The boardroom is missing a chair

A chief executive might reasonably look at the nine planetary boundaries and ask a simple question: what exactly am I supposed to do about this?

The planetary boundaries describe nine interconnected systems that keep Earth stable and capable of supporting life. They include the climate, biodiversity, forests and land, freshwater, oceans, the ozone layer, nutrient cycles, air pollution and the growing burden of synthetic chemicals and other novel substances.

A retailer cannot stabilise the Amazon. A bank cannot rebalance the nitrogen cycle. A manufacturer cannot restore the chemistry of the oceans. So why should they occupy precious time in the boardroom?

The reality is that boards spend much of their time assessing global forces they cannot control. The test is not whether a company can change them, but whether they can change the company.

Planetary boundaries are the macroeconomics of the physical world. No individual company controls inflation, interest rates, pandemics, wars, or the price of oil, yet no serious board would ignore them on that basis.

What appears as a global scientific threshold rapidly becomes a local commercial reality. Water stress closes factories and constrains power generation. Drought reduces harvests and drives up food prices. Biodiversity loss weakens soils, pollination and agricultural productivity. Ocean acidification threatens fisheries and coastal economies. Chemical pollution creates health costs, legal liabilities, and regulatory upheaval.

These risks also compound. A drought becomes a food shock, which becomes an inflation problem, which becomes political instability. A degraded forest changes rainfall patterns far beyond its borders, affecting farms, reservoirs, hydropower, and cities thousands of kilometres away. This is systemic risk: interconnected, cascading, and difficult to diversify away.

The inability of any one company to repair a planetary boundary is not an argument for corporate indifference.

Business still has important levers. Companies influence supply chains, purchasing standards, capital flows, technology, public policy, and consumer behaviour. They can reduce their contribution to planetary instability, prepare for the risks already locked in, and join coalitions capable of shifting entire markets.

Voluntary action alone cannot protect global public goods; common problems require common rules.

We have done this before. No single company or industry could repair the ozone layer alone. Scientists identified the danger, governments responded with the Montreal Protocol, and industry came together to redesign products and replace destructive chemicals. The ozone layer is now recovering.

Science revealed the boundary. Government coordinated the response. Business innovated within a clear direction of travel and a common set of rules. With 7 of the 9 boundaries already breached, we desperately need that architecture again.

The challenge today is considerably more complex. Climate, water, biodiversity, land, pollution, food, energy, and health cannot be separated into neat policy boxes. Yet neat boxes are precisely how most governments are organised.

Environment ministries monitor emissions and ecosystems. Agriculture ministries pursue food production. Finance ministries manage growth, debt, and taxation. Health ministries respond to disease. Defence and security officials assess instability and conflict.

Each may perform its own task competently, but the Earth system does not fit neatly into an organisational chart.

A policy that appears successful through one departmental lens can create serious damage elsewhere. An energy subsidy may lower prices today while increasing exposure to volatile fossil-fuel markets tomorrow. Irrigation can raise agricultural output this year while exhausting a river basin on which the next harvest depends. A poorly designed biofuel policy may cut fossil-fuel use while accelerating deforestation and food insecurity.

This is the governance gap the Chief Planetary Scientist Network is designed to address.

The Planetary Guardians, where I am Vice-Chair, and Professor Johan Rockström launched the network in June. Belgium became its first national member, appointing Luc Bas director of its Climate Risk Assessment Centre, as Chief Planetary Officer. CERAC already translates climate and environmental science into national risk assessments and reports primarily to Belgium's National Security Council.

The purpose of a Chief Planetary Scientist is to place integrated Earth-system science inside complex decisions on budgets, infrastructure, economic development, and national security.

Political leaders must still weigh competing priorities and decide how to act, but they would do so with a far clearer view of the whole and of benefits and consequences that previously remained obscured.

For this to matter, the role needs real authority. A CPS needs access to the cabinet, national security machinery and budget process, making risks visible before decisions and investments are locked in.

Taken seriously, this could change the operating system of government. Budgets would be tested against physical as well as fiscal limits. Infrastructure would be designed for the next fifty years, not the last fifty. National security would encompass food, water, energy, health and ecosystem integrity.

When I became CEO of Unilever in 2009, one of my first decisions was to end quarterly earnings guidance. Many analysts thought I had gone mad, but the reasoning was simple: if leaders are judged every ninety days, they will naturally make decisions that serve the next ninety days.

Changing the reporting cycle did not make difficult choices disappear, but it changed the horizon against which those choices were judged.

A Chief Planetary Scientist could do something similar for government. The role would make the long term visible in institutions dominated by election cycles, annual budgets, and immediate crises. It would ensure that the consequences of today's decisions are present in the room before those decisions become tomorrow's disasters.

Business should welcome that shift. As we saw with the ozone, companies can respond to demanding rules when the direction is clear and credible. What deters investment is political whiplash, fragmentation, and policy divorced from physical reality.

But business must meet government at the same level, supporting science-based policy and bringing planetary risk into its own capital allocation, supply chains, and advocacy.

Planetary boundaries are not another collection of environmental targets for the sustainability department; they describe the conditions under which business itself remains profitable.

No company can restore those conditions alone, but every company can decide whether it will help to accelerate collective action, actively stick its head in the sand, or actively use its influence to delay it.

That is the distinction business leaders must understand. Lack of control does not mean lack of exposure, and it certainly does not mean lack of responsibility.

The planet may not have a seat in the boardroom, but no business can escape the consequences of ignoring it.

This article is also published on LinkedIn. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the opinions of leading Sustainability Thought Leaders, their views do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

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