Seven Boundaries Breached – and the Silence in the Room

Yesterday, the Planetary Health Check 2025 was released. Its message is sobering: human activities have now pushed Earth beyond seven of the nine scientifically defined planetary boundaries.

Climate change is accelerating. Biodiversity is not doing well. Freshwater systems, soils, and nutrient cycles are destabilized. And for the first time, ocean acidification has been assessed as transgressed. The Earth’s natural resilience — the buffering capacity that has held our climate and ecosystems relatively stable throughout the Holocene — is weakening. Early warning signs of tipping points are emerging.

Safeguarding the resilience of our planet means bringing our collective activity back within planetary boundaries. These boundaries are not optional. They are the life-support system upon which all human societies and economies depend.

As the introduction of the report states: “The Planetary Health Check report is more than data. It’s a call to action. With each new insight comes greater responsibility – to protect the global commons, to invest in restoration and renewals, and to empower a new generation of planetary stewards… By understanding the boundaries that keep Earth stable, we can make better choices –before tipping points become points of no return.”

Meanwhile, in Oslo, I’ve joined (online) the many leaders who have gathered at the Oslo Business Forum 2025. The headline themes: artificial intelligence, accelerating complexity, leading in uncertainty. Important topics, without a doubt. Yet as I listened in, I could not help noticing what was missing.

There has so far been no mention of the planetary crisis. No mention of a poly-crisis or meta-crisis. Why?

Why we turn away

Part of the answer lies in psychology. The planetary crisis feels overwhelming — it triggers fear, grief, and sometimes paralysis. Leaders naturally turn toward challenges that feel actionable within their own sphere of control. AI disruption feels urgent and solvable. Planetary overshoot feels diffuse, political, and long-term.

Part of the answer lies in narrative. Business conferences are designed to inspire with stories of growth, opportunity, and possibility. Planetary boundaries point instead to limits, responsibility, and transformation. That narrative is harder to package in an “energizing” keynote for bunch of senior leaders.

And part of the answer lies in development. To see and act on the planetary crisis requires a more mature kind of leadership — one that can integrate paradoxes, hold long time horizons, and take moral responsibility for future generations. Most of our leadership culture is not there yet.

Why this matters

Silence has a cost. If business leadership gatherings talk only about AI and complexity while avoiding the planetary crisis, we risk preparing brilliantly for the wrong future. It is not that AI or complexity are irrelevant — they are deeply important. But they exist within a deeper context: the destabilization of the Earth system itself.

As the scientists remind us: stay within the boundaries, and the Earth remains our dependable home. Breach them, and we risk irreversible damage to our life-support system.

A call to deeper leadership

This is a call for courage and maturity. We need leaders who can hold both truths at once:

• That technology like AI can unlock powerful new opportunities.
• And that all of it becomes meaningless if we undermine the living systems that sustain us.

To navigate this paradox, leaders must grow beyond business-as-usual. We must expand our capacity for complexity, for presence, for long-term stewardship. In short: our inner development is now inseparable from our outer survival and thriving.

This is the real work that lies before each and every one of us. Let me know if you want to get started.

If you want to learn more about the Planetary Health Check, you can read the full report here: www.planetaryhealthcheck.org.

Elisabet Lagerstedt

Elisabet Lagerstedt is the founder and director of Future Navigators. As a trusted advisor, consultant, and Executive Coach, she helps business leaders navigate beyond business as usual to build Better Business and co-create a better future - through insight, strategy, innovation, and transformation. Elisabet is also the author of Better Business, Better Future (2022) and Navigera in i Framtiden (2018).