Nature and wealth — setting the scene [1/3]
(this is the first of a 3-part series written for the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, 15–19 January 2024, on my emerging understanding of what is needed to reverse the biodiversity and climate crises, and ‘fix’ the global system to suit the challenges of the Anthropocene. A work in progress, so comments and ideas are all welcome!! See all sections of this piece: Part 1 (this piece), Part 2, Part 3, and Supporting material).
THE CHALLENGE … We are exceeding the planet’s limits, my focus is on provisioning for people.
The foundation of this idea is Natures Contributions to People (NCP), defined in the IPBES Conceptual Framework. NCP incorporate the myriad benefits (and dis-benefits) that people derive from nature, in 18 classes that include, for example, air and water regulation, pollination, food production and psychological wellbeing from being in nature.
From a human perspective and the current state and trends of nature, focusing on the provisioning of the planet for people is of direct importance as:
- a) we are the drivers of decline and undermining of these benefits across all spaces; and
- b) ethically we need to provide for each human on the planet — as codified in United Nations conventions and international principles of justice.
The provisioning by the biosphere for people is also foundational in influencing how we deal with the other planetary boundaries currently being exceeded, as
a) assuring sustainable provisioning will also require returning within those other boundaries, and
b) meeting peoples needs is of daily and immediate importance to all people on earth, whereas other boundaries feel more remote and inaccessible. So assuring provisioning for people will help all people increase their trust of one another and systems to also address other boundaries and challenges.
So the biosphere/functional integrity boundary is perhaps the most important of the planetary/earth system boundaries for building trust, cohesion and effective action across all countries and levels within societies.
In planetary boundary terms, this is expressed as biosphere or functional integrity
The biosphere or functional integrity boundary is defined by:
A) the Earth Commission (EC), as the ability of natural systems to provide sufficient benefits to meet peoples needs (Rockstrom et al. 2023). That is, what amount and quality of habitat at local scales is needed to provided specific benefits, such as pollination, soil health, water/erosion control, etc.
B) the Planetary Boundaries v3 (PB3) team, as Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity (HANPP — Richardson et al. 2023). That is, the total aggregate of global primary productivity (the capture of sunlight by plants, including crops) that is channeled into human societal and economic pathways, e.g. through agriculture and food production.
These are in a sense reciprocals of each other; the PB3 indicator is an aggregate measure of appropriation of natural capital by people at the planetary scale; whereas the EC indicator is focused on provisioning of individual NCPs at local scales within land/seascapes.
The biosphere/functional integrity boundary is relevant to people and actionable
The provisioning of contributions from nature to people (ecosystems services) is critical both:
- To all people, but in particular those with fewest financial/other material assets, who are fully dependent on nature, and are most vulnerable to declining provisioning locally; and
- To allocate responsibility to those driving declines at multiple scales and often with teleconnections, to assign accountability.
The Anthropocene expression of spaceship earth, a biophysically finite planet
Coming back to concepts- of the 1970s when humanity first saw its one planet from space, there is only so much material to be consumed. Crossing planetary/earth system boundaries now (for the first time in history), we see that the challenge is about the distribution and sharing of basic resources supporting human life.
There are two aspects of distribution:
a) a minimum floor per person; just distribution of benefits among people expresses a minimum threshold of access and benefits (Gupta et al. 2023);
b) a maximum total, the biophysical limit at planetary levels that can support humans (just one species, of the 1000s of mammals and millions of species that exist). This total disaggregates down to, and is highly variable at, local levels depending on biomes/anthromes, their productivity and specifics of what they provide, as well as the spatial and tele-connected demands from human society(ies).
Where these bottom-up and top-down thresholds meet determines what is ‘safe and just’ (sense the Earth Commission) for our trajectory into the future.
Extraction/consumption have amplified over centuries
In simple terms, losses in nature have happened through extraction, ie. the conversion of natural capital to goods and services, with power and assets accumulating in financial capital. This is equivalent to consumption (production), and has developed over several centuries … the transition from imperialism to colonialism to capitalism and now ‘neoliberal capitalism’.
This development has been amplified through energy-fuelled growth (using fossil fuels, resulting in climate change) plus the industrial + digital revolutions driving exponential increases in efficiency of extraction and conversion of natural assets into manufactured and financial capital, and thus wealth accumulation.
Global and national economies have basically gravitated towards this single paradigm of capitalism for 400 years, honed to efficiency through outcompeting others. The ‘rules’ of capitalism have transformed responding to internal incentives for wealth accumulation, faster than decision makers could react to the emerging signs of its negative consequences (of which there have been many) of over-extraction, degradation of biodiversity and climate assets, and growing social and economic inequalities.
This model now does not fit the challenges of the current context of exceeding limits in the Anthropocene, and having driven the world over the limits, is not fit for purpose to return within limits.
Consumption over population — equity implications for action
We must be conscious of the historical biases anchored in the western perspectives that generated the market-based system, have dominated sciences, and world affairs (at least until now). The 1970s ‘limits to growth’ sciences were based on ecological concepts of carrying capacity and plant-herbivore-predator dynamics, where all individuals of a species are equivalent in terms of consumption (ie. power and leverage on the system) — certainly in model assumptions, and as a generic rule in reality.
But human development, wealth accumulation and energy intensification mean that human individuals do not have equal footprints — the footprint of high income consumers is amplified, by orders of magnitude, by their wealth and access to/deployment of energy and technologies (see IPAT equation).
Evidence now shows it is the top consumers that dominate the global footprint of humanity (Box 1). This is vitally important as the equity implications of actions to reduce (global) impact are diametrically opposed:
- If pure number of people drives the outcome, action must be taken by/on high-population actors;
- If per capita consumption drives the outcome, action must be taken by/on high-consumption actors.
Other biases have also influenced priorities expressed in planning processes developed in the current neo-capitalist paradigm.
A new two-part solution for global sustainability
A two-part solution is proposed, for providing both the motivation, and the means (both natural and financial) for returning with planetary limits. This solution involves two independent but synergistic parts. Improvements can be achieved by each one separately, but are vastly amplified and enabled by both together, based on their complementarity, mutual dependence, and fundamentally, their reciprocity.
Part 1 — rebuild nature, focusing on enough nature at local (square kilometre) scales to support people;
Part 2 — reinvest wealth back into nature, directly reversing the centuries-old practices that have driven the decline to date.
See all sections of this piece: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Supporting material).
Primary sources
Díaz S, Demissew S, Carabias J, et al (2015) The IPBES Conceptual Framework — connecting nature and people. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 14:1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2014.11.002
Gupta J, Liverman D, Prodani K, et al (2023) Earth system justice needed to identify and live within Earth system boundaries. Nat Sustain. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01064-1
IPBES (2019) Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Zenodo. URL https://zenodo.org/record/3553579/export/hx
Obura DO (2018) The Three Horses of Sustainability — Population, Affluence and Technology. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201812.0176.v1
Pascual U, Balvanera P, Díaz S, et al (2017) Valuing nature’s contributions to people: the IPBES approach. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 26–27:7–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2016.12.006
Richardson K, Steffen W, Lucht W, et al (2023) Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries. Sci Adv 9:eadh2458. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
Rockström J, Gupta J, Qin D, et al (2023) Safe and just Earth system boundaries. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06083-8
