The Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) studies how people and nature can live and grow together on a planet facing challenges. The center works together with Stockholm University and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The center's mission is to focus on social-ecological resilience, which means studying how humans and nature function as a single system. The center helps government leaders and businesses manage ecosystems and plan for long-term development that is both sustainable and fair in Europe and other parts of the world.

Organisation

The Stockholm Resilience Centre has about 160 employees. Line Gordon has been the director since 2018. Johan Rockström was the first director. The centre includes many researchers who do important work. In 2024, five researchers from the centre—Sarah Cornell, Thomas Elmqvist, Max Troell, Johan Rockström, and Carl Folke—were listed in the Clarivate list of the world’s most cited researchers.

The Centre is managed by a board, and two international boards provide extra advice. A scientific advisory council, led by Elena Bennett from McGill University, gives guidance on the Centre’s scientific work. An international advisory board, currently led by Jim Balsillie, helps the Centre achieve global influence in science, business, policy, and practice.

The Stockholm Resilience Centre focuses on six areas of research related to sustainability, resilience, and social-ecological systems:

• The human ocean focus area studies new research areas to create a more sustainable and fair future for the ocean.
• The food for resilience focus area examines how to build sustainable and resilient global food systems.
• The Anthropocene dynamics focus area looks at how global physical and social changes affect human-nature relationships and their effects on society and the environment.
• The resilience and sustainable development focus area explores challenges and different paths to achieving sustainable development for all in the Anthropocene.
• The interacting complexities focus area studies how to solve complex sustainability problems using different ways of thinking about complexity.
• The stewardship and transformative futures focus area investigates knowledge, values, practices, and governance that can lead to fair and sustainable futures.

In addition to a PhD programme in Sustainability Science, the Centre offers a Masters programme in Social-Ecological Resilience for Sustainable Development and several specialised courses. These include an executive programme in resilience thinking for business leaders and courses from Stockholm University on global change, sustainable business, social-ecological resilience, and systems theory.

Notable work

In 2009, Johan Rockström, who was the director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, worked with 28 top scientists from around the world. Together, they created a new idea called the "planetary boundaries." This idea helps governments and organizations understand how to protect Earth’s systems to support long-term human survival. The plan suggests that Earth has natural limits, and crossing these limits could lead to sudden and dangerous changes that make Earth less livable. Scientists identified nine important systems that support life, such as climate, forests, and clean water. They measured how far these systems have already been pushed and how much more they could be pushed before harm occurs. This idea helps people understand where it is safe to develop and live.

In 2015, the scientists updated their work. They changed the name of one boundary from "loss of biodiversity" to "change in biosphere integrity," which means they now consider how ecosystems work as a whole, not just the number of species. They also renamed "chemical pollution" to "novel entities," which includes new types of materials like plastics, chemicals, and radioactive substances. According to the 2015 update, four of the nine boundaries had already been crossed: climate change, loss of biodiversity, land use changes, and changes in natural cycles of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. The idea of planetary boundaries became widely known in the media, including in newspapers like The Economist and National Geographic.

In 2022, scientists confirmed that the boundary related to "novel entities" had also been crossed. In 2023, they studied all nine boundaries for the first time and found that six had been crossed, with four posing serious risks. This included two new boundaries: changes in freshwater use and the presence of novel entities. A new study showed that the planetary boundaries idea has influenced both science and society.

In 2025, scientists confirmed that the boundary for ocean acidification had also been crossed.

Some scholars have criticized the planetary boundaries idea, saying it might unfairly affect countries in the Global South. For example, rules about protecting forests might require countries that have not yet developed to make sacrifices, while countries that already used their forests for farming may not face the same challenges.

In 2021, a documentary film titled Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet was released by Netflix. The film, directed by Jonathan Clay and presented by Sir David Attenborough and Johan Rockström, explains the discovery of the nine planetary boundaries. A book with the same name was also published, with a message from Greta Thunberg.

The Planetary Health Diet is a type of diet that includes more plant-based foods and less meat, processed foods, and sugar. It was created by the EAT-Lancet Commission in 2019 to help feed a growing world population while protecting the environment. The Stockholm Resilience Centre helped organize this report.

The goal of the diet is to:
– Feed 10 billion people by 2050
– Reduce deaths caused by unhealthy eating
– Protect the environment to prevent harm to Earth’s systems

The report received attention in the media but was also criticized for suggesting people eat less meat. Later, it was found that this criticism came from groups that support meat production.

In 2024, the Stockholm Resilience Centre released a report titled Doing Business Within Planetary Boundaries. This report helps businesses measure their environmental impacts more easily. It introduces two tools:
– Essential Environmental Impact Variables (EEIVs): A way to measure the most important environmental effects of companies.
– Earth System Impact score (ESI): A tool to study how companies affect the environment beyond just carbon emissions.

The Stockholm Resilience Centre is also involved in other projects, such as:
– Being a partner in SeaBOS, a group of the world’s largest seafood companies working to make fishing more sustainable.
– Hosting international conferences on resilience and sustainability in 2008 and 2017.
– Organizing the third Nobel Laureate Symposium on global sustainability in 2011.
– Hosting the first Nobel Prize Summit in 2021, in partnership with the US National Academy of Sciences and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.