• Brian Walker
• CSIRO

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08 October 2009CSIRO has contributed to a new approach to help safeguard the world from dangerous levels of climate change and other global environmental threats through the setting of planetary boundaries.

Since scientists began warning of the effect of global warming and other environmental threats, a lot of research has been carried out into the cause and impact of these threats now and into the future.

Recently, a group of 28 internationally renowned scientists hypothesised for humanity to survive and the planet to remain stable, nine global biophysical boundaries representing critical levels in the Earth’s environment should not be transgressed.

Published in Nature, the new approach includes a set of nine inter-connected planetary boundaries:

• climate change
• stratospheric ozone
• land-use change
• freshwater use
• biological diversity
• ocean acidification
• the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles
• aerosol loading and
• chemical pollution.

Under the auspices of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Dr Brian Walker from CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems is one of the 28 international scientists involved in formulating the nine boundaries.

In this podcast, Dr Walker explains the nine boundaries and how three may have already been crossed, leading to the danger of impacting the others.

(9:25 mintues)