Climate, Biodiversity and Human Welfare: The Crises and their Root Cause...Why it Matters that the World Needs Transformation to a Nature-Centric Paradigm
- Dr. Dave Augeri
- Jan 21
- 31 min read
Updated: Mar 25
A reality check on the world’s most severe systemic ‘polycrises’: Why conservation is not working while human welfare is at serious risk and what we can do: A Nature-centric Approach for Transformation.
(Excerpts from Augeri, 2025)
© Dave Augeri, Ph.D.
“There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable
and sustainable future for all (very high confidence).” (IPCC, 2023a)
The Climate Crisis
On the 3rd of July 2023 the Earth experienced its hottest global temperatures in recorded history. Yet, that record was broken again each successive day on July 4th, 5th, and 6th, with the 6th of July 2023 being the hottest global temperatures on Earth in 125,000 years (Climate Change Institute, 2023; Copernicus, 2023a; Dance, 2023; IPCC, 2023a, 2023b).
Every day during the remainder of July 2023 was hotter than the previous record, which was set on 13 August 2016, making 3-31 July 2023 the hottest 29 days of global air temperatures on record to that point (Copernicus, 2023a, 2023b). By the first week of August 2023, global ocean temperatures measured from the surface to -2,000 m (-6,561.8 ft) below were also the hottest ever recorded (Climate Change Institute, 2023; Copernicus 2023c; Horton, 2023). As the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) stressed: “Greenhouse gas levels are record high. Global temperatures are record high. Sea level rise is record high. Antarctic sea ice is record low. It’s a deafening cacophony of broken records” (WMO, 2023).
Not to be outdone, global temperatures broke those records on July 21st 2024, which were broken yet again on July 22nd 2024 (Copernicus, 2024). Furthermore, both land and sea surface temperatures (to -2,000 m below the surface) for the 13 months between June 2023 through July 2024 were the highest on record, during which the Earth was 1.64°C hotter and more consistently above the internationally agreed limit of 1.5°C than any period since preindustrial times (Copernicus, 2024; 2025; NCEI-NOAA, 2024; WMO, 2024). These extremes trigged record-setting “high-impact weather events” on every continent, affecting virtually every ecosystem on Earth along with billions of people, while creating widespread catastrophes and killing large numbers of people and other species without discrimination (Copernicus, 2025; WMO, 2024).
Why should we care about ‘just a few degrees’?
Quite simply: These life-threatening weather events have not been simply sporadic. They are also not freakish or random abnormalities. Two-thirds of global warming since 1880 has occurred since 1975 and the ten years with the highest annual maximum daily average temperatures were during 2015-2024 (figure 1) (Copernicus, 2024; 2025). The latter were also the warmest years on record since modern record keeping began (Copernicus 2025; NASA Goddard Earth Observatory, 2023). In 2024, surface air and sea temperatures also exceeded the 1991–2020 averages across 91% of the Earth (figures 2 and 3) (Copernicus, 2025). Furthermore, eleven months and 75% of days in 2024 had global-average surface air temperatures more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, making it the first calendar year on record for this to occur (Copernicus, 2025). In fact, “at the current rate of warming of more than 0.2°C per decade, the probability of breaching the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement within the 2030s is highly likely” (Copernicus, 2025).
The trends are unmistakable. Analyses by global authorities of data from around the world confirm that global temperatures across the 2023-2024 period for both land and oceans were not only the hottest on record (Copernicus, 2023d, 2024a, 2025; NCEI-NOAA, 2024, 2023; WMO, 2024, 2023), but they were also the hottest in the last 125,000 years (Copernicus 2025; IPCC, 2023). Furthermore, global air temperatures over the 21-year period of 2003-2024 also exceeded those of any multi-century period of warmth over the past 125,000 years (Copernicus, 2025; IPCC, 2021b; 2023a, 2023b). In addition, concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases CO2 (carbon dioxcide) and CH4 (methane) were higher in 2024 than at any time in at least 2 million years and 800,000 years respectively (Copernicus, 2025; IPCC, 2021a, 2021b).
Arguments are made by fossil fuel industries and those who deny climate change that there have been climatic and temperature fluctuations throughout Earth’s history and, therefore, what is happening today is supposedly just “natural”, right? While it is true that variances in climate have occurred in geologic history, those changes occurred very slowly over hundreds of thousands to millions of years, as discussed below. However, the current unprecedented rate of climate change the Earth has been experiencing has occurred in just 55 years since 1970. Based on the significant preponderance of empirical evidence and research by thousands of scientists and scholarly institutions over multiple decades, global authorities conclude it is “unequivocal” (IPCC, 2021a) that human activities — particularly emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — have been the primary driver of this unprecedentedly rapid change in climate since the industrial revolution and especially since the 1950s, with a sharp acceleration beginning in the early 1970s (Copernicus, 2023d, 2024a, 2025; IPCC, 2021a, 2021b, 2022, 2023a, 2023b; NCEI, 2023; NASA, 2023; WMO, 2023).
So, why should we care about ‘just one or two degrees of global warming’? According to the Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2021a), “Climate change is already affecting every inhabited region across the globe…Projected changes in extremes are larger in frequency and intensity with every additional increment of global warming”. But temperatures fluctuate and sometimes by large ranges every day in different parts of the world, right?
Well, global temperatures not only depend on how much energy the Earth receives from the sun, but also how much the planet retains and radiates back into space. The sun’s energy fluctuates very little in a year, but the amount of energy the Earth is able to radiate back to space is also connected with the chemical composition of our atmosphere, especially the concentrations of greenhouse gases (e.g., CO2 and CH4, etc.) that trap the heat and retain it within the atmosphere (NASA Goddard Earth Observatory, 2023). Furthermore, approximately 90% of the accumulated heat on Earth is deposited in the world’s oceans to at least -2,000 m below the surface (Cheng et al., 2024). Therefore, just 1.0°C of change at a global scale is highly significant because it requires an enormous amount of heat to warm the entire Earth’s atmosphere along with all of the land masses and oceans down to -2,000 m below the surface by only that seemingly small temperature change on a consistent basis (Cheng et al., 2020; 2022, 2024; IPCC, 2021a, 2021b, 2022, 2023a, 2023b; NASA Goddard Earth Observatory, 2023).
To put it in stark terms that perhaps we can all understand: Recent studies (e.g., Cheng et al., 2020, 2022, 2024) by dozens of scientists led by researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Center for Atmospheric Research, and many other institutions around the world concluded it is “irrefutable” that the amount of excess heat energy caused specifically by human sources that accumulated in the world's oceans between 1994-2019 is equivalent to 3.6 billion Hiroshima atomic bomb explosions. This averages to 4 Hiroshima bombs' worth of heat energy entering the oceans every second for this 25-year period (IAP, 2020). Furthermore, it reached record levels in 2023 and again in 2024 (Cheng et al., 2024).
The IPCC (2022) concluded with “high confidence” that these threats to the biosphere and humanity are on every continent and are a systemic global risk that will increase with each additional 1/10 th of a degree of warming.
The Biodiversity Crisis
Not to be outdone by the climate crisis, the Earth has also entered an ‘accelerated modern human-induced biological annihilation’ via mass species extinctions (Ceballos et al., 2015; 2017). The global rate of species extinctions is hastening and, on average, is hundreds to 1,000 times higher than background extinctions over the last 10 million years, threatening more than 1 million species with extinction within the next few decades (IPBES, 2019; Pimm et al., 2014; WWF, 2024). The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, 2019) concluded that there are just five direct drivers of change in Nature that have caused more than 90% of Nature loss since 1970, and all are caused specifically by human activities:
1. Land use (e.g., agriculture) and sea change causing habitat loss, disturbance, degradation, fragmentation, and destruction, etc.
2. Natural resource and species overuse and exploitation.
3. Climate change (e.g., causing mass mortalities; altering or eliminating habitat; biophysical and biochemical changes in the environment (e.g., ocean acidification and salinity changes, etc.); reducing food and freshwater sources; drought, extreme heat, fires, storms and other species-harming and mortality-inducing severe weather events, etc.).
4. Pollution, which has been documented in every ecosystem on Earth, from the deepest parts of the ocean to outer space.
5. Invasive species from human impacts and vectors (e.g., deforestation; habitat loss, habitat change, and habit disturbance; roads, trails, and other unnatural corridors; transportation; species introductions and relocations; pest and other management actions; etc.).
Agriculture: The Primary Driver of Biodiversity Loss Today
As one example among the countless, 96% of all mammal biomass on Earth is humans and domestic animals (e.g., livestock and pets), while only 4% are wild mammals (Bar-On et al., 2018; IPBES-IPCC, 2021; Ritchie & Roser 2022). In fact, humans and livestock outweigh all vertebrates on Earth combined, except for fish (Bar-On et al., 2018).
Since 1970 there has been at least a 45% increase in raw timber production in natural forests creating substantial deforestation (IPBES, 2019), but the single largest driver of deforestation and associated biodiversity loss since 1970 are agricultural expansion, the global food system, and the conversion of native forests and ecosystems for cash crop production (including plantations for palm oil, timber, pulp & paper, etc.), animal farming, and pastures (Benton et al., 2021; UNEP, 2020; WWF, 2024).
Half (49%) of all habitable land on Earth has been cleared for agriculture (Benton et al, 2021; Ritchie & Roser, 2021, 2022). This includes approximately 90% of deforestation in the Tropics where the highest amount of terrestrial biodiversity exists (IPBES, 2019; Willson, 1992; WWF, 2024). The significant majority (82%) of agricultural land is devoted entirely to livestock grazing, feed production, and producing farmed animal protein (e.g., red meat, pork, and poultry) and dairy for human consumption (Benton et al, 2021; IPBES, 2019; Ritchie & Roser, 2021, 2022; WWF, 2024).
Estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 2024a, 2024b) and others (e.g., Ritchie et al., 2023) are that livestock production has doubled since 1988, with approximately 26.56 billion chickens, 1.55 billion cows, and 1 billion domestic pigs currently in the world for human consumption -- in addition to countless others that authorities are unable to track. As a society, we eat approximately 350 million tons (771.75 billion pounds) of beef per year around the world and it is estimated that by 2050, global meat consumption is projected to reach between 460 - 570 million tons (1.3 trillion pounds). The average American consumes about 224.6 lbs/person/year of beef, pork and poultry or 30 billion pounds total, and if the meat-heavy diet of the average American was shared, the world could feed 2.5 billion people (FAO, 2024a, 2024b; Ritichie et al., 2023).
In addiiton, our total food system enterprise currently creates up to about 37% of total annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and food waste creates around half of this, mostly as methane which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (Crippa et al., 2021). In fact, if wasted food were the equivalent of a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world, just behind the USA and China. Another way to imagine this is that global food loss is responsible for more than four times the GHG emissions of all annual aviation combined (UNEP, 2022).
There is no doubt that agriculture is the primary driver of biodiversity loss and a significant source of pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and other serious environmental degradations around the world. In addition, agriculture also accounts for 70-75% of the world’s freshwater withdrawals (Bar-On et al., 2018; Ritchie & Roser 2022) negatively impacting both freshwater and marine ecosystems. In fact, approximately 4,226 gallons (16,000 liters) of water are needed to produce just 2.3 lbs (1 kg) of beef in addition to more than 2 gallons (8 liters) of gasoline needed to produce 2.3 lbs (1 kg) of grain-fed beef (Crippa et al., 2021).
It is certain that the world needs food, particularly with an extremely fast-growing population with our adding about 1 billion people to the planet every twelve years -- likely reaching approximately 10.2 billion people by 2060 (O’Neil, 2020; U.S. Census Bureau, 2023). It is equally evident, however, that we have tremendous food waste and loss leading to a negative cycle of increased deforestation, desertification, biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and other deleterious impacts.
One-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year with a monetary worth of approximately $1 trillion USD (World Food Programme, 2020). At least 13-14% of food produced globally is lost between harvest and retail and another 17% of global food production is wasted by households, the food service industry, and retail businesses (United Nations, 2023; UNEP, 2021; World Food Programme, 2020). Importantly, according to the World Food Programme (2020), all of the food produced in the world that is never eaten is enough to feed two billion people, which is more than twice the number of undernourished people around the world.
Infant organutan orphaned from deforestation by fires used to clear forests for agriculture.
Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss
Climate change today is considered the third most direct driver of biodiversity loss noted by the IPBES, but both the IPBES (2019) and the IPCC (2022) conclude with “very high confidence” that the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and ecosystems are also compounded by the other anthropogenic impacts. This is particularly the case with habitat loss, fragmentation and land use changes; overexploitation; freshwater water abstraction (e.g., overuse, irrigation, farming and livestock, watering lawns, etc.); nutrient loading; pollution; human introduction of invasive species, pests and diseases; and legal and illegal hunting, fishing and its bycatch; among others. All of these and other human-induced influences reduce or destroy species’ and ecosystems’ resiliencies to climate change and other disturbances (IPBES-IPCC, 2021; IPCC et al., 2019; IPCC, 2019, 2021b, 2022, 2023a, 2023b).
However, the IPBES and the IPCC together concluded with “very high confidence” that “extreme climate events” on all continents are also creating conditions that many species (including humans) cannot adapt to (IPBES-IPCC, 2021; IPCC, 2022, 2023a, 2023b). Both authorities have concluded with “high confidence” and “very high confidence” that climate change has substantially altered terrestrial, marine, and freshwater ecosystems around the world causing species losses and extinctions, increases in disease, pest and invasive species outbreaks and pandemics, and mounting mass mortality events of plants and animals. In addition, climate change has caused significant ecosystem degradation and collapses along with losses of entire ecosystems and key ecosystem functions, services, products and other benefits for society and Nature (IPBES-IPCC, 2021; IPCC, 2019, 2021a, 2022, 2023a, 2023b). All of this has resulted in not only the first mass extinction in Earth’s history caused by another species – humans – but also the first climate-driven mass extinction caused by a species.
While agriculture and land use change will continue to be top drivers of biodiversity loss today, recent collaborative research integrating data in the largest modeling study of its kind by 57 scientists from 45 institutions around the world indicates climate change will likely become the most important driver of biodiversity loss with accelerated extinctions by mid-century (Pereira, et al., 2024). The same study showed substantial declines in ecosystem regulating, support, and provisioning services (e.g., oxygen production, pollination, water filtration, nitrogen retention, carbon sequestration, soil formation, food, medicines, fuel, timber, and other products, etc.) in the same time frame.
In 2020, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) solemnly stated that the world had failed for a second consecutive decade to meet any single target to mitigate the destruction of Nature and critical ecosystem services (CBD, 2020) and this remained the same by the CBD’s 15th and 16th Conference of the Parties (CoP) held in 2022 and 2024 respectively. Importantly, many people are unaware of the fact that climate change and biodiversity loss are “inextricably connected with each other and human futures” (IPBES-IPCC, 2021).
As a result, the most severe risks to the world for the foreseeable future after the impacts of climate change causing extreme weather events (#1 most severe) and critical change to Earth ecosystems (#2 most severe) are the combined crises of biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapses (#3 most severe), along with society’s continued failure of their mitigation (CBD, 2020, 2022a, 2022b; IPBES, 2019; WEF, 2020a, 2021, 2022, 2024; WWF, 2022, 2024).
Why Does This Matter?
Biodiversity is both the fabric and engine of life. The millions of species on Earth and their roles are what provide the essential life support, products, services and other benefits that we receive and entirely depend on to survive, not only for our wellbeing, livelihoods, economies and businesses, but for every breathe we take and for our very existence. Biodiversity is fundamental for the existence and well-being of all life on Earth, essential for healthy and proper ecosystem and biosphere functions and integrities, critical for a healthy and stable climate, integral to our economies (55% of global GDP depends on Nature [Evison et al., 2023]) and all human systems, and ensures resilience against catastrophic events, among myriad other services. Crucially, it is the biological and functional diversities in this ecological array that make all of this is possible.
The tragic reality is that the climate, biodiversity, ecosystem, natural resource and human welfare crises are systemic ‘polycrises’. A polycrisis comprises multiple interconnected crises that converge and amplify each other, wherein each crisis and/or various combinations of them are potentially catastrophic. A systemic crisis is the breakdown of an entire system (rather than the failure of an individual part) that can spillover with rippling impacts internally and across other external systems. This can happen within and between ecosystems, economic systems, social systems, industrial systems, food systems, and governing systems, among others. Systemic crises can spread across a range of time and space horizons and within and/or across system, regional, country and continental boundaries.
The reality is that each one of the current crises is systemic with multiple polycrises converging within and among them. Therefore, the current situation can be considered a mega-polycrisis, one which has no comparison in human history. The closest comparison would be “The Great Dying” about 252 million years ago.
The Great Dying event occurred when massive volcanic eruptions in present day Siberia triggered a cascade of excessive greenhouse gas emissions over the course of about 1 million years, causing all of the problems we are experiencing today as well as many more that are also projected to occur in the foreseeable future. An important distinction is that biological recovery required about 8-9 million years to occur (Burgess & Bowring, 2015; Chen & Benton, 2012; Cui et al., 2021).
Therefore, the key differences are: The current geologic period known as the ‘Anthropocene’ is the first period in Earth’s history that mass extinctions and excessive greenhouse gas emissions with associated effects are occurring, but not by natural geologic events like volcanic eruptions. Rather, the cause today is by the hand of a species: humans. Also in contrast, the current climate crisis from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has occurred in only about 250 years with significant acceleration in just the last 55 years, while the current mass extinctions are occurring predominantly in the last 100 years and are accelerating at rates hundreds to thousands of times faster than at any other known time in the 3.5-billion-year history of life on Earth. Consequently, it is also causing severe damage and loss of ecosystems around the world that normally provide humanity, society and all other species critical life support, thereby further compounding extinctions and biodiversity loss and leading to vicious downward cycles.
Today, climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, natural resource shortages, and the deterioration of human welfare are intricately linked and can reinforce and accelerate each other in a synergistic manner. In terms of the top most severe risks to the world -- climate change and biodiversity loss -- the seven elected Commission Chairs of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (consisting of 170 nation state voting members and more than 18,000 scientists, scholars, policy makers, economists, lawyers, other experts, indigenous communities, and NGOs representing millions of members worldwide) made quite clear:
“Against a rapidly closing window of opportunity, we must overcome two of the most significant challenges for human societies: climate change and biodiversity loss. They are inseparable, interdependent, and mutually reinforcing. Our current approaches fall short of what scientific evidence indicates is needed to address them.” (IUCN, 2023).
Ultimately, the IPCC, IPBES, IUCN, Convention on Biological Diversity, United Nations, World Economic Forum, and numerous other global authorities have strongly emphasized that it is “unequivocal” climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapses are the most severe existential threats to human welfare, our society, and the world.
The Human Welfare Crisis
Biodiversity and the biosphere give us life, nurture us, enable our economies to prosper, and protect us within extremely fragile thresholds that can tip in either direction. Our capacity as a species and society to be able to exist and flourish – and that of myriad other species that also provide all of the services and benefits for us to exist – is restricted within these very narrow planetary boundaries. Even just a few degrees either way can alter the entire planet, making many regions uninhabitable for humans and countless other species for thousands to millions of years. The same can result from biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse. Quite simply, life on Earth cannot exist without healthy biodiversity, ecosystems and a habitable climate.
The Alliance of World Scientists (AWS) consisting of 15,682 scientists from 165 countries provided sobering data and analyses about the state of the biosphere in their “Scientists’ Warning” report to the world in 2020 (Ripple et al., 2020) with successive reports in 2021, 2022, and 2024 (Ripple et al. 2021, 2022, 2024). By 2024, nearly 72% of planetary vital signs tracked annually by the AWS reached record levels and they concluded “much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled” (Ripple et al., 2024). Several other robust studies tracking these critical planetary boundaries on Earth’s stability, resilience, and life support functions – all of which indicate the overall health of the planet – have also shown that at least two-thirds of the boundaries have been breached (e.g., Caesar et al., 2024; IPBES-IPCC 2021; IPCC, 2023a, 2023b; Richardson et al., 2023; WWF, 2024). Another robust study (Richardson et al., 2023) comprising 29 renowned scientists conducting such research in fifteen institutions around the world, concluded that the significance of our consistently exceeding the majority of these limits is “suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity”.
Among countless consequences for the biosphere that affect all of us, humanity’s anthropocentric approach to the world is ironically leading directly to increasing humanitarian disasters, disease, malnutrition, life-changing medical and physical harms, higher security risks for women and girls, and deaths for millions of people every year just from pollution, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and other environmental damages alone (IEG, 2024; Institute for Economics and Peace 2020; Lenton et al., 2023; United Nations, 2024; WEF, 2024).
At least 1.8 billion people are currently undergoing “absolute water scarcity” in 2025 and present trends strongly indicate approximately 5.4 billion people (more than half of the world’s projected population) will be suffering “high or extreme” water stress by 2040 (FAO, 2024; Institute for Economics and Peace, 2020). Furthermore, despite excessive agricultural expansion and food waste and loss that could otherwise feed billions of people, more than a quarter of the human population (2.4 billion people) experienced “moderate or severe food insecurity” by 2022 (FAO et al., 2023) and 3.5 billion people will be suffering food insecurity by 2050 (Institute for Economics and Peace, 2020). Thus, the number one United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 is actually out of reach (IEG, 2024). In fact, according to many experts, this goal “is likely to remain so [out of reach] in perpetuity if nature loss is not reversed and climate change is not halted. The poorest people are most directly reliant on biodiversity and ecosystem services for subsistence and most vulnerable to environmental shocks and stresses” (IEG, 2024).
In addition, these crises will be forcing up to one third or more (39%) of the human population to flee from regions that will no longer be liveable for humans within Gen Z’s lifetime by 2080 (Lenton et al., 2023). Therefore, as direct consequence of these and other health, social, economic, governing, and geopolitical problems caused by the climate, biodiversity and ecosystem crises, experts estimate civil unrest will dramatically increase as well as competition over scarce resources -- both leading to approximately 1.2 billion environmental refugees as soon as 2050 (Evison et al., 2023; IEG, 2024; Institute for Economics and Peace, 2020; Lenton, et al., 2023; WEF, 2024).
Importantly, social justice requires environmental justice and environmental justice must address social justice needs throughout the conservation process. The two are inseparable. Although there have been many influences on human welfare throughout history, the two most prevailing and interconnected factors today are: 1) anthropocentrism and 2) environmental degradation. However, in a vicious feedback loop, the former is creating the latter and causing the biodiversity, ecosystem, natural resource, and climate crises that are degrading both the biosphere and human welfare.
Anthropocentrism: Simply put, anthropocentrism literally means human-centered. It originates from the ancient Greek ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos) or 'human' and κέντρον(kéntron) or 'center'. It is the value system, belief and philosophy that human beings are supreme, exceptional and separate from Nature (a.k.a "human exceptionalism"), and are the central and most important entity on Earth regardless of the cost to any other beings and the biosphere. According to anthropocentrism, humans alone have intrinsic value versus all other beings who have only instrumental utility (if any) to serve humans.
Nature-Centrism: In contrast to anthropocentrism, Nature-centrism is a paradigm that prioritizes the biosphere, biodiversity and ecosystems at the core of human and societal values, choices, actions, and decision-making. It encompasses both ecocentrism and biocentrism and is rooted in the absolute respect for and intrinsic value of Nature and nonhuman species, along with the essential principles of interconnectedness, interdependence, balance, mutualism and inter-being among humanity, society and the natural world.
A WISE Solution at the Roots: Nature-centric Transformation of the Climate, Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Human Welfare Crises
These are just a fraction of the issues resulting from climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and natural resource shortages. Despite tens of thousands of environmental non-governmental organizations, humanitarian organizations, and international multi-party authorities (e.g., IUCN, IPCC, IPBES, United Nations, Convention on Biological Diversity, etc.) laser focused on these issues and spending billions of dollars around the world, conservation is losing and these crises have continued unabated – more than Nature and society can feasibly sustain. In fact, these crises have not only worsened, they are accelerating. Consequently, these crises are considered by global authorities to be the greatest existential threats to the world for the foreseeable future along with government, business, and societal failures to see, accept, mitigate and adapt to them.
Unfortunately, they are being lost in the cacophony of misinformation-disinformation, which together are ranked with these crises in the top five most severe threats to the world over the long-term (WEF, 2024). It may or may not be a surprise to some folks, but the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report (WEF, 2024) also ranked the combination of misinformation-disinformation as the #1 most severe threat to the world in the short-term. Furthermore, throughout this discourse and our prideful boasting of human achievement, society is misplacing and glossing over the human welfare crisis. Yet, it is the biodiversity, ecosystem, natural resource, and climate crises that individually and together are degrading the welfare of people and society, but are ironically being caused by ouselves. Consequently, “involuntary migration” (i.e., refugees), which has myriad cascading and systemic impacts across governing, geopolitical, social, economic, cultural, food, and other systems, is now ranked #7 in the top 10 most severe systemic risks to the world today and for the foreseeable future (WEF, 2024).
So, why is conservation not working while human welfare is also declining and at serious risk around the world? Ultimately, it boils down to us -- each one of us and our values, behaviors, and choices. It is our values that hold either the poison or the cure and which one we harness is a simple matter of choice.
The reality is that anthropocentrism and the values at its roots and reinforced by them are the primary drivers of these crises, all of which are fully interconnected with each other. In other words, none of these crises can be abated without a substantial shift in our values. Furthermore, because these systemic ‘polycrises’ are interconnected and generally compound by and synergistic with each other, biodiversity conservation cannot happen without humanity addressing climate change; mitigating climate change cannot occur without humanity advancing biodiversity conservation through practical initiatives such as Nature-based Solutions, protected areas (particularly of remaining pristine land and ocean wildernesses), ecosystem rewilding and restoration, and other conservation mechanisms; the wellbeing of humanity and society will continue to decline and be threatened by these existential crises unless climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem collapses are reversed via equitable and just means; and none of these can occur without a fundamental transformation in society, which should include a Preventative Care System for the biosphere.
Einstein (1946) famously said humanity needs a new way of thinking if we are to even survive, let alone improve ourselves and society. Prominent scholars suggest humanity’s failure to achieve such critical conservation necessities is grave and has been caused, in part, by timidity and lack of will in the conservation and scientific communities to communicate and advance a more bold and honest vision (Noss et al. (2012). Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) proposed that humanity needs a “radical mindset shift” and that “the transformations must be systemic and exponential, and delivered with justice in mind…Yet changing mindsets is not mentioned in many of the excellent climate action and nature conservation roadmaps that leaders consult. It’s time we called that out” (Figueres, 2022).
We’ve known for decades what the necessary outcome should be. But how can we achieve it and in the most effective manner possible? Ironically, these crises offer us a very rare opportunity for the transformational change the world needs.
These crises are soberly warning all of us that we need a radical shift away from anthropocentrism to Nature-centrism. This can only happen through a transformation or enhancement of our values, which research shows are the foundational antecedent of our beliefs, attitudes, behaviors and choices. When we make this shift, we will create substantive and lasting change and the root causes of these crises will be resolved.
The anthropocentric paradigm no longer serves humanity and the world and we must radically evolve ourselves into a higher way of being. Dr. Martin Luther King once wrote in an impassioned letter from jail to local clergymen who had denounced his efforts to inspire change: “none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes” (King, 1963). So too must we halt the root causes of these crises, which can only occur through a fundamental transformation of our value systems. While our individual values, choices, actions and relationships with Nature are extremely important and pivotal to the world, ultimately we must address the state of the planet holistically and on collective levels.
Life’s strength is the diversity in the fabric of the biosphere…Its saving grace is in the power of our unity. However, these interconnected polycrises are not problems that individual people, governments, industries, and businesses, et al. can even consider brushing off for a distant generation to contend with “later” while they are becoming irreversible now, but can be mitigated today. This also cannot be achieved by one or even a group of nations.
This situation can only be remedied by our collective action and globally focused proactive participation and responsibility of every country in the world. We cannot pass it off under the illusion that ‘somewhere somehow someone’ will take care of it. The reality is:
This boils down to us…every one of us as individuals. It begins with a shift in values within each of us. Our personal transformations generate broader cultural change, which consequently leads to wider changes and collective action across society to create a healthier world.
In a 1966 speech to the University of Capetown in South Africa, Robert F. Kennedy eloquently stated:
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” (RFK, 1966).
We need to restore the essence of our humanity. We’ve lost hope and courage and we are only applying band-aids to the symptoms of these crises at best. The world needs each of us to revolutionize our relationship with the Earth. We need to awaken our humanity, reclaim our vision to end these crises and embrace the courage to engage in a fundamental transformation of our values – individually and across society – to Nature-centrism. The world desperately needs us to convert these crises into opportunities for this new paradigm.
We can awaken the essence of our humanity and fall back in love with the Earth. We have the innate ability to ignite our hope, passion and capacity to unify our collective vision, courage, and action. When we do, it will guide us on a path of grace to transform ourselves and solve these most significant crises in human history.
Please join us in creating, and being, the change the world needs.
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