The concepts of planetary boundaries are influential in the sustainability literature and assist in delineating the 'safe operating spaces' beyond which critical Earth system processes could collapse. Moving away from our current trajectory towards 'hothouse Earth' will require knowledge of how Earth systems have varied throughout the Holocene, and whether and how far we have deviated from past ranges of variability. Such information can inform decisions about where change could be resisted, accepted or where adaptation is inevitable. The need for information on long-term (Holocene) change provides an interface for palaeoecology and sustainability that remains underexploited. In this position paper, we explore this interface, first discussing the need for long-term perspectives and introducing examples where palaeoecology has been used in defining safe operating spaces and constraining limits of acceptable change. We describe advances in quantitative methods for analysis of time-series data that strengthen the contribution of palaeoecology to the concepts of planetary boundaries and safe operating spaces. We consider the importance of issues of scaling from landscape to regional and global scales in operationalising planetary boundaries concepts. We distil principles for this field of research going forward and introduce three case studies which will form the basis of research on these topics.

Center for Theoretical Study Charles University Prague Czech Republic

Department of Archaeology University of Cambridge Cambridge UK

Department of Botany Faculty of Science Charles University Prague Czech Republic

Department of Environment and Geography York Institute for Tropical Ecosystems University of York York UK

Future Regions Research Centre Federation University Ballarat Australia

Geoecology Department of Environmental Sciences University of Basel Basel Switzerland

Geography and Environmental Science University of Southampton Southampton UK

Institute of Plant Sciences and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research University of Bern Bern Switzerland

Key Laboratory of Lake and Watershed Science for Water Security Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology Chinese Academy of Sciences Nanjing China

Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity Department of Biology University of York York UK

Plant Conservation Unit University of Cape Town Rondebosch South Africa

School of Energy Construction and Environment Coventry University Coventry UK

School of Geography Archaeology and Environmental Studies University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg South Africa

University of Bergen Bergen Norway

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