Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) is a research centre at Stockholm University focused on resilience, sustainability science and social-ecological systems. Founded in 2007, it is a collaboration between Stockholm University and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The centre has a particular focus on social-ecological resilience, where humans and nature are studied as an integrated whole. Stockholm Resilience Centre states that its mission is to:
advance the scientific understanding of the complex, dynamic interactions of people and nature in the Biosphere train the next generation of sustainability researchers and leaders engage in collaborations with change agents Its research addresses sustainability challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, food systems and global financial markets. The centre advises policymakers and industry on ecosystem management and long-term sustainable and equitable development in Europe and elsewhere around the world.
Organisation Stockholm Resilience Centre was founded in 2007 with funding from Mistra by Johan Rockström and Carl Folke. The centre has approximately 160 staff. Line Gordon has been director of the centre since 2018. Several researchers affiliated with the centre have been recognised among highly cited researchers. In 2025, five of the centre's researchers (Sarah Cornell, Max Troell, Johan Rockström, Garry Peterson, and Carl Folke), were included in the prestigious Clarivate list of the world's most cited researchers. Stockholm Resilience Centre is governed by a board. It also receives strategic advice from two international advisory bodies. The International Scientific Advisory Council (ISAC) provides advice on the scientific development and direction of the centre and is led by Elena Bennett from McGill University. The International Advisory Board (IAB) provides strategic advice on the centre's efforts to connect knowledge to action towards global sustainability, particularly in business and policy, and is currently led by Jim Balsillie.
Research Stockholm Resilience Centre organises its research around four research areas:
Conflict and collaboration in a hyperconnected world, which examines how democratic backsliding, political polarisation and violent conflicts affect the capacity to collaborate and transform toward sustainability. Anthropocene dynamics and capacities, which studies how human activities influence the functioning of the Earth's climate and ecosystems. Transformative futures, which focuses on systemic changes needed to address global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality, and technological disruptions. Doing sustainability research – the how, which examines methods for inter- and transdisciplinary research aimed at developing both theory and practical action. The centre also works across five research topics: Ocean, finance, food, fresh water and AI and tech.
Education Stockholm Resilience Centre offers a PhD programme in Sustainability Science and a Master's programme in Social-Ecological Resilience for Sustainable Development. It also offers specialised courses, including an executive programme in resilience thinking aimed at CEOs and chairpersons, and a number of Stockholm University courses focused on global change, sustainable business, social-ecological resilience and systems theory.
Notable work
The Planetary Boundaries The planetary boundaries framework was first proposed in 2009 by a group of 28 scientists led by Stockholm Resilience Centre's then director Johan Rockström. The framework identifies nine Earth system processes that are essential for human survival and proposes that these processes have boundaries that should not be crossed. The extent to which these boundaries are not crossed marks what the researchers call the safe operating space for humanity. Beyond these boundaries there is a risk of irreversible and abrupt environmental change which could make Earth less habitable. The Planetary Boundaries framework was first published in Ecology & Society and later presented and discussed in Nature: A safe operating space for humanity. In the original assessment, the group attempted to quantify how far seven of the nine boundaries had already been pushed. In 2015, the scientists published an update in Science. They changed the name of the boundary "loss of biodiversity" to "change in biosphere integrity" meaning that not only the number of species but also the functioning of the biosphere as a whole is important, and "chemical pollution" to "novel entities," including in it not only pollution but also organic pollutants, radioactive materials, nanomaterials, and microplastics. According to the 2015 update, four of the boundaries have been exceeded: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change and altered biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen). By now, the concept of planetary boundaries had gained significant international media attention and was covered in, among others, the Economist and National Geographic. In 2022, researchers concluded that the novel entity boundary had been exceeded. In 2023, scientists assessed all nine planetary boundaries for the first time in an update published in Science Advances. They found that six of these boundaries had been crossed, with four of them posing a high risk. Additional to the crossed boundaries assessed in 2015, the freshwater change and novel entities boundaries had been crossed. A new study also shows the broad impact that the Planetary Boundaries framework has on society and science. Since 2024, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has used the planetary boundaries framework for its Planetary Health Check, updated yearly. In 2025, ocean acidification was assessed as the seventh transgressed planetary boundary in the Planetary Health Check. Development studies scholars have been critical of aspects of the framework, arguing that its adoption could place burdens on the Global South. Proposals to conserve a certain proportion of Earth's remaining forests can be seen as rewarding the countries such as those in Europe that have already economically benefitted from exhausting their forests and converting land for agriculture. In contrast, countries that have yet to industrialize are asked to make sacrifices for global environmental damage they may have had little role in creating.
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