The planetary boundaries framework defines a safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes that regulate the stability of the Earth system. Here, we revise and update the planetary boundary framework, with a focus on the underpinning biophysical science, based on targeted input from expert research communities and on more general scientific advances over the past 5 years. Several of the boundaries now have a two-tier approach, reflecting the importance of cross-scale interactions and the regional-level heterogeneity of the processes that underpin the boundaries. Two core boundaries—climate change and biosphere integrity—have been identified, each of which has the potential on its own to drive the Earth system into a new state should they be substantially and persistently transgressed.

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Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet

Protecting the world’s freshwater resources requires diagnosing threats over a broad range of scales, from global to local. Here we present the first worldwide synthesis to jointly consider human and biodiversity perspectives on water security using a spatial framework that quantifies multiple stressors and accounts for downstream impacts. We find that nearly 80% of the world’s population is exposed to high levels of threat to water security. Massive investment in water technology enables rich nations to offset high stressor levels without remedying their underlying causes, whereas less wealthy nations remain vulnerable. A similar lack of precautionary investment jeopardizes biodiversity, with habitats associated with 65% of continental discharge classified as moderately to highly threatened. The cumulative threat framework offers a tool for prioritizing policy and management responses to this crisis, and underscores the necessity of limiting threats at their source instead of through costly remediation of symptoms in order to assure global water security for both humans and freshwater biodiversity.

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Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity

This paper reviews the concept of adaptation of human communities to global changes, especially climate change, in the context of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. It focuses on scholarship that contributes to practical implementation of adaptations at the community scale. In numerous social science fields, adaptations are considered as responses to risks associated with the interaction of environmental hazards and human vulnerability or adaptive capacity. In the climate change field, adaptation analyses have been undertaken for several distinct purposes. Impact assessments assume adaptations to estimate damages to longer term climate scenarios with and without adjustments. Evaluations of specified adaptation options aim to identify preferred measures. Vulnerability indices seek to provide relative vulnerability scores for countries, regions or communities. The main purpose of participatory vulnerability assessments is to identify adaptation strategies that are feasible and practical in communities. The distinctive features of adaptation analyses with this purpose are outlined, and common elements of this approach are described. Practical adaptation initiatives tend to focus on risks that are already problematic, climate is considered together with other environmental and social stresses, and adaptations are mostly integrated or mainstreamed into other resource management, disaster preparedness and sustainable development programs. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Adaptation, adaptive capacity and vulnerability

Over the past few decades, a new form of governance has emerged to replace adversarial and managerial modes of policy making and implementation. Collaborative governance, as it has come to be known, brings public and private stakeholders together in collective forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making. In this article, we conduct a meta-analytical study of the existing literature on collaborative governance with the goal of elaborating a contingency model of collaborative governance. After reviewing 137 cases of collaborative governance across a range of policy sectors, we identify critical variables that will influence whether or not this mode of governance will produce successful collaboration. These variables include the prior history of conflict or cooperation, the incentives for stakeholders to participate, power and resources imbalances, leadership, and institutional design. We also identify a series of factors that are crucial within the collaborative process itself. These factors include face-to-face dialogue, trust building, and the development of commitment and shared understanding. We found that a virtuous cycle of collaboration tends to develop when collaborative forums focus on ‘‘small wins’’ that deepen trust, commitment, and shared understanding. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of our contingency model for practitioners and for future research on collaborative governance. Over the last two decades, a new strategy of governing called ‘‘collaborative governance’’ has developed. This mode of governance brings multiple stakeholders together in common forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making. In this article, we conduct a meta-analytical study of the existing literature on collaborative governance with the goal of elaborating a general model of collaborative governance. The ultimate goal is to develop a contingency approach to collaboration that can highlight conditions under which collaborative governance will be more or less effective as an

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Collaborative governance in theory and practice

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

Theoretical propositions need testing against empirical evidence. Theoretical breakthroughs have always been informed by an in-depth understanding of the “real” world. This chapter summarizes and synthesizes major results from a number of empirical studies that were conducted over the past decade under the umbrella of the research programme on water governance and management I developed. The studies range from single case studies to comparative analyses of nearly 30 cases. The chapter introduces the overall logic behind the classification of the various analyses under three thematic clusters: characterization of dynamic state, analysis of social learning processes and analysis of transformative change. Then the results and conclusions on major insights with respect to the guiding theme of the book, the transformation of water governance towards sustainability, are discussed for each thematic stream.

Empirical Analyses—From Single Case Studies to Comparative Analyses

Many of the reflections on governance in this book do not apply only to the governance and management of water but also to environmental and resource governance in general. Then what makes water so special? Why did I write a book focusing on water and not on resource governance? Water is pervasive—it connects all other resources and other environmental components. By addressing water, the transformation towards sustainability requires and will promote transformative change in resource and environmental governance in general. I argue that it is the most demanding and challenging resource governance problem humankind is facing. Solving the water problem will solve the sustainability problem. Water governance is an agent of change (Pahl-Wostl et al. in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 5:708–714, 2013c).

From Understanding to Transforming

Integrated management of natural resources: Uncertainty, ambiguity and the role of framing and reframing

Water Resilience for Human Prosperity: Water resources and functions for agro-ecological systems at the landscape scale

Es wird zunehmend wichtiger, die komplexen Zusammenhange im Umgang mit Gewasserressourcen adaquat zu berucksichtigen. Computergestutzte Modelle konnten hier eine zentrale Rolle spielen. Doch die Anwendung in der Praxis ist durch die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven und Interessen von Forschung und Wasserwirtschaft oft schwierig.

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Claudia Pahl-Wostl

Papers

Empirical Analyses—From Single Case Studies to Comparative Analyses

From Understanding to Transforming

Integrated management of natural resources: Uncertainty, ambiguity and the role of framing and reframing

Water Resilience for Human Prosperity: Water resources and functions for agro-ecological systems at the landscape scale

Computermodelle in der Gewässerbewirtschaftung