Started in 1980 with the famous series of Seminars on Nuclear War, the Erice International Seminars on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies are held annually at the Ettore Majorana Centre in Erice, Sicily. They are interdisciplinary and are attended, by invitation only, by high-level scientists and decision-makers from all over the world. Four types of meetings are held each year from 18 to 26 August. The annual meetings of the Permanent Monitoring Groups (PMPs) of the World Federation of Scientists, the International Seminar on Nuclear Warfare and Planetary Emergencies, the General Assembly of the World Federation of Scientists, and associated workshops and meetings. With the Nuclear Warfare Seminars, we moved into the broad field of planetary emergencies, where we achieved the necessary degree of international representation and expertise by identifying and categorising as many as 72 planetary emergencies into 15 classes. This study was followed by the establishment of twelve permanent Monitoring Groups to monitor planetary emergencies.