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Dietary change, supported by bold policies, is essential for a sustainable planet.

Success at the latest climate talks will be a recognition by the world’s nations that incremental change will not do the job, says Johan Rockström.

Meeting global food needs requires strategies for storing rainwater and retaining soil moisture to bridge dry spells, urge Johan Rockström and Malin Falkenmark.

Anthropogenic pressures and climate change are altering water flows worldwide. Better understanding, new economic thinking and an international governance framework are needed to stave off catastrophe.

Consensus exists on the urgent need for food systems to be more sustainable, but defining their environmentally safe operating space is challenging. This study proposes food system boundaries as a share of planetary boundaries, defining budgets across nine boundaries and revealing where boundary transgression is most critical.

In the light of nine Earth System Processes (ESPs) and the corresponding planetary boundaries, here the authors assessed the global environmental impact of a global carbon pricing in a multi-boundary world. They show that a global carbon tax would relieve pressure on most ESPs and it is therefore stronger in a multi-boundary world than when considering climate change in isolation.

The idea that emissions can be offset through projects that claim to avoid releases or to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is fatally flawed.

We find that justice considerations constrain the integrated Earth system boundaries more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading, and our assessment provides a foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people.

Exploitation of the high seas risks doing irreversible damage to biodiversity, climate stability and ocean equity. A consensus must be built now to save them.

Identifying and quantifying planetary boundaries that must not be transgressed could help prevent human activities from causing unacceptable environmental change, argue Johan Rockström and colleagues.

Failure to agree on global grants to help low- and middle-income countries to achieve net-zero emissions cannot be the end of the story. An urgent solution is needed.

Water consumption in line with natural water supply ensures sustainable and equitable access to freshwater resources worldwide. This study assesses whether renewable surface water is enough to meet people’s basic needs and, where it is not, estimates how much groundwater would be required.

Temporarily overshooting the 1.5 °C limit risks triggering climate tipping elements. This study finds that every 0.1 °C of warming increases risk, with a strong acceleration above +2.0 °C. Achieving net-zero emissions by 2100 is crucial to minimise long-term risks.

Planetary stability must be integrated with United Nations targets to fight poverty and secure human well-being, argue David Griggs and colleagues.

Researchers must help to define science-based targets for water, nutrients, carbon emissions and more to avoid cascading effects and stave off tipping points in Earth’s systems.

Exceptional streamflow and soil moisture conditions now occur on a substantial share of global land area and are much more frequent than in pre-industrial times. This marks a notable transgression of the new planetary boundary for freshwater change.

Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires that we avoid losing key natural carbon reserves. This study maps such irrecoverable carbon globally and finds a third of the remaining managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities and nearly a quarter in protected areas.

A global model finds that the environmental impacts of the food system could increase by 60–90% by 2050, and that dietary changes, improvements in technologies and management, and reductions in food loss and waste will all be needed to mitigate these impacts.

Tropical rainforests partly create their own climatic conditions by promoting precipitation, therefore rainforest losses may trigger dramatic shifts. Here the authors combine remote sensing, hydrological modelling, and atmospheric moisture tracking simulations to assess forest-rainfall feedbacks in three major tropical rainforest regions on Earth and simulate potential changes under a severe climate change scenario.

The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions.

Temporarily exceeding temperature targets could increase risk of crossing tipping-element thresholds. This study considers a range of overshoot scenarios in a stylized network model and shows that overshoots increase tipping risks by up to 72% compared with remaining within targets.

As the United Nations climate negotiations flounder, businesses are forging ahead with their own low-carbon standards. Have we passed a political tipping point for momentum on carbon action?

Translating Earth system boundaries across scale involves scientific and normative judgements, with associated assumptions, bias and uncertainties. A protocol involving key building blocks and control steps in translation is presented with focus on businesses and cities, two understudied critical actors.

Agriculture transforms the Earth and risks crossing thresholds for a healthy planet. This study finds almost half of current food production crosses such boundaries, as for freshwater use, but that transformation towards more sustainable production and consumption could support 10.2 billion people.

The cascading effects and feedbacks of interactions between planetary boundaries shrink the safe operating space originally identified by analysing each boundary separately.

The world should redouble its efforts on the SDGs, not abandon them. Here’s how to progress the United Nations’ agenda towards 2050.

Without a great food system transformation, the world will fail to deliver both on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement. There are five grand challenges to be faced, by science and society, to effect that transformation.

Reversing the alarming trend of rising food insecurity requires transformations towards just, sustainable and healthy food systems with an explicit focus on the most vulnerable and fragile regions.

Christiana Figueres and colleagues set out a six-point plan for turning the tide of the world’s carbon dioxide by 2020.

The environmental implications of meeting the needs of the poorest are under debate. By showing substantial inequalities in natural resource claims and responsibility for ecological damage globally, this study estimates and discusses the impacts of achieving just access on the Earth system.

The concept of resilience, once meaning the ability to ‘bounce back’ to the status quo, now refers to the capacity to live and develop with change. A mismatch between the latest science of resilience and the talk of resilience recovery after COVID-19 requires resilience thinking to be aligned with sustainable development.

The Planetary Boundary (PB) framework — which provides guardrails to maintain the safe operating space for humanity — has received widespread scientific and societal interest. This Review outlines the emergence and mainstreaming of PB thinking, including relevance to Earth system science, justice, governance, economics and sustainability.

In order to limit warming and the most severe consequences of climate change, net global carbon emissions must reach zero by 2050. Many ecosystems contain carbon that would be irrecoverable on this timescale if lost and must be protected to meet climate goals.

Intensifying agricultural production often imposes environmental costs. This study assesses progress towards the redesign of agricultural systems, finding that seven types of sustainable intensification now characterize an estimated 29% of farms on 9% of agricultural land worldwide.

Biophysical boundaries are not inherently just. A collaboration between social and natural scientists, the Earth Commission, defines and operationalizes Earth system justice to ensure that biophysical boundaries reduce harm, increase well-being, and reflect substantive and procedural justice.

Earth System Science (ESS) has emerged as a powerful tool to investigate and understand global change. This Perspective outlines the history of ESS and advocates for the full integration of human and biogeophysical dynamics necessary to build a truly unified ESS effort.

Technologies and systemic innovation are critical for the transformation of the food system. This Perspective identifies promising technologies, assesses their readiness and proposes eight action points to accelerate innovation.

The planetary boundaries framework outlines a safe operating space for humanity according to key Earth system dynamics. This Perspective proposes the addition of a green water planetary boundary based on root-zone soil moisture and demonstrates that widespread green water modifications now present increasing risks to Earth system resilience.

Transgressing planetary boundaries has generated global, ongoing and interconnected problems that represent a real challenge to policy makers. This Perspective sheds light on the complexities of designing policies that can keep human life within the biophysical limits of planet Earth.

The Sustainable Development Goals require profound national and societal changes. This Perspective introduces six Transformations as building blocks for achieving the SDGs and an agenda for science to provide the requisite knowledge.