Abstract
Operating within safe and just Earth system boundaries requires mobilizing key actors across scale to set targets and take actions accordingly. Robust, transparent and fair cross-scale translation methods are essential to help navigate through the multiple steps of scientific and normative judgements in translation, with clear awareness of associated assumptions, bias and uncertainties. Here, through literature review and expert elicitation, we identify commonly used sharing approaches, illustrate ten principles of translation and present a protocol involving key building blocks and control steps in translation. We pay particular attention to businesses and cities, two understudied but critical actors to bring on board.
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Acknowledgements
This work is part of the Earth Commission, which is hosted by Future Earth and is the science component of the Global Commons Alliance. The Global Commons Alliance is a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, with support from Oak Foundation, MAVA, Porticus, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Tiina and Antti Herlin Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Global Environment Facility and Generation Foundation. The Earth Commission is also supported by the Global Challenges Foundation and Frontiers Research Foundation. Individual researchers were supported by the Australian Government (Australian Research Council Future Fellowship FT200100381 to S.J.L.) and the Swedish Research Council Formas (grant 2020-00371 to S.J.L.). We thank S. Bringezu for his valuable inputs and V. Vijay for her comments on an earlier version of this paper. The authors take full responsibility for the contents and any remaining errors.
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X.B., S.H., L.S.A., A.B., S.K., D. Ospina., J.L., S.E.C., O.S.M., A.d.B., B.C., F.D., J.G., H.H., N.N., D. Obura., G.W., W.B., S.J.L., J. Rockström., B.S.-K., D.v.V. and C.Z. contributed to the conceptualization and deliberation of the work. X.B. led the work and the writing process. S.H. led the literature review of sharing approaches. X.B., S.H., L.S.A., D. Ospina., A.B., S.K., J.L. and O.S.M. drafted the manuscript. S.H., X.B. and L.S.A. produced and finalized the figures. X.B., S.H., L.S.A., A.B., S.K., D. Ospina., J.L., S.E.C., O.S.M., A.d.B., B.C., F.D., J.G., H.H., N.N., D. Obura., G.W., W.B., S.J.L., J. Rocha, J. Rockström., B.S.-K., D.v.V. and C.Z. provided critical reviews, extensive comments and editing of the manuscript.
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Bai, X., Hasan, S., Andersen, L.S. et al. Translating Earth system boundaries for cities and businesses. Nat Sustain (2024). https://ift.tt/26x70N8
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