These boundaries, together, serve to keep the planet within a so-called "safe operating space" for humanity. Influential scientific analyses suggest that the world has entered the Anthropocene, a new epoch in which human activities have become the dominant driver of many earth system processes including the climate, biogeochemical cycles, ecosystems and biodiversity. Potentially catastrophic thresholds are in prospect, it is argued, providing a new urgency and authority to arguments that growth and development pathways must reconnect with the biosphere's capacity to sustain them (Folke and others, 2011). But the concept is also critiqued, with some actors interpreting it as anti-growth and development, while others suggest that "planetary boundaries' thinking privileges universal global environmental concerns over diverse local ones, justifying top-down interventions that protect the environment at the expense of people and their livelihoods.