Mo Li

UNSW Sydney | UNSW · School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

The idea of revisiting the biophysical limits of human life on planet Earth has gained renewed momentum in the Anthropocene. The planetary boundaries (PBs) framework has emerged as a strong guardrail concept, even though its capacity to inform the development of absolute sustainability assessments and realistic policies remains unclear. In this pap...

The water planetary boundary (PB) has attracted wide academic attention but empirical water footprint research that accommodates local biophysical boundaries remains scarce. Here we develop two novel quantitative footprint indicators, the water exceedance footprint and the surplus water footprint. The first measures the amount of excessive water wi...

There is building consensus that non-state actors have the potential to drive more ambitious action towards climate targets than governments, thus driving the necessary transition to ensure that humanity remains within a safe operating space. These bottom-up mitigation activities, however, require individual targets on both direct and indirect (ups...

The idea of measuring humanity's footprint against planetary boundaries has attracted wide academic attention but methods to implement the theory in sustainability accounting remain underexplored. To help nations take collective actions to stay within a safe operating space, footprinting approaches need to be revised to accommodate biophysical limi...