The concept of planetary boundaries was developed to, ‘outline a safe operating space for humanity that carries a low likelihood of harming the life support systems on Earth to such an extent that they no longer are able to support economic growth and human development’ (Rockström, et al., 2013). The concentration of human populations into cities, or city clusters, is placing those spaces under enormous social, economic and ecological pressure, in addition to affecting their resilience to environmental change or disasters.
This PhD will focus on the application of the concept of Planetary Boundaries to the Greater Bay Area, China, and will focus on assessing the status of one of the following areas: (1) freshwater use, (2) land use change and its impact on food security, or (3) how the resilience or carrying capacity of the Greater Bay Area has changed since 1978.
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F.S., Lambin, E.F., Lenton, T.M., Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H.J., Nykvist, B., De Wit, C.A., Hughes, T., Van Der Leeuw, S., Rodhe, H., Sörlin, S., Snyder, P.K., Costanza, R., Svedin, U., Falkenmark, M., Karlberg, L., Corell, R.W., Fabry, V.J., Hansen, J., Walker, B., Liverman, D., Richardson, K., Crutzen, P. and Foley, J.A. (2009) A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461 (7263) 472 – 475.
Informal inquiries may be addressed to Dr. Odette PARAMOR (
Odette.PARAMOR@nottingham.edu.cn) and Prof Fenzhen SU (
sufz@lreis.ac.cn), but formal applications should follow the instructions in ‘
How to apply’ section.