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The Earth4All scenarios: human wellbeing on a finite planet towards 2100

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2025

Per Espen Stoknes*
Affiliation:
Leadership and Organizational Behaviour, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway
David Collste
Affiliation:
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden
Sarah E. Cornell
Affiliation:
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden
Ben Callegari
Affiliation:
School of Economics, Innovation and Technology, Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway
Nathalie Spittler
Affiliation:
School of Economics, Innovation and Technology, Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway
Owen Gaffney
Affiliation:
Leadership and Organizational Behaviour, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway
Jorgen Randers
Affiliation:
BOKU University, Vienna, Austria
*
Corresponding author: Per Espen Stoknes; Email: per.e.stoknes@bi.no

Abstract

How can wellbeing for all be improved while reducing risks of destabilising the biosphere? This ambition underlies the 2030 Agenda but analysing whether it is possible in the long-term requires linking global socioeconomic developments with life-supporting Earth systems and incorporating feedbacks between them. The Earth4All initiative explores integrated developments of human wellbeing and environmental pressures up to 2100 based on expert elicitation and an integrated global systems model. The relatively simple Earth4All model focuses on quantifying and capturing some high-level feedback between socioeconomic and environmental domains. It analyses economic transformations to increase wellbeing worldwide and increase social cohesion to create conditions that are more likely to reduce pressures on planetary boundaries. The model includes two key novelties: a social tension index and a wellbeing index, to track societal progress this century. The scenarios suggest that today's dominant economic policies are likely to lead to rising social tensions, worsening environmental pressures, and declining wellbeing. In the coming decades, unchecked rising social tensions, we hypothesise, will make it more difficult to build a large consensus around long-term industrial policy and behavioural changes needed to respect planetary boundaries. We propose five extraordinary turnarounds around poverty, inequality, empowerment, energy and food that in the model world can shift the economy off the current trajectory, improve human wellbeing at a global scale, reduce social tensions and ease environmental pressures. The model, the five (exogenous) turnarounds and the resulting two scenarios can be used as science-policy boundary objects in discussions on future trajectories.

Non-technical summary

Our world is facing a convergence of environmental, health, security, and social crises. These issues demand urgent, systemic solutions now that address not only environmental but also social dimensions. Weak political responses have stalled progress on the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. We have developed scenarios that explore interconnections between possible climate futures, rising living costs, and increasing inequalities that fuel populism and undermine democracy to the year 2100. We propose five turnaround solutions – energy, food and land systems, inequality, poverty, and gender equality – that if enacted are likely to provide wellbeing for a majority of people plus greater social cohesion. This will support long-term industrial policies and behavioural change to reduce emissions and protect the biosphere toward a long-term goal of living on a relatively stable planet.

Social Media summary

Our dominant economic model is destabilising societies and the planet. Earth4All found 5 turnarounds for real system change.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Figure 0

Figure 1. Representation of the Earth4All model. As simple as possible representation of the Earth4All model showing key links. Each arrow represents a causal relationship. The ‘+’ signs at the arrowhead indicate that the effect is positively related to the cause (e.g. an increase in population causes deaths to rise above what it otherwise would have been). The ‘–’ signs at the arrowhead indicate that the effect is negatively related to the cause (e.g. an increase in environmental damage causes productivity to fall below what it otherwise would have been).

Figure 1

Figure 2. Wellbeing in the Earth4All model. Main determinants and components of wellbeing in the Earth4All model. See the description of the use of links and polarities (‘+’ and ‘-’) in the caption to Fig. 1. ‘R’ signifies a reinforcing loop and ‘B’ a balancing loop.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Scenario overview. Scenario results of a) Too-Little-Too-Late (TLTL) and b) Giant Leap (GL) for: Population (red), GDP per person (blue), global warming (black), average wellbeing (green), and inequality (pink).

Figure 3

Figure 4. Scenario results for the five determinants (components) of global average wellbeing: disposable income, global warming, public spending per person, inequality, and observed rate of progress in wellbeing. The last graph shows the resulting average wellbeing index. Giant Leap (GL) - red solid line, and Too-Little-Too-Late (TLTL) - turquoise dotted line.

Supplementary material: File

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