Webinar “From tipping points to planetary boundaries – safeguarding planetary health”

Key details

Title: From Tipping Points to Planetary Boundaries – Safeguarding Planetary Health
Speaker: Leve Caesar, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Date: June 3, 2025
Time: 14:00–15:00 pm CET
Webinar link: Join here (ClimTip main Zoom room)
Registration: Not necessary

Key messages

You’ve heard it before: We’re pushing the planet beyond its limits, and beyond its safe operating space.

Six out of nine planetary boundaries have already been crossed, including those for climate change, biodiversity loss, land system change, novel entities (like synthetic chemicals and nuclear waste) and the disruption of freshwater and nutrient cycles.

But how do climate tipping points fit into this picture? 

Join the ClimTip project’s upcoming webinar to find out. This time, guest speaker Levke Caesar from PIK will talk about how climate tipping points fit into the planetary boundaries framework.

Tipping point science has illuminated how self-reinforcing feedbacks in Earth system components—like ice sheets, rainforests, and ocean circulation—can lead to abrupt, nonlinear change. But how can these insights be integrated into a broader framework for understanding and governing Earth system stability?

This talk will present the Planetary Boundaries (PB) framework as a science-based approach to defining a Safe Operating Space for humanity. We’ll explore how the PB framework incorporates (and is increasingly informed by) tipping dynamics, and discuss the role of control variables in tracking Earth system resilience.

With six of the nine boundaries already transgressed, and some processes showing signs of destabilisation, the need to merge tipping point insights with boundary-based governance becomes increasingly urgent. From an Earth system perspective, we’ll argue that the PB framework offers a powerful lens to operationalise tipping point science for planetary-scale risk assessment and policy guidance.

Registration & joining details

Join here (ClimTip main Zoom room). Registration not necessary

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