Experts urge governance of planetary commons to manage climate change
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
They’re coming for your democracy, but don’t worry, it’s all in your own interest! ( I suppose the clue is in the name – Democracy Without Borders).
Earlier this year, an international group of 22 experts from a range of disciplines, including environmental science, governance, and law, emphasized the importance of establishing “planetary commons” in an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The group argued that this step is essential for strengthening global governance to “protect the functions of Earth’s biophysical systems in ways that ensure planetary resilience and justice for present and future generations.”
The article introduces the concept of “planetary commons” as a framework to align global law and governance with the science of the Earth system. The consequences of climate change are worsening globally, and there is presently no effective governance system in place to address the issue. Instead, nations have developed their own policies for climate change, each motivated by national-level pressures and interests, often misaligned with other nations and the global goal of a sustainable Earth. According to the authors, however, if “essential systems and processes are perturbed beyond critical thresholds, they can undergo irreversible state shifts with potentially dire consequences for life on Earth.” For this reason, it is necessary to develop “collective global scale solutions that transcend national boundaries.”
The authors argue that “planetary commons governance” should involve integrating, in a “nested” manner, “formal and informal, higher- and lower-level, established and self-organized, but reasonably coordinated, governing entities.” They stress that an “overarching institution” would be needed that serves as a “universal point of aggregation.” A starting point could be the United Nations General Assembly, despite its “state-based approach that grants equal voting rights to both large countries and micronations,” which “represents outdated traditions of an old European political order.” For this reason, the article states, “novel arrangements, such as weighted voting or the addition of a United Nations Parliamentarian Assembly or a Global Deliberative Assembly might be needed to make governance at the planetary scale more representative, legitimate, just, effective, and reflective.”
The scale of climate change and the extreme inequity of its impact are therefore a central and urgent argument for global democracy. Countries primarily in the global North, that have been industrialized for many decades, are responsible for aggregated carbon emissions that predominantly cause damage to countries in the global South. Recently, the Climate Governance Commission endorsed the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly as a central feature of just climate change governance that is able to preserve the stable state of the Earth system.
Johan Rockström, the lead author of this article, is regarded as a leader across efforts for global sustainability and is presently co-director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, professor of Earth system science at the University of Potsdam, and professor of environmental sciences at Stockholm University. Rockström is best known for introducing the widely received concept of “planetary boundaries,” a set of nine limits of allowable change to the Earth system, after which the familiar stable state of the planet becomes uncertain. By now, six of the nine boundaries have been transgressed, an indication of the severe need to establish a governance system that effectively protects the resiliency of the Earth.
Both the “planetary boundaries” and the “planetary commons” are informed by Earth system science, a discipline that regards the planet as a system made up of multiple biophysical subsystems, interacting with one another and together self-regulating the overall stable state of the Earth. These biophysical systems connect the five general “spheres” of the Earth: the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and cryosphere. There are many biophysical systems, including atmospheric circulation, ice sheet reflectivity, ocean carbon capture, and others (see figure).
Proposed categories of planetary commons shown across five spheres and divided as tipping elements and other subsystems. Source: Figure 2 in Rockström, et al. 2024. “The Planetary Commons: A New Paradigm for Safeguarding Earth-Regulating Systems in the Anthropocene.” PNAS 121 (5)
Rockström and co-authors refer to these biophysical systems as the “planetary commons,” because although some sit squarely within national borders, like the Amazon rainforest, the stability of the entire Earth system relies on their protection. In their article, the authors propose a list of planetary commons, shown as the grey boxes in the figure, and suggest that a central purpose of global governance needs to be their protection.
Presently, the only regions that are globally managed for the sake of collective interest are the global commons, which exist outside of national boundaries and include the high seas, the deep seabed, outer space, Antarctica, and to a lesser extent, the atmosphere. Notably, these commons were not chosen for collective governance in order to protect the Earth system, but instead to regulate equitable access between nations. Furthermore, each global common is governed separately with the assumption of a stable Earth system.
Rockström and co-authors’ article presents the planetary commons as the expansion of the global commons, arguing that the global commons are no longer adequate to address current issues because they omit most biophysical systems that are in our collective interest to protect. Although forming an effective global governance scheme is an immense challenge, the planetary commons should provide a useful framework around which to organize governance that aligns with science, and that is based on a global democratic architecture with a parliamentary body at its center to represent the world’s citizens.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Obviously not one of the authors knows anything about the physics of the climate. They are on the climate change money bandwagon.
They don’t even know their ‘era’s!! It starts with “The Anthropocene” which isn’t a defined/recognised period, and as far as I can remember, the move to define it was specifically rejected.
Given that those Climate “experts” have been wrong about every prediction for over more than 40 years, why should they be listened to, let alone follow their advice?
Has Buckingham Palace become underwater? According to several “experts” that was going to happen soon. That was in 1981. And that was after 20 years of “experts” claiming an ice age was coming real soon.
Westminster Hall flooded in 1216…
1216 – London: “It is recorded that in 1216 people have rowed through the Great Hall of Westminster whose floor lay covered in fish as the floods receded”
For this reason, it is necessary to develop “collective global scale solutions that transcend national boundaries.”
Have you signed up China? Russia? India? Sign them up, then get back to us. To wit, this is simply an attack on Western Civilization. It’s not global. It’s us they are after.
The article introduces the concept of “planetary commons”
The old “your land is my land” trick.
as a framework to align global law and governance with the science of the Earth system
There is no global law. There is no global governance. There is no science of Earth system.
The old “turn your stuff over to me – cos reasons” trick.
The authors argue that “planetary commons governance” should involve integrating, in a “nested” manner, “formal and informal, higher- and lower-level, established and self-organized, but reasonably coordinated, governing entities.”
Gauleiters and reichsleiters.
or a Global Deliberative Assembly might be needed to make governance at the planetary scale more representative, legitimate, just, effective, and reflective.
Pure evil. Not ‘Democracy without borders,” but Global Communism.
“Gauleiters and reichsleiters.” Well they are a German organisation at heart.
They also have “Chapters” (Hell’s Angels speak?) in the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Kenya, Ghana and Greece. Hardly global eh?
Xi Jinping must be quaking in his boots.
Gauleiters and reichsleiters
My understanding is that the above terms are specifically associated with the Nazi party, which was at the centre of Nazism, which was a lethal belief system.
Belief systems: generally very dangerous and best avoided.
If all governments agree, why do you need supra-government? If they don’t, supra-government won’t work. These people just love Authority.
The bigger something gets the worse it performs. More centralisation just brings more remoteness which I suppose means that the culprits are further from the pitchfork mobs that have decided that democracy has failed and they need to pursue politics by other means.
Good points, GC. With so many belief systems – religious or otherwise – what do these wise men think will be the unifying concept for their ‘commons’? I’m trying to imagine a group of Ayatollahs and a group of Marxists working with Christians and other religions around the world. Or are they really trying to justify a more powerful U.N.?
Anything involving “The Commons” immediately brings to mind “The Tragedy of the Commons” essays. Simplified., it’s saying “Everybody is responsible, therefore no-one’s responsible”.
The global and planetary commons under a UN umbrella is a scam of enormous proportions. In line with many UN ‘umbrella organisations’ it would be dominated by an alliance of intra governmental bodies, NGOs and multi national corporations. The aim is really about leverage of the world’s resources to make profit for those multi nationals as well as imposing ‘global’ taxation on all citizens.
Rubbish. It’s people who think they know how to run the world. Nothing to do with silly conspiracy theories about businesses.
Mass ignorance, stupidity and trendsetters put those with common-sense on the defensive.
It is time to present evidence, that this is a fiction! It is not difficult, a few decades of ‘climate change’, have not seen any changes, whatsoever!
Reality will always supersede, fantasy and propaganda!
Pretty much everything we are told is a fiction,from water pollution to stagnating incomes to weather disasters to public health. Look at the falsehoods that came with DDT, acid rain, the ozone layer and now plastics, gas cookers and weather disasters. It is a constant litany of negative news that is almost always false.
a few decades of ‘climate change’, have not seen any changes, whatsoever!
The climate is always changing, but there is no proof that humans are responsible for dangerous climate change.
μεγαλωμανια
It clearly needs more research, but to me – at first pass – it appears to have all of the hallmarks of globalist word salad underpinned by group-think?
Note the “experts” largely have no expertise in the actual topic. And how do you become an expert in something that has never been done?
Word salad to get people to accept mass murder, the only way their vision might be implemented.
Pure evil, supported by the National Academy of Sciences.