Research

Water and other natural resources are increasingly under stress. Building their resilience is a goal of much public and private investment, but what resilience is and how to build it is often unclear. We believe that the key to making resilience operational is viewing resilience as the diversity of option pathways available to people. Diversity of options is important, such as a farmer with multiple crops that remain viable through climate and market changes. These options should also remain viable into the future, such as a farming practice that depletes topsoil would not. We work with communities, governments, industry to map their options through participatory workshops and model the consequences of these options on future resilience.

Key papers:

1. Lade et al. 2020: Resilience as pathway diversity

2. Sellberg et al. 2024: Operationalizing pathway diversity in a mosaic landscape

How can an investor tell whether farms using the same amount of water in eastern Australia or the Amazon will have greater impact on the planet? Which of two mining companies with the same land footprint will have greater planetary impact? There is an accelerating global shift towards investing for nature and reporting on environmental impacts but a lack of science-based metrics to inform target-setting and decision-making. We are developing an 'Earth system impact score' to address this gap, using: (1) Earth system modelling to capture systemic risks arising from the interactions of planetary systems; (2) the planetary boundary framework for scientific reference points that enable decision-makers to compare environmental impacts across locations and domains of nature; (3) collaborations with companies and investors to apply and interpret the score.

Test out the prototype score here.

For an overview of the ESI, see Chapter 7 of Doing Business within Planetary Boundaries.

Key papers:

1. Lade et al. 2020: Human impacts on planetary boundaries amplified by Earth system interactions

2. Lade et al. 2021: A prototype Earth system impact metric that accounts for cross-scale interactions

3. Crona et al. 2023: Going beyond carbon: An "Earth system impact" score to better capture corporate and investment impacts on the earth system

Given the limits to Earth's global commons, how can we limit ourselves to a safe operating space, but still provide communities and ecosystems with the resources they need not just to survive but to thrive? The Earth Commission synthesizes the science to address this central challenge. The Safe and Just Workstream, co-led by Steven Lade, is tasked with identifying and refining the safe and just Earth System Boundaries (ESBs) of different domains: biodiversity, land, freshwater and the ocean, nutrients, climate, air pollution, and novel entities. We are also performing an assessment of interactions between different domains mediated by biophysical processes, to develop an understanding of the interconnections among them and the implications on target-setting and decision-making.

Key papers:

1. Rockstrom, Gupta, Qin, Lade et al. 2023: Safe and just Earth system boundaries

2. Gupta, Bai,...Lade...et al. 2024: A just world on a safe planet: a Lancet Planetary Health–Earth Commission report on Earth-system boundaries, translations, and transformations

Multimedia:

1. Steven Lade at the Earth Commission

2. From Science to Action: Meet the Earth Commission

Environmental disturbances such as droughts and bushfires have significant implications for hydrological processes, particularly in regions where water availability is a critical concern. Changes in rainfall-runoff dynamics due to these disturbances can alter water resource availability, affect ecosystem health, and challenge existing water management strategies. This project aims at investigating the complex interactions between extreme environmental events and hydrological responses. Specifically, it seeks to explore how long-term droughts influence rainfall-runoff relationships, hydrological processes and the performance and reliability of hydrological models across catchments with diverse vegetation types. By delving deeper into these aspects, this research will provide valuable insights into the resilience of catchments under changing climatic conditions.

As environmental turbulence and systemic risks increasingly challenge our world, how can human societies learn, adapt, and maintain function? This research area investigates how collective learning mechanisms influence resilience in socio-ecological systems (SES) facing disruption. It examines network structures, agent diversity, and adaptive capacity in systems ranging from human communities to institutions. The work advances methodological approaches drawing from network analysis, agent-based modeling, algorithmic information theory, and active inference to assess resilience and identify relationships in complex adaptive systems. These approaches are designed to be compatible with SES that contain increasingly agential cyber-physical components. Applications include resilience planning and designing governance systems for SES. Findings contribute to resilience theory while providing practical insights for managing common-pool resources and addressing risks in increasingly uncertain environments.