What is Planetary Intelligence?

Given I'm running a business unit called Planetary Intelligence, I'd better explain what I mean by "Planetary Intelligence".

There are lots of definitions in use and no one correct one. But this is what I mean.

 Planetary intelligence is using information about the planet to inform decisions.

In the context of my business that information is particularly predictions of the interplay between planetary processes and the outcomes of possible business actions.

Planetary processes would be weather, climate, carbon, biogeochemistry, biodiversity, hydrology, rare earth metals, crop growth, etc...

Possible business actions would range from business transformation strategy, different risks, to day to day business operations. Their outcomes would vary from overall business survival, revenue generation, waste saving, emissions avoided/reduced, habitat protected/restored etc...

 I do love this other definition of Planetary Intelligence by Frank et al. (2022) in "Intelligence as a planetary scale process".

 "the acquisition and application of collective knowledge operating at a planetary scale which is integrated into the function of coupled planetary systems"

This definition is more about sharing knowledge across the planet to inform actions across the planet! As they state, this has happened in the past: our response to the Ozone hole as the nascent example.

Humanities response to other planetary crises now underway will be another. It's through that which I think my definition and Frank et al.'s definitions will merge. As the climate and other crises develop, we'll inevitably need to use collectively acquired information to inform decisions. If we don't the crises will simply evolve to a state in which we do - how soon we adopt collective knowledge about key planetary properties will strongly influence how bad things will get before we do.

I'm looking forward to, but not waiting for, global collective action to be enabled by what we're building. More on that later!