•Legal instrument citation networks show architecture of global N and P governance.•Cross-scale and cross-sector links are an empirical test of polycentric theory.•Actors interact with institutional ...network in response to Earth system governance gap.•Polycentric governance offers an adaptive response mode for Earth system challenges.
Global change and governance scholars frequently highlight polycentricity as a feature of resilient governance, but both theoretical and empirical knowledge about features and outcomes of the concept are lacking at the global scale. Here we investigate the structural properties of governance of global nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycles, two processes in the ‘planetary boundaries’ framework. We have used a mixed-methods approach to institutional analysis, integrating polycentric theory with social network theory in environmental policy and legal studies. We include an actor collaboration case study, the Global Partnership on Nutrient Management (GPNM), to explore governance challenges associated with global N and P cycles. We set the scope for selection of relevant legal instruments using an overview of global N and P flows between Earth system ‘components’ (land, water, atmosphere, oceans, biosphere) and the major anthropogenic N and P perturbations. Our network analysis of citations of global N and P governance exposes the structural patterns of a loose network among the principal institutions and actors, in which legal instruments of the European Union serve as key cross-scale and cross-sectoral ‘gateways’. We show that the current international regimes in place for regulating N- and P-related issues represent a gap in governance at the global level. In addition, we are able to show that the emergence of GPNM provides synergies in this context of insufficient governance. The GPNM can be viewed as a structure of polycentric governance as it involves deliberate attempts for mutual adjustments and self-organised action.
•The planetary boundaries concept may be applied to regions for sustainable development.•Analysing biophysical time-series defines an environmental ceiling.•Regional social norms define a social ...foundation.•Safe and just operating space lies between the environmental ceiling and social foundation.•Two demonstration case studies from China highlight constraints on water management.
Humanity faces a major global challenge in achieving wellbeing for all, while simultaneously ensuring that the biophysical processes and ecosystem services that underpin wellbeing are exploited within scientifically informed boundaries of sustainability. We propose a framework for defining the safe and just operating space for humanity that integrates social wellbeing into the original planetary boundaries concept (Rockström et al., 2009a,b) for application at regional scales. We argue that such a framework can: (1) increase the policy impact of the boundaries concept as most governance takes place at the regional rather than planetary scale; (2) contribute to the understanding and dissemination of complexity thinking throughout governance and policy-making; (3) act as a powerful metaphor and communication tool for regional equity and sustainability. We demonstrate the approach in two rural Chinese localities where we define the safe and just operating space that lies between an environmental ceiling and a social foundation from analysis of time series drawn from monitored and palaeoecological data, and from social survey statistics respectively. Agricultural intensification has led to poverty reduction, though not eradicated it, but at the expense of environmental degradation. Currently, the environmental ceiling is exceeded for degraded water quality at both localities even though the least well-met social standards are for available piped water and sanitation. The conjunction of these social needs and environmental constraints around the issue of water access and quality illustrates the broader value of the safe and just operating space approach for sustainable development.
Abstract
Objectives
To introduce the Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA) Outcome Monitoring System, which can monitor the quality and safety of care provided to individuals accessing residential ...aged care. Development and examination of 12 quality and safety indicators of care and their 2016 prevalence estimates are presented.
Design
Retrospective.
Setting
2690 national and 254 South Australian (SA) aged care facilities.
Participants
208 355 unique residents nationally and 18 956 in SA.
Main Outcome Measures
Risk-adjusted prevalence of high sedative load, antipsychotic use, chronic opioid use, antibiotic use, premature mortality, falls, fractures, medication-related adverse events, weight loss/malnutrition, delirium and/or dementia hospitalisations, emergency department presentations, and pressure injuries.
Results
Five indicators were estimated nationally; antibiotic use (67.5%, 95% confidence interval (CI): 67.3–67.7%) had the highest prevalence, followed by high sedative load (48.1%, 95% CI: 47.9–48.3%), chronic opioid use (26.8%, 95% CI: 26.6–26.9%), antipsychotic use (23.5%, 95% CI: 23.4–23.7%) and premature mortality (0.6%, 95% CI: 0.6–0.7%). Seven indicators were estimated in SA; emergency department presentations (19.1%, 95% CI: 18.3–20.0%) had the highest prevalence, followed by falls (10.1%, 95% CI: 9.7–10.4%), fractures (4.8%, 95% CI: 4.6–5.1%), pressure injuries (2.9%, 95% CI: 2.7–3.1%), delirium and/or dementia related hospitalisations (2.3%, 95% CI: 2.1–2.6%), weight loss/malnutrition (0.7%, 95% CI: 0.6–0.8%) and medication-related events (0.6%, 95% CI: 0.5–0.7%).
Conclusions
Twelve quality and safety indicators were developed to monitor aged care provided to older Australians based on the synthesis of existing literature and expert advisory input. These indicators rely on existing data within the aged care and healthcare sectors, therefore creating a pragmatic tool to examine quality and unwarranted care variation.
Background : For decades, scientists have attempted to provide a sustainable development framework that integrates goals of environmental protection and human development. The Planetary Boundaries ...concept (PBc)-a framework to guide sustainable development-juxtaposes a 'safe operating space for humanity' and 'planetary boundaries', to achieve a goal that decades of research have yet to meet. We here investigate if PBc is sufficiently different to previous sustainability concepts to have the intended impact, and map how future sustainability concept developments might make a difference. Design : We build a genealogy of the research that is cited in and informs PBc. We analyze this genealogy with the support of two seminal and a new consumer-resource models, that provide simple and analytically tractable analogies to human-environment relationships. These models bring together environmental limits, minimum requirements for populations and relationships between resource-limited and waste-limited environments. Results : PBc is based on coherent knowledge about sustainability that has been in place in scientific and policy contexts since the 1980s. PBc represents the ultimate framing of limits to the use of the environment, as limits not to single resources, but to Holocene-like Earth system dynamics. Though seldom emphasized, the crux of the limits to sustainable environmental dynamics lies in waste (mis-)management, which sets where boundary values might be. Minimum requirements for populations are under-defined: it is the distribution of resources, opportunities and waste that shape what is a safe space and for whom. Discussion : We suggest that PBc is not different or innovative enough to break 'Cassandra's dilemma' and ensure scientific research effectively guides humanity towards sustainable development. For this, key issues of equality must be addressed, un-sustainability must be framed as a problem of today, rather than projected into the future, and scientific foundations of frameworks such as PBc must be broadened and diversified.
The planetary boundaries framework defines the “safe operating space for humanity” represented by nine global processes that can destabilize the Earth System if perturbed. The water planetary ...boundary attempts to provide a global limit to anthropogenic water cycle modifications, but it has been challenging to translate and apply it to the regional and local scales at which water problems and management typically occur. We develop a cross‐scale approach by which the water planetary boundary could guide sustainable water management and governance at subglobal contexts defined by physical features (e.g., watershed or aquifer), political borders (e.g., city, nation, or group of nations), or commercial entities (e.g., corporation, trade group, or financial institution). The application of the water planetary boundary at these subglobal contexts occurs via two approaches: (i) calculating fair shares, in which local water cycle modifications are compared to that context's allocation of the global safe operating space, taking into account biophysical, socioeconomic, and ethical considerations; and (ii) defining a local safe operating space, in which interactions between water stores and Earth System components are used to define local boundaries required for sustaining the local water system in stable conditions, which we demonstrate with a case study of the Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta wetlands in Colombia. By harmonizing these two approaches, the water planetary boundary can ensure that water cycle modifications remain within both local and global boundaries and complement existing water management and governance approaches.
Key Points
Local and regional water management responds to and is influenced by global water cycle processes
The planetary boundaries framework is useful for reconciling local and global water sustainability goals
The framework can be applied at scales including nations, watersheds, aquifers, or commercial entities
On Oct 6, 1837, two enslaved African Americans were hanged in Rapides Parish LA. The next day, seven more souls shared their fate. Local whites had sentenced these slaves to death, despite the ...financial loss incurred by the slave owners, because they believed that the slaves had planned to rebel and wreak bloody vengeance upon them. Solomon Northup, a free African American from the North who was illegally enslaved in the area several years later, recorded a different account of the conspiracy. The goal of the failed plot, still "a subject of general and unfailing interest in every slave hut on the bayou," was not the slaughter of whites, he wrote. Rather, a large number of runaways planned a crusade to Mexico," where they could find freedom. They would use violence only as a means to reach their destination. Northup predicted that the failed attempt would "doubtless go down to succeeding generations as their chief tradition. Here, Cornell investigates the nature of the freedom fugitive slaves imagined, found, and constructed in Mexico.
Earth system science (ESS) has identified worrying trends in the human impact on fundamental planetary systems. In this conceptual article, we discuss the implications of this research for business ...schools and management education (ME). We argue that ESS findings raise significant concerns about the relationship between business and nature and, consequently, a radical reframing is required to embed economic and social activity within the global sustainability of natural systems. This has transformative implications for ME. To illustrate this reframing, we apply the ESS lenses of social-ecological interdependence, multiscalar relations, environmental governance, and environmental values to the ME functional domains of institutional purpose, social context and engagement, pedagogical practice, curricular design, and research focus. Our work contributes to the literature on business education for sustainability and the business-society-nature nexus. We explore and apply key ESS findings and concepts, discuss normative implications of these ideas, and offer guidance on transformational pathways for business schools and ME.
Science-Based Targets (SBTs) are being developed for companies to contribute to global sustainability goals, including for ‘nature’. The literature has not yet explored multiple understandings of ...SBTs. We adopt an interpretive approach, using Q methodology to explore framings of SBTs amongst 22 scientists and practitioners engaged in SBT development. Results show two distinct framings: ‘we need science-based targets to help economic systems move towards global sustainability’ and ‘the system itself is unsustainable and needs to change – science-based targets can help’, with areas of agreement and disagreement. They lean towards reformist or radical discourse, at times weaving them together. What kinds of ‘transformation’, if any, are SBTs capable of driving? Conceptualising SBTs as a boundary object, we suggest that sustainability transformations involve paradoxical tensions, including where actors appeal to the powerful to drive change, but this inhibits the most radical discourses. We conclude with potential implications for sustainability science and governance.
•This study explores views of people involved in developing science-based targets.•Q method reveals framings of SBTs that draw from reformist and radical discourses.•Framings differ on role of SBTs in transformation: working in or against the system.•SBTs act as boundary objects, may facilitate collaboration or reinforce status quo.•Interpretive methods aid reflexivity in Earth system governance initiatives.
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