, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom, along with widespread wildfires across Europe and Canada. Record heat was also recorded in Japan, South Korea and the Middle East, while droughts alternating with heavy rains and frosts caused billions of dollars in damage to crops in the United States and Africa.

A new record for ocean heat content was set in 2025. From January 2023 to September 2025, heat stress caused coral bleaching across 84.4% of the world's coral reef area — the largest such event ever recorded. A symbol of the overheated oceans was last year's Hurricane Melissa, which rapidly intensified to category five and struck Jamaica after passing over abnormally warm waters.

The natural phenomenon of El Niño — a warm phase of ocean-atmosphere oscillations in the Pacific first noticed by Peruvian and Ecuadorian fishermen back in the 19th century — is also playing a role in these events. During the warm phase, trade winds weaken, the ocean surface warms, and warm water blocks the upwelling of cold deep currents. Ocean surface temperatures typically rise by 1–2°C, but this year, by September, the deviation exceeded 3.05°C above the long-term average — and the event traditionally peaks in December. The current El Niño intensified earlier than the comparably powerful events of 1997 and 2015, with the greatest warming observed in the eastern tropical Pacific.

The consequences are already being felt around the world: drought has slowed shipping through the Panama Canal, an historic drought has intensified in the Caribbean, leading to water restrictions in Puerto Rico and threatening crops in Jamaica. Indonesia's wildfire season began early and severely, while monsoon rains in India came in below normal alongside localized flooding. Heatwaves are expected in South and Southeast Asia, Australia and the Amazon, while food security is under threat in southern and eastern Africa. In Chile and Peru, by contrast, heavy rain and snowfall have caused flooding, disrupted copper mining and led to the closure of Machu Picchu to tourists. By year's end, heavy rains, floods and landslides are also expected on the west coast of South America and in the western United States.

Ways Out of the Crisis

Human civilization has developed over the past 10,000 years thanks to a relatively stable climate and natural resources. These conditions are now being disrupted by the mass release of pollutants and the destruction of natural ecosystems — forests and wetlands that filter drinking water — to make way for agriculture and development. The report's authors warn that the ability of land, forests, water bodies and oceans to act as a buffer against the climate crisis "is fundamentally weakening and may be significantly overestimated." There is a growing risk that the Amazon rainforest, the world's largest carbon store, will reach a tipping point and turn into savanna — with severe consequences for climate, food and water security, and human health worldwide.

"El Niño poses an enormous threat to the food security of millions of people who are already in vulnerable situations. The sooner we help people prepare for these climate shocks, the greater our chances of saving lives and protecting their livelihoods," said Carl Skau, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme.

The report's lead author, Boris Sakschewski, summed up the situation this way: "The diagnosis is clear. Pressure is mounting across all the planetary boundaries that have already moved beyond the safe operating space. This means a growing risk of large-scale, long-lasting and potentially irreversible changes, while the room for error in addressing these problems is shrinking."

According to scientists and economists, the set of solutions needed to bring the planet back into a safe state is well known, but requires systemic changes in the economy, energy and consumption. Solving the climate and ocean acidification problem requires an energy transformation: phasing out fossil fuels, switching to renewable sources, improving the energy efficiency of buildings and industry, and restoring forests, wetlands and soils in combination with carbon capture and storage technologies.

Disrupted nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, excessive land use and biodiversity loss are meant to be addressed through reform of agriculture and the food system: ecological farming, precision fertilizer application, reducing global meat and dairy consumption, and cutting food waste — all of which would free up land for ecosystem restoration. Chemical pollution from plastics, chemicals and heavy metals, as well as resource depletion, should be tackled through a transition to a circular economy — with a right to repair for appliances, closed-loop material cycles and strict regulation of synthetic substances.

"We have no time to delay: we have the knowledge, the capabilities and the solutions to change course. Accelerating action to bring all planetary boundaries back into a safe operating space is essential to protect people's lives and livelihoods, and to deliver on the promise of a shared prosperous future," said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute and one of the report's co-authors.

The resources and technologies needed to rebuild the economy within the planet's limits already exist, the report's authors note. The main obstacle remains dysfunctional politics, beholden to lobbying from the oil, gas and agrochemical industries and various oligarchic interests. After a summer marked by numerous tragedies linked to climate change, scientists are calling for louder public discussion and for building more resilient and united households, cities and states — the world, they say, stands on the edge of an abyss, and people increasingly want change.

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Source: ekolist.cz