Professor Melissa Leach, IDS Director and former STEPS Centre Director, gave this presentation as part of a Plenary Dialogue with Johan Rockstrom of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at the Resilience 2014 conference in Montpellier, France on 7 May 2014. Find out more: http://steps-centre.org/

1. Planetary boundaries, politics and
pathways
Melissa Leach
Plenary Dialogue
Montpellier, 7 May 2014

2. Intensified poverty and inequalities
Ecological stresses
Ill healthLand grabs Water scarcity Energy poverty
RR
Social, institutional and
political-economic
processes
Scarcities, challenges,
deprivations, ill-being
Development threats in the Anthropocene

3. Source: Raworth 2012,
based on Rockström et
al 2009
Planetary and social boundaries:
Creating a safe and just space for humanity

4. Urgent challenges …..
• Building pathways that
enhance sustainability
and resilience,
integrating:
• Ecological integrity
• Social equality
• Human rights, well-
being and security

5. Source: Leach,
Raworth and
Rockström
2013
This means building and steering alternative
pathways....

6. 6
That respect three Ds:
What directions are different pathways headed in?
What goals, values, interests, power relations are
driving particular pathways – and how might they be
‘re-steered’?
Is there a sufficient diversity of approaches?
- to resist powerful processes of lock-in, build
resilience in the face of uncertainty, and respond to
a variety of contexts, goals and values?
What are the implications for distribution?
Who stands to gain or lose from current or
alternative pathways? How will choosing between
them affect inequalities of wealth, power, resource
use, and opportunity?
Need to attend to contestations, tensions and trade-offs….

7. Politicising planetary boundaries
Whose boundaries? Whose
safety?
Whose goals? Sustainability
and resilience of what for
whom?
Which pathways?
Choosing and shaping
interlocked with power
Who gains, who loses? Planetary
boundaries as power grab,
undermining justice and democracy?

8. 8
Planetary boundaries – discourse and narrative
‘Planetary boundaries’ as a discourse
A particular ‘regime of truth’ co-constructed through
power, knowledge and institutions
‘Accelerating human influence in the anthropocene
threatening planetary boundaries’ as a powerful
narrative
 A storyline – with a beginning, middle and end
 Created by people and institutions
 Assigns responsibility and blame
 Underpins, justifies, legitimates action

9. 9
Whose boundaries? Whose safety?
A two degree ‘safety barrier’ or ‘guardrail’ for climate change
Safety involves meanings and values beyond climate
per se....
Secure livelihoods? Freedom from gender-based
violence?
Too hot for coral reefs?
Too hot for small island
states?
1.5 degrees?
3 degrees?
??

10. Alternative sustainable food futures
transgenics
industrial hybridssmall-scale farmer
livelihoods
participatory breeding
Biochar and climate-smart
agriculture
Whose goals? Sustainability and resilience of what for
whom?

11. 11
One forest, multiple values and sustainabilities
Carbon
sequestration
Hydrological
services
Biodiversity
Ecotourism
Timber and building
supplies
Ancestors
and cultural
practices
Fallows for farming
Food and medicines

12. 12
Global governance
A global referee (Rockstrom et al
2009)
Recognition of the ‘earth system’
and ‘safe operating space’ as legal
entities that can legitimise supra-
national governance
Which pathways?

13. 13
To aspirations for directed control and ‘planetary management’
“control variables of the Earth” (Rockstrom et al 2009)
“identification of mechanisms amenable to human control”
(E. Ehlers and T. Krafft, Eds., Earth System Science in the Anthropocene,
2006).
“planetary management” (European Commission Directorate General for
Research, 2009).
Planetary control and management
From human ‘control’ in the anthropocene, and planetary domination
“we…” who “…are taking control of Nature’s realm”
P. J. Crutzen and C. Schwagerl, “Living in the Anthropocene: Toward a
New Global Ethos,” Yale Environ. 360, no. 24 January, pp. 6–11, 2011.

14. 14
A “landscape approach” means taking both a geographical and
socio-economic approach to managing the land, water and forest
resources that form the foundation – the natural capital – for
meeting our goals of food security and inclusive green growth....
we are better able to maximize productivity, improve livelihoods,
and reduce negative environmental impacts’ (Landscape
approaches in sustainable development, World Bank)
Landscape rationalisation and planning
Before: Forest
livelihood After: 34,000 ha Jatropha
biofuel plot

15. 15
Insert a geo engineering pic
Techno-scientific fixes
Climate geo-engineering
Crop biotechnologies

16. 16
Green market fixes
“Selling nature to save it”
(Kathy McAfee 2010)

17. Original artwork (water colour on 20 x 30 illustration board, 2011) by Filipino painter Boy Dominguez
‘Green Grabbing’, JPS Special Issue 39(2), April 2012. Edited by James Fairhead, Melissa
Leach and Ian Scoones

18. 18
Pathways marginalised?
Transformative pathways – involving alliances that
challenge and rework political, economic and social
structures
Zero carbon energy
Ecological
agriculture

19. 19
Citizen pathways – involving grassroots innovation,
mobilisation and collective action
Slum and shack
dwellers’
networks
Food sovereignty
and agroecology

20. 20
Emergent pathways – involving alignments in diverse
bottom-up marginal interests, pursuing contending –
even unknown – ends.

21. Democratising planetary boundaries?
Matters for inclusive deliberation and debate
Whose boundaries? Whose
safety?
Whose goals? Sustainability
and resilience of what for
whom?
Which pathways?
Choosing and shaping
interlocked with power
Who gains, who loses? Planetary
boundaries as power grab,
undermining justice and democracy?

22. 22
Towards politics and governance for
sustainability, resilience and development
Challenging unsustainable and unjust pathways, opening up to
appreciate alternatives, enabling and supporting transformational
pathways
Multi-scale – to respond to challenges across global, national, regional,
local settings
Adaptive – to respond to complexity, uncertainty and dynamics in social,
ecological, political and economic systems
Networked and alliance-based – combining state and non-state actors
and institutions, formal and informal processes, planning and
mobilisation, leadership and distributed action
Deliberative – to foster inclusive, democratic debate around boundary-
placing, goals, and means to get there
Engaged with science – but as reflexive partner in framing questions,
investigating processes, debating implications (rather than distant
authority)

23. Safe and just futures?
Innovation and transformation
Freeman et al 1973
SPRU, UK
Importance of science, technology and
innovation
Stretching limits,
steering within them
Hererra et al 1972
Fundacion Bariloche, Argentina
Values-based vision: a society ‘based on
equality and full participation of all its
members ....intrinsically compatible with
its environment.’
Human creativity
Social and political transformation