We submit that the safe operating space of the planetary boundary of novel entities is exceeded since annual production and releases are increasing at a pace that outstrips the global capacity for assessment and monitoring. The novel entities boundary in the planetary boundaries framework refers to entities that are novel in a geological sense and that could have large-scale impacts that threaten the integrity of Earth system processes. We review the scientific literature relevant to quantifying the boundary for novel entities and highlight plastic pollution as a particular aspect of high concern. An impact pathway from production of novel entities to impacts on Earth system processes is presented. We define and apply three criteria for assessment of the suitability of control variables for the boundary: feasibility, relevance, and comprehensiveness. We propose several complementary control variables to capture the complexity of this boundary, while acknowledging major data limitations. We conclude that humanity is currently operating outside the planetary boundary based on the weight-of-evidence for several of these control variables. The increasing rate of production and releases of larger volumes and higher numbers of novel entities with diverse risk potentials exceed societies’ ability to conduct safety related assessments and monitoring. We recommend taking urgent action to reduce the harm associated with exceeding the boundary by reducing the production and releases of novel entities, noting that even so, the persistence of many novel entities and/or their associated effects will continue to pose a threat.

Agriculture’s global environmental impacts are widely expected to continue expanding, driven by population and economic growth and dietary changes. This Review highlights climate change as an additional amplifier of agriculture’s environmental impacts, by reducing agricultural productivity, reducing the efficacy of agrochemicals, increasing soil erosion, accelerating the growth and expanding the range of crop diseases and pests, and increasing land clearing. We identify multiple pathways through which climate change intensifies agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, creating a potentially powerful climate change–reinforcing feedback loop. The challenges raised by climate change underscore the urgent need to transition to sustainable, climate-resilient agricultural systems. This requires investments that both accelerate adoption of proven solutions that provide multiple benefits, and that discover and scale new beneficial processes and food products.

Purpose This paper addresses the need for a globally regionalized method for life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), integrating multiple state-of-the-art developments as well as damages on water and carbon areas of concern within a consistent LCIA framework. This method, named IMPACT World+, is the update of the IMPACT 2002+, LUCAS, and EDIP methods. This paper first presents the IMPACT World+ novelties and results and then analyzes the spatial variability for each regionalized impact category. Methods With IMPACT World+, we propose a midpoint-damage framework with four distinct complementary viewpoints to present an LCIA profile: (1) midpoint impacts, (2) damage impacts, (3) damages on human health, ecosystem quality, and resources & ecosystem service areas of protection, and (4) damages on water and carbon areas of concerns. Most of the regional impact categories have been spatially resolved and all the long-term impact categories have been subdivided between shorter-term damages (over the 100 years after the emission) and long-term damages. The IMPACT World+ method integrates developments in the following categories, all structured according to fate (or competition/scarcity), exposure, exposure response, and severity: (a) Complementary to the global warming potential (GWP100), the IPCC Global Temperature Potentials (GTP100) are used as a proxy for climate change long-term impacts at midpoint. At damage level, shorter-term damages (over the first 100 years after emission) are also differentiated from long-term damages. (b) Marine acidification impact is based on the same fate model as climate change, combined with the H⁺ concentration affecting 50% of the exposed species. (c) For mineral resources depletion impact, the material competition scarcity index is applied as a midpoint indicator. (d) Terrestrial and freshwater acidification impact assessment combines, at a resolution of 2° × 2.5° (latitude × longitude), global atmospheric source-deposition relationships with soil and water ecosystems’ sensitivity. (e) Freshwater eutrophication impact is spatially assessed at a resolution grid of 0.5° × 0.5°, based on a global hydrological dataset. (f) Ecotoxicity and human toxicity impact are based on the parameterized version of USEtox for continents. We consider indoor emissions and differentiate the impacts of metals and persistent organic pollutants for the first 100 years from longer-term impacts. (g) Impacts on human health related to particulate matter formation are modeled using the USEtox regional archetypes to calculate intake fractions and epidemiologically derived exposure response factors. (h) Water consumption impacts are modeled using the consensus-based scarcity indicator AWARE as a proxy midpoint, whereas damages account for competition and adaptation capacity. (i) Impacts on ecosystem quality from land transformation and occupation are empirically characterized at the biome level. Results and discussion We analyze the magnitude of global potential damages for each impact indicator, based on an estimation of the total annual anthropogenic emissions and extractions at the global scale (i.e., “doing the LCA of the world”). Similarly with ReCiPe and IMPACT 2002+, IMPACT World+ finds that (a) climate change and impacts of particulate matter formation have a dominant contribution to global human health impacts whereas ionizing radiation, ozone layer depletion, and photochemical oxidant formation have a low contribution and (b) climate change and land use have a dominant contribution to global ecosystem quality impact. (c) New impact indicators introduced in IMPACT World+ and not considered in ReCiPe or IMPACT 2002+, in particular water consumption impacts on human health and the long-term impacts of marine acidification on ecosystem quality, are significant contributors to the overall global potential damage. According to the areas of concern version of IMPACT World+ applied to the total annual world emissions and extractions, damages on the water area of concern, carbon area of concern, and the remaining damages (not considered in those two areas of concern) are of the same order of magnitude, highlighting the need to consider all the impact categories. The spatial variability of human health impacts related to exposure to toxic substances and particulate matter is well reflected by using outdoor rural, outdoor urban, and indoor environment archetypes. For “human toxicity cancer” impact of substances emitted to continental air, the variability between continents is of two orders of magnitude, which is substantially lower than the 13 orders of magnitude total variability across substances. For impacts of water consumption on human health, the spatial variability across extraction locations is substantially higher than the variations between different water qualities. For regionalized impact categories affecting ecosystem quality (acidification, eutrophication, and land use), the characterization factors of half of the regions (25th to 75th percentiles) are within one to two orders of magnitude and the 95th percentile within three to four orders of magnitude, which is higher than the variability between substances, highlighting the relevance of regionalizing. Conclusions IMPACT World+ provides characterization factors within a consistent impact assessment framework for all regionalized impacts at four complementary resolutions: global default, continental, country, and native (i.e., original and non-aggregated) resolutions. IMPACT World+ enables the practitioner to parsimoniously account for spatial variability and to identify the elementary flows to be regionalized in priority to increase the discriminating power of LCA.

Gold mining is a major source of metal and metalloid emissions into the environment. Studies were carried out in Krugersdorp, South Africa, to evaluate the ecological and human health risks associated with exposure to metals and metalloids in mine tailings contaminated soils. Concentrations of arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), manganese (Mn), nickel (Ni), and zinc (Zn) in soil samples from the area varied with the highest contamination factors (expressed as ratio of metal or metalloid concentration in the tailings contaminated soil to that of the control site) observed for As (3.5x10²), Co (2.8x10²) and Ni (1.1x10²). Potential ecological risk index values for metals and metalloids determined from soil metal and metalloid concentrations and their respective risk factors were correspondingly highest for As (3.5x10³) and Co (1.4x10³), whereas Mn (0.6) presented the lowest ecological risk. Human health risk was assessed using Hazard Quotient (HQ), Chronic Hazard Index (CHI) and carcinogenic risk levels, where values of HQ > 1, CHI > 1 and carcinogenic risk values > 1×10⁻⁴ represent elevated risks. Values for HQ indicated high exposure-related risk for As (53.7), Cr (14.8), Ni (2.2), Zn (2.64) and Mn (1.67). Children were more at risk from heavy metal and metalloid exposure than adults. Cancer-related risks associated with metal and metalloid exposure among children were also higher than in adults with cancer risk values of 3×10⁻² and 4×10⁻² for As and Ni respectively among children, and 5×10⁻³ and 4×10⁻³ for As and Ni respectively among adults. There is significant potential ecological and human health risk associated with metal and metalloid exposure from contaminated soils around gold mine tailings dumps. This could be a potential contributing factor to a setback in the health of residents in informal settlements dominating this mining area as the immune systems of some of these residents are already compromised by high HIV prevalence.