The Social and Planetary Boundaries Framework, known as the “Doughnut,” provides a key visual tool for assessing progress towards meeting the needs of all people within the means of a living planet. This The framework defines a safe and just space for humanity that lies between the social base (minimization of deprivation) and the ecological ceiling (planetary boundaries).

Latest synthesis, which monitored trends between 2000 and 2022, has made a disturbing finding: despite the fact that global gross domestic product (GDP) has more than doubled over this period, humanity’s collective pressure on the planet has worsened substantially since the beginning of the 21st century. The current data for 2022 shows that humanity is not only not living within this safe space, but is also pushing the ecological ceiling, with crosses at least six of the nine planetary boundaries.

The median level of ecological overload (ecological overshoot) reached a level of almost twice as high than the ecological ceiling (96 %). These exceedances disrupt critical planetary processes that underlie the stability of Holocene-like conditions on which all life fundamentally depends.

Six planetary boundaries crossed in 2022

The six areas where humanity is critically exceeding safe ecological limits in 2022 include:

1. Chemical pollution (Chemical pollution): This is the area with the highest rate of exceedance. In 2022, the production of hazardous chemicals exceeded the safe limit by a huge margin. 3 174 %In general, this condition is more than ten times beyond safe limits.
2. Biodiversity degradation (Biodiversity breakdown): The rate of species extinction is at another extreme, reaching 100,000 in 2022 900 % exceedances, which is more than ten times the safe limits. Also, the human appropriation of net primary productivity (HANPP) exceeded the limit by 204 %.
3. Climate change (Climate change): This boundary is deeply breached. Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations have reached 416 ppm (94 % exceedance), while radiative forcing has reached 183 % exceedance.
4. Nutrient pollution (Nutrient pollution): Limits for nitrogen and phosphorus use have been exceeded. The application of phosphorus to the soil as fertilizer exceeded the safe limit by 273 %, while the application of nitrogen by 212 %.
5. Land conversion (Land conversion): The area of forested land, measured as a proportion of the area before human change, was exceeded in 2022 by 61 %.
6. Freshwater disruption (Freshwater disruption): Green water disturbance indicator (green water disruption), which measures the deviation of soil moisture in the root zone from Holocene variability, showed a 74 % exceedance. Although the blue water disturbance (blue water flow) had a 78 % deviation, in 2022 its exceedance/non-exceedance was not reported.

Boundaries that have not yet been crossed

Among the nine borders, some remain uncrossed, although with different trends:

• Ozone layer (Ozone layer depletion): Stratospheric ozone in 2022 was approximately 50 % below the limitThis indicator was also the only exception that did not show a worsening trend since the beginning of the 21st century.
• Ocean acidification (Ocean acidification): In 2022, this limit was still below the limit (-6 % deviation). However, it is worth noting that over the period 2000 to 2022, more than three-quarters of the gap below the limit has closed, leaving only 6 % of safe space.
• Air pollution (Air pollution): The indicator of aerosol asymmetry between the hemispheres was below the threshold.

The urgency of regenerative change

Historical trends show a clear divergence: while humanity has made only modest improvements in reducing social deprivation, ecological stress has been rapidly worsening over the same period. Nine out of ten ecological indicators with available time series show highly significant worsening trends in ecological stress.

These data reinforce the call to overcome the structural dependence of nations on constant GDP growth and to reorient towards ecologically regenerative and socially distributive economic policies, which prioritize human needs and planetary integrity. A scenario to eliminate ecological overload by 2050 would require not only an immediate halt to the current rapid rates of degradation, but also an acceleration of the opposite, regeneration rate, which would be almost twice as fast as historical trends. JRi