About
The Environmental Risks Monitor (ERM) is a weekly structured intelligence product covering planetary boundary status, Earth system tipping points, extreme weather, environmental policy and law, and geopolitical cascades driven by environmental stress. It is one monitor in the Asymmetric Intelligence hub-and-spoke architecture — a network of specialised monitors each covering a distinct strategic domain, sharing a common design system and publication schedule.
ERM is organised around the Stockholm Resilience Centre / Potsdam Institute planetary boundaries framework — nine boundaries that define the safe operating space for humanity: Climate Change, Biosphere Integrity, Land System Change, Freshwater Change, Biogeochemical Flows, Novel Entities, Ocean Acidification, Atmospheric Aerosol Loading, and Stratospheric Ozone. As of the inaugural issue, six of the nine boundaries have been transgressed.
Beyond boundary tracking, ERM monitors six major tipping systems — AMOC, West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Amazon dieback, Greenland Ice Sheet, permafrost methane release, and coral reef collapse — that have the potential to trigger non-linear and potentially irreversible Earth system transitions. ERM applies a filter framework (F1–F4) to classify the nature of each signal: cascade from physical to human systems (F1), regulatory vacuum or policy failure (F2), tipping system early warning (F3), or attribution gap (F4).
ERM tracks cross-monitor connections — where environmental stress is a causal driver of developments covered by other Asymmetric Intelligence monitors, including the European Geopolitical and Hybrid Threat Monitor, the World Democracy Monitor, the FIMI and Cognitive Warfare Monitor, and the AI Governance Monitor.
ERM publishes every Saturday at 05:00 UTC. For readers in the UK, this is published on Saturday at 06:00 BST (British Summer Time) during summer, or 05:00 GMT in winter.
Each issue covers the seven-day period ending on the Saturday of publication. The data window closes at approximately 00:00 UTC Saturday to allow processing and publication. Cron tasks update the data JSON files only — the HTML shell is static and maintained separately.
| Event | Time (UTC) |
|---|---|
| Data window closes | Saturday 00:00 UTC |
| Processing and JSON update | Saturday 00:00–05:00 UTC |
| Publication | Saturday 05:00 UTC (06:00 BST) |
Peter Howitt
Gibraltar
ERM is produced independently as part of the Asymmetric Intelligence project. The project exists to surface structured intelligence on asymmetric threats, geopolitical risk, and planetary-scale dynamics for analysts, researchers, and policy-oriented readers who need structured signal rather than news narrative.
Contact and full project details: asym-intel.info
ERM is produced with the assistance of Perplexity Computer. The analytical judgements, source selection, boundary status assessments, and editorial decisions are made by the human editor. Perplexity Computer assists with structured data processing and publication workflow.
ERM is an independent intelligence product. It does not represent the views of any government, institution, or organisation. All assessments are the editor's own and should not be used as the sole basis for operational, policy, or investment decisions.