"Planetary Boundaries and Sustainability Principles: An integrated approach in the context of agriculture."

by Jesper Revald Dorph, Nicole Harvey and Pieter Ploeg

Department of Strategic Sustainable Development, Blekinge Institute of Technology Karlskrona, Sweden, 31 May 2016

Thesis submitted and defended for completion of Master’s Programme in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden.

This thesis explores how the Planetary Boundaries (PBs), as derived from the Planetary Boundary Framework (PBF), and the Sustainability Principles (SPs), as derived from the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD), can be integrated. It presents and discusses how the PBs and SPs intersect and provide additive value, with the purpose to inform the development of strategic guidelines towards sustainability. Agriculture was used as a case context due to its significant contribution to the sustainability challenge. The methods include the development of a matrix, populated with agricultural contributions to SP violations and PB transgressions, and a series of qualitative interviews with sustainability experts to validate the matrix and provide further insight into how an integrated approach can be used in practice. Results show that intersects exist on both driver and impact levels and that the matrix provides an enhanced understanding of the system. Researchers conclude that there are various benefits from integrating the SPs and PBs, including aspects such as easing communication, informing prioritisation of urgent issues, and the development of strategic transformation approaches. Integrating SPs and PBs provides an enhanced definition of sustainability, from which explicit goals, criteria and strategic guidelines can be developed towards solving the sustainability challenge.