A special section of the journal Ambio is now available and is based on the three working papers that provided the scientific foundation for the 3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium dialogue. The 3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium, that was held in Stockholm last spring, was one of the definite sustainability events of 2011. Nobel Laureates and experts on sustainability gathered in Stockholm to discuss the necessity and opportunities in a world transition to global sustainability. The major output of the Symposium was the Stockholm Memorandum, that was signed by the involved Nobel Laureates and handed over to the UN High-level Panel on Global Sustainability.

The first paper Reconnecting to the Biosphere (Folke et al. 2011) calls for a shift in mind set, emphasizing that people shape the Earth System and are at the same time fundamentally dependent on the capacity of its biosphere to sustain our own development. Institutions and governance for building social-ecological resilience to deal with an interconnected and fluctuating global system becomes a central priority.

The second paper The Anthropocene: From global change to planetary stewardship (Steffen et al. 2011) focuses on the great acceleration into a human dominated geological epoch, the Anthropocene, and on identifying the Earth’s safe operating space for societal development. The new era calls for planetary stewardship to fundamentally alter our relationship with the planet we inhabit.

The third paper Tipping towards sustainability: Emerging pathways of transformation (Westley et al. 2011) explores links between agency, institutions and social- ecological innovation for navigating large-scale transfor- mations towards global sustainability. What conditions are necessary to escape the current lock-in? Promising social and technical innovations creating planetary opportunities need to be connected to broad institutional resources and responses.