Are the world’s ecosystems in imminent danger of destruction due to the rate of temperature increase?

‘Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change. Their study finds that five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited. If the rate is 0.3 C per decade, 15 percent of ecosystems will not be able to adapt. If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming’ –Leemans and Eickhout (2004), ‘Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change,’ Global Environmental Change 14, 219–228

What systems of earth system governance are likely to support a co-evolution of nature and human societies that leads towards sustainable development?

Earth system governance can be defined as the interrelated and increasingly integrated system of formal and informal rules, rule-making systems, and actor-networks at all levels of human society (from local to global) that are set up to steer societies towards preventing, mitigating, and adapting to global and local environmental change and, in particular, earth system transformation, within the normative context of sustainable development.

Earth system governance is a major analytical challenge for the social sciences. It involves questions of the emergence, design and effectiveness of governance systems as well as the overall integration of global, regional, national and local governance—that is, the quest for effective architectures. It also requires understanding the actors that drive earth system governance and that need to be involved—that is, the question of agency. Third, earth system governance must respond to the inherent uncertainties in human and natural systems; it must combine stability to ensure long-term governance solutions, with flexibility to react quickly to new findings and developments. In other words, we must understand and further develop the adaptiveness of systems of earth system governance. Fourth, the more regulatory competence and authority is conferred upon institutions and systems of governance the more will we be confronted with the need to understand the democratic quality of earth system governance and with questions of how to ensure the accountability and legitimacy of governance systems. Fifth, earth system governance is, as is any political activity, about the distribution of material and immaterial values. It is, in essence, a conflict about the access to goods and about their allocation—it is about justice, fairness, and equity. The novel character of earth system transformation puts questions of allocation and access in a new light.

(Based on the Science and Implementation Plan of the IHDP Earth System Governance Project)