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Short Essay on Our Planet Earth [100, 200, 400 words] With PDF

Earth is the only planet that sustains life and ecosystems. In this lesson, you will learn to write essays in three different sets on the planet earth to help you in preparing for your upcoming examinations.

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Short Essay on Our Planet Earth in 100 Words

Earth is a rare planet since it is the only one that can support life. On Earth, life is possible for various reasons, the most essential of which are the availability of water and the presence of oxygen. Earth is a member of the Solar System. The Earth, along with the other seven planets, orbits the Sun.

One spin takes approximately twenty-four hours, and one revolution takes 365 days and four hours. Day and night, as well as the changing of seasons, occurs due to rotation and revolution. However, we have jeopardized our planet by our sheer ignorance and negligence. We must practise conservation of resources and look after mother earth while we have time.

Short Essay on Our Planet Earth in 200 Words

Earth is a blue planet that is special from the rest of the planets because it is the only one to sustain life. The availability of water and oxygen are two of the most crucial factors that make life possible on Earth. The Earth rotates around the Sun, along with seven other planets in the solar system. It takes 24 hours to complete one rotation, and approximately 365 days and 4 hours to complete one revolution. Day and night, as well as changing seasons, are all conceivable due to these two movements.

However, we are wasting and taking advantage of the natural resources that have been bestowed upon us. Overuse and exploitation of all-natural resources produce pollution to such an alarming degree that life on Earth is on the verge of extinction. The depletion of the ozone layer has resulted in global warming. The melting of glaciers has resulted in rising temperatures.

Many animals have become extinct or are endangered. To protect the environment, we must work together. Conversation, resource reduction, reuse, and recycling will take us a long way toward restoring the natural ecosystem. We are as unique as our home planet. We have superior intelligence, which we must employ for the benefit of all living beings. The Earth is our natural home, and we must create a place that is as good as, if not better than, paradise.

Short Essay on Our Planet Earth in 400 Words

Earth is a unique planet as it is the only planet that sustains life. Life is possible on Earth because of many reasons, and the most important among them is the availability of water and oxygen. Earth is a part of the family of the Sun. It belongs to the Solar System.

Earth, along with seven other planets, revolves around the Sun. It takes roughly twenty-four hours to complete one rotation and 365 days and 4 hours to complete one revolution. Rotation and revolution make day and night and change of seasons simultaneously possible. The five seasons we experience in one revolution are Spring, Summer, Monsoon, Autumn, and Winter.

However, we are misusing resources and exploiting the natural gifts that have been so heavily endowed upon us. Overuse and misuse of all the natural resources are causing pollution to such an extent that it has become alarming to the point of destruction. The most common form of pollution caused upon the earth by us is Air Pollution, Land Pollution, Water Pollution, and Noise Pollution.

This, in turn, had resulted in Ozone Layer Depletion and Global Warming. Due to ozone layer depletion, there harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun are reaching the earth. It, in turn, is melting glaciers and causing a rise in temperature every year. Many animals have either extinct or are endangered due to human activities.

Some extinct animals worldwide are Sabre-toothed Cat, Woolly Mammoth, Dodo, Great Auk, Stellers Sea Cow, Tasmanian Tiger, Passenger Pigeon, Pyrenean Ibex. The extinct animals in the Indian subcontinent are the Indian Cheetah, pink-headed duck, northern Sumatran rhinoceros, and Sunderban dwarf rhinoceros.

The endangered animals that are in need of our immediate attention in India are Royal Bengal Tiger, Snow leopard, Red panda, Indian rhinoceros, Nilgiri tahr, Asiatic lion, Ganges river dolphin, Gharial and Hangul, among others. We have exploited fossil fuels to such an extent that now we run the risk of using them completely. We must switch to alternative sources of energy that are nature friendly. Solar power, windmills, hydra power should be used more often, and deforestation must be made illegal worldwide.

We must come together to preserve the natural environment. Conversation, reduction, reuse and recycling of the resources will take us a long way in rebuilding the natural habitat. We are as unique as our planet earth. We have higher intelligence, and we must use it for the well-being of all living organisms. The Earth is our natural abode, and we must make a place as close to Paradise, if not better.

Hopefully, after going through this lesson, you have a holistic idea about our planet Earth. I have tried to cover every aspect that makes it unique and the reasons to practise conversation of natural resources. If you still have any doubts regarding this session, kindly let me know through the comment section below. To read more such essays on many important topics, keep browsing our website.

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What will the planet look like in 50 years? Here's how climate scientists figure it out

by Margo Rosenbaum

Climate change scientists don't like to use the term "prediction." Rather, they're making "projections" about the future of the planet as sea levels rise, wildfires sweep the West and hurricanes become more ferocious.

There's a good reason for that.

In a world awash in misinformation—about medicine, politics and climate, and pretty much everything else—part of a scientist's job now involves teaching the public about how science works. Convincing the public to have faith in science means making precise, measured projects about the future.

They've got to overcome the big question: Can you really make accurate projections about what the planet will look like in 50 years, a century from now?

Climate scientists think they can, based on the past five decades of climate science that has proven accurate. Futurists, such as Jamais Cascio, a distinguished fellow for the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit foresight group based in Silicon Valley, study present trends and available data to lay out plausible outcomes for the future.

Today, a lot of Cascio's work is centered around climate change, helping people prepare for the future and make informed decisions for a warming world.

"Everything in the world," Cascio said, "every future outcome will have to be examined through the lens of climate."

In the future, climate change may only get worse. But how much worse will it get?

Scientists have relied on climate models for over 50 years. To people who aren't scientists, it's challenging to understand the calculations that go into these projections. So, what exactly is a climate model?

Meteorologists can make weather predictions for the next hour, or even week, based on weather data and forecast models that use humidity, temperature, air pressure, wind speed, among other current atmospheric, land and oceanic conditions. But with climate, a specific region's weather averaged over decades, is a little more challenging to project and understand.

An extension of weather forecasting, climate models factor in even more atmospheric, land and oceanic conditions to make longer-term forecasts. Using mathematical equations and thousands of data points, the models create representations of physical conditions on earth and simulations of the current climate.

Climate models predict how average conditions will change in a region over the coming decades as well as how the climate appeared before humans recorded it.

Researchers can then understand how these changing conditions could impact the planet, which is useful especially for understanding climate change, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center based in the Bay Area.

"Perhaps the most important (purpose) is to try to suggest the types of changes that might occur as the world continues to emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases," Hausfather said.

The first climate model, developed over 50 years ago in the early days of climate science, helped scientists gauge how the ocean and atmosphere interacted with each other to influence the climate. The model predicted how temperature changes and shifts in ocean and atmospheric currents could lead to climate change.

Today, these models are much more complicated and run on some of the world's most powerful supercomputers. A decade ago, most models broke up the world into 250-kilometer segments, but now the models are 100 square kilometers. More regional patterns emerge when simulations are at a finer scale.

"People aren't drawing a picture of temperature and carbon dioxide and drawing a line through it and then extrapolating that into the future," said Gavin A. Schmidt, a senior climate adviser at NASA.

Through these advancements in technology, these models are becoming even more useful to scientists in understanding the climate of the past, present and future.

"Fortunately, they don't do such a terrible job," Schmidt said.

All of this works toward convincing the public and businesses to take action.

A majority of Americans already notice the effects of climate change around them, according to a Pew Research Center survey from 2020. But individuals, businesses and politics must "adapt to a radically and dangerously changing climate," Cascio said.

On the individual level, people must consider the climate in all of their monumental decisions: whether to have children; which car to buy; how to invest; when and where to buy a house. Governments are tasked with climate decisions that impact the future of entire nations, such as whether to invest in alternative energy or write policy curbing emissions.

Are climate models useful?

Instead of thinking about climate models as whether or not they are right, Schmidt said climate models should be considered as to whether they provide useful forecasts.

"Do they tell us things? Do they get things right more than you would have done without them?" Schmidt said.

Usually, the answer is yes, and what these models inform scientists is crucial for their understanding of the future climate.

Hausfather knows this better than anyone, as he led a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters analyzing the accuracy of early climate models. Some of the findings were included in the latest report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in August.

Hausfather, along with co-author Schmidt, compared 17 model projections of global average temperature developed between 1970 and 2007 with actual changes in global temperature observed through the end of 2017.

Hausfather and his colleagues found promising news: Most of the models have been quite accurate. More specifically, 10 of the model projections show results consistent with observations. Of the remaining seven model projections, four projected more warming than observed while three projected less warming than observed.

But Hausfather and his colleagues realized this wasn't telling the whole story. After accounting for differences between modeled and actual changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other factors driving the climate, it turns out 14 of 17 model projections were "effectively identical" to warming observed in the real world.

"That was strong evidence that these models are effectively right," Hausfather said. "They're doing a very good job of predicting global temperatures."

The accuracy was particularly impressive in the earliest climate models, Hausfather said, especially given the limited observational evidence of warming at the time.

But not all of the early models were error-free. One of the first climate models, created in 1971 by climate scientists Rasool and Schneider, projected that the world would cool due to the cooling effect of atmospheric aerosols.

"(The researchers) thought that the cooling effect of these aerosols from burning fossil fuels that would reflect sunlight back to space would be much stronger than the warming effects of the greenhouse gas," Hausfather said.

While the 1970s were still in the early days of climate research, most of the scientific literature of the time was still pointing toward a warming future as much more likely. Yet, Rasool and Schneider's model still spurred a slew of news stories about a potential ice age. Even today, the model "still gets trotted out every now and then by folks trying to discredit climate science today," Hausfather said.

Now the model is proven to be wrong. It's a consensus among climate scientists that the planet is not cooling—instead it's warming at an alarming rate.

Even today, despite the promise of climate models shown by Hausfather's study, these models still have their limitations, especially with regard to the uncertainty of future emissions. Climate scientists are physicists—not economists or political scientists, and it's challenging to understand how policy will shape emissions standards.

"We don't have a crystal ball that can predict the future human behavior in terms of how much our emissions will change," Hausfather said. "We can just predict how the climate will respond to the emissions."

Issues of accuracy in climate models also still arise when models are pushed outside of their specific parameters. To combat this, climate models focus their projections on physical conditions seen in the natural world, instead of statistical probability, Schmidt said.

Researchers have more confidence in the predictability of physics than statistics, because physics doesn't change into the future. Researchers can have confidence that they can use these models outside of the time period where they have observational data, such as looking at climate during the last ice age, Schmidt said.

"How things get expressed might be different but the basic physics ... the underlying processes don't really change," Schmidt said.

Hausfather said there's still a lot of work still to improve climate models, but they are consistently getting better over time. Simulations of the Earth become sharper as more physical processes are added and computer power grows.

Why make projections for the future?

While climate scientists focus on physics to make forecasts for the future climate, Cascio and other futurists place scientific data in a larger context, making foresight based on climate change, new technological developments, as well as political and social movements. Futurism is "essentially anticipatory history," Cascio said.

"The idea is to take the science and embed it into a historian's understanding of how the world works to try to get a sense of what are the possible outcomes that we see going forward," Cascio said.

But, just like with climate models , uncertainty is inherent to the nature of projections. Futurists do not want to over-promise, but they provide a forecast of what could happen and reasons why it could happen, Cascio said.

Most of Cascio's work with climate change projects a grim future. In his perspective, an "absolutely radical" and "transformative" climate plan is necessary to make the necessary change. Plans that are "sensible and acceptable (are) almost definitely not enough."

"I really want to be wrong about all of this stuff," Cascio said, "because there are no futures that are not really depressing for the next generation."

Despite the despair projected by many climate scientists and futurists, there's still hope. If global emissions can be brought down to zero, Hausfather said the best climate model estimates illustrate that the world will stop warming.

"It's not too late to act," Hausfather said. "The world is not locked into a particular amount of warming."

Cascio still tries to consider himself a long-term optimist for the future, because the changes necessary to mitigate climate change will also lead to a much more "transparent and equitable" world, he said.

"If we can make it through the second half of this century, there's a very good chance that what we'll end up with is a really wonderful world," Cascio said.

Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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May 22, 2023

One Planet, Two Crises: Tackling Climate Change and Biodiversity in the Fight for Our Future

World Biodiversity Day reminds us that the profound crises we confront are just different sides of the same coin

By Katharine Hayhoe

agriculture as a buffer against the advance of the desert

Farmland serves as a bulwark against desertification in India.

Antonio Ciufo/Getty Images

When you hear the word nature, what comes to mind? For me, it’s the lakes of Southern Ontario, where I spent my childhood summers among its pink and gray granite rocks and shadowed pine forests. I picture the rock bass darting through the sunbeams in the water and hear the cicadas humming in the trees.

I grew up in the 1970s, and even then, nature was far from untouched. Acid rain and water pollution were already making headlines. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring had raised the alarm in 1962. Seven years later, the Cuyahoga River was ablaze for the 12th time . By 1970, the U.S. Clean Air Act was signed.

I still saw these issues as somehow separate from our ordinary lives, though. They were concerns for and on behalf of fish, plants or bees, I thought, not us. I took for granted clean air, abundant water and ample food, and a home unthreatened by fire or flood.

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Fast forward to today, and those early alarms have become a deafening siren. While air pollution in the U.S. has declined , its impacts worldwide have skyrocketed. Today, more than one in every six deaths globally is caused by the pollution of our air, water, and soil.

Then there’s climate change: an invisible but devastating force that’s wreaking havoc on a planetary scale. The industrial revolution ignited our unhealthy dependence on fossil fuels; but what we often don’t realize is that nearly 80 percent of the CO 2 emissions from burning coal, gas and oil, and close to 60 percent of all heat-trapping gas emissions, have been released since 1970 . Choices made within my own lifetime are the main reason temperatures are now rising at an unprecedented rate , loading the weather dice against us . Every day now, we witness the impacts : record-breaking heat waves stressing power grids and health systems, supersized cyclones ravaging cities and refugee camps, wildfire smoke suffocating continents, and floods displacing millions.

The urgency and the injustice of the climate crisis compelled me to become an atmospheric scientist. I’m convinced it's the most immediate threat to our civilization and many of the countless species with whom we share this planet. But closely trailing climate change is another equally menacing crisis: the loss of biodiversity, which threatens all life on Earth.

The biodiversity crisis isn’t new, either. Over the last four centuries, humans have driven at least 680 mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish species into extinction; but as with climate change, the rate of impact has escalated. Since 1970, WWF has documented a near 70 percent decline in populations of existing wildlife species; and across the more than eight million animal and plant species on earth, the human-induced extinction rate is estimated at tens to hundreds of times greater than natural rates. With so many species still undiscovered, these numbers vary widely ; enough is known about the impacts of human activities on biodiversity, though, for ecologists to label the era we’re currently in as the “sixth extinction.”

All too often, though, many of us still think and act as I did when I was young: mistakenly assuming that, were our planet’s ecosystems to collapse, we could miraculously persist without the air, water, and essential resources they provide. This perspective endangers us all. Climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss have escalated to crisis levels that threaten not just flora and fauna, but humanity itself. It’s our collective survival that’s at risk.

Our ultimate goal is not merely to fix these crises, but to ensure a better future: for ourselves, for our children and for everyone and everything we love here on this Earth. However, this better future can only be reached by overcoming our self-made crises. Our ecosystems are, quite literally, our life-support systems. Without them, we cannot ensure stable global food systems and economies, let alone provide clean air and unpolluted water for the eight billion people who inhabit this planet. Our well-being and that of all life on Earth are fundamentally entwined.

Unlike other species, however, we have a choice. We can see what’s happening; we know we’re responsible; and we can still prevent catastrophe. But we don’t have much time. We can’t afford to tackle these crises with piecemeal solutions. We need comprehensive, multipronged strategies, everything from clean energy to educating women in low-income nations, that address climate, pollution, biodiversity—and health, poverty and other inequities—and we need them now .

The stakes are high: in the 2015 Paris Agreement , the world agreed to limit warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, a threshold now set at 1.5 degrees C after scientists quantified the risks of additional warming. More recently, in December 2022, countries agreed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework . It addresses the main drivers of biodiversity loss and calls for the protection of 30 percent of land, ocean and freshwaters by 2030.

Policies implemented since the Paris Agreement have already reduced projected warming by end of century from about 4.5 degrees C to 2.8 degrees C . That’s a lot: but it’s still not enough. For these audacious plans to succeed, there cannot be any new fossil fuel development. Greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced and eventually eliminated through efficiency, improved land use and agricultural practices, and the clean energy transition. We must invest in nature, which has the potential to absorb up to a third of our carbon emissions. And we need countries to write and implement their own national biodiversity action plans, and funding to flow to climate mitigation, climate resilience and biodiversity in low-income countries and key conservation areas around the world, particularly those most vulnerable and most representative of the world’s ecosystems.

Nature offers a powerful ally in combating the catastrophic effects of human-induced climate change and ecosystem disruption, and the path to a net-zero, nature-positive world isn’t uncharted. The latest IPCC report shows how so many of the solutions to climate change are already here, from halting deforestation to accelerating electrification. Organizations like the Nature Conservancy and Project Drawdown offer resources like the Biodiversity Action Guide and the Drawdown Roadmap , illustrating how we can get started on actions that tackle multiple crises at once.

Implementing effective, nature-positive solutions is crucial to our fight against climate change. Greening low-income neighborhoods in large urban centres keeps them cool during heat waves, reducing socioeconomic inequities in health risks. But this action also filters pollution from the air; and absorbs rainfall to prevent floods, making the neighborhoods more climate-resilient. It provides places for people to be in nature, improving both our physical and mental health; it increases habitats for biodiversity; and it even takes up carbon. That’s at least six wins. Other solutions, from investing in public transportation to climate-smart agriculture, carry similar benefits for health and well-being, as well as pollution, biodiversity and climate.

Tackling the pollution, climate and biodiversity crises that stand between us and a better future is the biggest and most complex challenge we’ve ever faced. It demands an equally ambitious response from all of us: from the largest countries and companies in the world to each of us as individuals who can raise our voices to advocate for the changes we need.

Events such as Earth Day in April and World Biodiversity Day in May serve as potent reminders that the crises we confront are just different sides of the same coin. That’s why I constantly strive to reach beyond the artificial silos we impose on ourselves and others and focus on the end goal: saving ourselves and all others who share our home. Our future is in our hands, and together, I know, we can turn the tide.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Essay on Save Earth for Students and Children

500+ words essay on save earth.

Earth and the resources of earth make life possible on it. If we were to imagine our lives without these resources, that would not be possible. As life cannot function without sunshine , air, vegetation , and water . However, this is soon going to be our reality if we do not save the earth now.

The resources earth provides us with are limited. They are blessings which we do not count. Human has become selfish and is utilizing the earth’s resources at a rapid rate. We need to protect them in order to protect our lives. This is so because man and all living organisms depend on the earth for their survival.

It is The Need of the Hour

To say that saving the earth is the need of the hour would be an understatement. All the activities of humans driven by greed and selfishness have caused immense damage to the earth. It is degraded it beyond repair. Almost all the natural resources are now polluted due to these activities.

When all these resources will be under threat, naturally lives of all living organisms will be under peril. This is why we need to save the earth at all costs. All the other issues are secondary and saving the earth is the main concern. For when the earth will not remain, the other issues will go away automatically.

Earth is the only planet which can sustain life on it. We do not have a planet B which we can move onto. This makes it all the more serious to save the earth and save our lives. If we do not take strict actions now, we will lose the chance of seeing our future generations flourish forever. Everyone must come together for the same causes, as we are inhabitants of this planet firstly and then anything else.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

How to Save Earth

As all human activities are impacting the lives of other organisms, humans only need to take steps to protect the earth and its resources. A little effort will go a long way on everyone’s end. Each action will make a difference. For instance, if one man decides to stop drinking bottled water, thousands of plastic can be saved from consuming.

Furthermore, we can start by planting more trees to make up for the deforestation that is happening these days at a rapid rate. When we plant more trees, ecological balance can be restored and we can improve the quality of life.

Similarly, we must stop wasting water. When done on individual levels, this will create a huge impact on conserving water. We must not pollute our water bodies by dumping waste in it. It is essential to save water most importantly as it is running out rapidly.

In short, the government and individuals must come together to save the earth. We can make people aware of the consequences of not saving the earth. They can be taught ways and how they can contribute to saving the earth. If all this collective effort starts happening, we can surely save our planet earth and make brighter earth.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [{ “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “Why must we save the earth?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “We need to save earth right away as it is the only planet that can sustain life. Earth supports life forms which no other planet does. Moreover, all the resources are being used up rapidly so we need to save them before they all get used up.”} }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “How can we save the earth?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”:”Everyone can take little steps to save the earth. We must not waste water and avoid the use of plastic. Moreover, we must plant more trees and encourage people to not pollute the environment.”} }] }

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Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere

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Published: 14 March 2021
Volume 50 , pages 834–869, ( 2021 )

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The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of this dynamic; humanity has become the major force in shaping the future of the Earth system as a whole; and the scale and pace of the human dimension have caused climate change, rapid loss of biodiversity, growing inequalities, and loss of resilience to deal with uncertainty and surprise. Taken together, human actions are challenging the biosphere foundation for a prosperous development of civilizations. The Anthropocene reality—of rising system-wide turbulence—calls for transformative change towards sustainable futures. Emerging technologies, social innovations, broader shifts in cultural repertoires, as well as a diverse portfolio of active stewardship of human actions in support of a resilient biosphere are highlighted as essential parts of such transformations.

A review of the global climate change impacts, adaptation, and sustainable mitigation measures

The costs and benefits of environmental sustainability

Climate change and its impact on biodiversity and human welfare

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Humans are the dominant force of change on the planet, giving rise to a new epoch referred to as the Anthropocene. This new epoch has profound meaning for humanity and one that we are only beginning to fully comprehend. We now know that society needs to be viewed as part of the biosphere, not separate from it. Depending on the collective actions of humanity, future conditions could be either beneficial or hostile for human life and wellbeing in the Anthropocene biosphere. Whether humanity has the collective wisdom to navigate the Anthropocene to sustain a livable biosphere for people and civilizations, as well as for the rest of life with which we share the planet, is the most formidable challenge facing humanity.

This article provides a systemic overview of the Anthropocene biosphere, a biosphere shaped by human actions. It is structured around the core themes of the first Nobel Prize Summit—Our Planet, Our Future, namely climate change and biodiversity loss, inequality and global sustainability, and science, technology, and innovation to enable societal transformations while anticipating and reducing potential harms (Box 1 ). These interconnected themes are framed in the context of the biosphere and the Earth system foundation for global sustainability, emphasizing that people and nature are deeply intertwined. Scientific evidence makes clear that both climate change and biodiversity loss are symptoms of the great acceleration of human actions into the Anthropocene, rather than independent phenomena, and that they interact, and interact with social, economic, and cultural development. It emphasizes that efficiency through simplification of our global production ecosystem challenges biosphere resilience in times when resilience is needed more than ever, as a critical asset of flexibility and insurance, for navigating rising turbulence, extreme events, and the profound uncertainty of the Anthropocene. This implies that not only will it be critical to curb human-induced climate change but also to enhance the regenerative capacity of the biosphere, and its diversity, to support and sustain societal development, to collaborate with the planet that is our home, and collaborate in a socially just and sustainable manner. This is the focus of the last part of this article on biosphere stewardship for prosperity. We stress that prosperity and wellbeing for present and future generations will require mobilization, innovation, and narratives of societal transformations that connect development to stewardship of human actions as part of our life-supporting biosphere.

BOX 1 The first Nobel Prize Summit - Our Planet, Our Future

The first Nobel Prize Summit, Our Planet, Our Future , is an online convening to discuss the state of the planet at a critical juncture for humanity. The Summit brings together Nobel Laureates and other leading scientists with thought leaders, policy makers, business leaders, and young people to explore solutions to immediate challenges facing our global civilization: mitigate and adapt to the threat posed by climate change and biodiversity loss, reduce inequalities and lift people out of poverty, and made even more urgent due to the economic hardships posed by the pandemic, and harness science, technology, and innovation to enable societal transformations while anticipating and reducing potential harms. The Nobel Prize Summit includes both workshops, publications, and online programmes in forms of webinars, pre-events, and the Nobel Prize Summit days on April 26–28, 2021. The Summit is convened by the Nobel Foundation, in partnership with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University/Beijer Institute, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. This article is a condensed and updated version of the White Paper “Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere: global sustainability and resilient societies” (Folke et al. 2020 ) written for the Nobel Prize Summit.

The biosphere and the earth system foundation

Embedded in the biosphere.

The Universe is immense, estimates suggest at least two trillion galaxies (Conselice et al. 2016 ). Our galaxy, the Milky Way, holds 100 to 400 billion stars. One of those stars, our sun, has eight planets orbiting it. One of those, planet Earth, has a biosphere, a complex web of life, at its surface. The thickness of this layer is about twenty kilometres (twelve miles). This layer, our biosphere, is the only place where we know life exists. We humans emerged and evolved within the biosphere. Our economies, societies, and cultures are part of it. It is our home.

Across the ocean and the continents, the biosphere integrates all living beings, their diversity, and their relationships. There is a dynamic connection between the living biosphere and the broader Earth system, with the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, the cryosphere, and the climate system. Life in the biosphere is shaped by the global atmospheric circulation, jet streams, atmospheric rivers, water vapour and precipitation patterns, the spread of ice sheets and glaciers, soil formation, upwelling currents of coastlines, the ocean’s global conveyer belt, the distribution of the ozone layer, movements of the tectonic plates, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Water serves as the bloodstream of the biosphere, and the carbon, nitrogen, and other biogeochemical cycles are essential for all life on Earth (Falkenmark et al. 2019 ; Steffen et al. 2020 ). It is the complex adaptive interplay between living organisms, the climate, and broader Earth system processes that has evolved into a resilient biosphere.

The biosphere has existed for about 3.5 billion years. Modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) have effectively been around in the biosphere for some 250 000 years (Mounier and Lahr 2019 ). Powered by the sun, the biosphere and the Earth system coevolve with human actions as an integral part of this coevolution (Lenton 2016 ; Jörgensen et al. 2019 ). Social conditions, health, culture, democracy, power, justice, inequity, matters of security, and even survival are interwoven with the Earth system and its biosphere in a complex interplay of local, regional, and worldwide interactions and dependencies (Folke et al. 2016 ).

Belief systems that view humans and nature as separate entities have emerged with economic development, technological change, and cultural evolution. But the fact that humans are living within and dependent upon a resilient biosphere has and will not change. Existing as embedded within the biosphere means that the environment is not something outside the economy or society, or a driver to be accounted for when preferred, but rather the very foundation that civilizations exist within and rely upon (Fig. 1 ).

The home of humankind. Our economies, societies, and civilizations are embedded in the Biosphere, the thin layer of life on planet Earth. There is a dynamic interplay between the living biosphere and the broader Earth system, with the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, the cryosphere, and the climate system. Humans have become a major force in shaping this interplay. Artwork by J. Lokrantz, Azote

A dominant force on earth

The human population reached one billion around 1800. It doubled to two billion around 1930, and doubled again to four billion around 1974. The global population is now approaching 8 billion and is expected to stabilize around 9–11 billion towards the end of this century (UN 2019 ). During the past century, and especially since the 1950s, there has been an amazing acceleration and expansion of human activities into a converging globalized society, supported by the discovery and use of fossil energy and innovations in social organization, technology, and cultural evolution (Ellis 2015 ; van der Leeuw 2019 ). Globalization has helped focus attention on human rights, international relations, and agreements leading to collaboration (Keohane et al. 2009 ; Rogelj et al. 2016 ; Bain 2019 ) and, rather remarkably, it appears, at least so far, to have inhibited large-scale conflict between states that have plagued civilizations from time immemorial. Health and material standards of living for many have improved and more people live longer than at any time in history. Boundaries between developed and developing regions have become blurred, and global economic activity is increasingly dispersed across production networks that connect metropolitan areas around the world (Coe et al. 2004 ; Liu et al. 2015 ).

Now, there is ample evidence that the cumulative human culture has expanded to such an extent that it has become a significant global force affecting the operation of the Earth system and its biosphere at the planetary level (Steffen et al. 2018 ). As a reflection of this unprecedented expansion, a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene, the age of mankind—has been proposed in the Geological Time Scale (AWG 2019 ).

Work on anthropogenic biomes finds that more than 75% of Earth’s ice-free land is directly altered as a result of human activity, with nearly 90% of terrestrial net primary production and 80% of global tree cover under direct human influence (Ellis and Ramankutty 2008 ). Similarly, in the ocean, no area is unaffected by human influence and a large fraction (41%) is strongly affected by multiple human impacts (Halpern et al. 2008 ). For example, oxygen-minimum zones for life and oxygen concentrations in both the open ocean and coastal waters have been declining since at least the middle of the twentieth century, as a consequence of rising nutrient loads from human actions coupled with warmer temperatures (Limburg et al. 2020 ). Just as on land, there has been a blue acceleration in the ocean, with more than 50% of the vast ocean seabed claimed by nations (Jouffray et al. 2020 ).

The human dominance is further reflected in the weight of the current human population—10 times the weight of all wild mammals. If we add the weight of livestock for human use and consumption to the human weight, only 4% of the weight of mammals on Earth remain wild mammals. The weight of domesticated birds exceeds that of wild birds by about threefold (Bar-On et al. 2018 ). The human dimension has become a dominant force in shaping evolution of all species on Earth. Through artificial selection and controlled reproduction of crops, livestock, trees, and microorganisms, through varying levels of harvest pressure and selection, through chemicals and pollution altering life-histories of species, and by sculpting the new habitats that blanket the planet, humans, directly and indirectly, determine the constitution of species that succeed and fail (Jörgensen et al. 2019 ).

Humans are now primarily an urban species, with about 55% of the population living in urban areas. By mid-century, about 7 out of 10 people are expected to live in cities and towns (UN DESA 2018 ). In terms of urban land area, this is equivalent to building a city the size of New York City every 8 days (Huang et al. 2019 ). Urbanization leads to more consumption, and the power relations, inequalities, behaviours, and choices of urban dwellers shape landscapes and seascapes and their diversity around the world (Seto et al. 2012a , b ). There is growing evidence that urban areas accelerate evolutionary changes for species that play important functional roles in communities and ecosystems (Alberti et al. 2017 ).

In addition, essential features of the globalized world like physical infrastructure, technological artefacts, novel substances, and associated social and technological networks have been developing extraordinarily fast. The total weight of everything made by humans—from houses and bridges to computers and clothes—is about to exceed the mass of all living things on Earth (Elhacham et al. 2020 ). The extensive “technosphere” dimension underscores the novelty of the ongoing planetary changes, plays a significant role in shaping global biosphere dynamics, and has already left a deep imprint on the Earth system (Zalasiewicz et al. 2017 ).

The notion that humanity is external to the biosphere has allowed for models in which technological progress is expected to enable humanity to enjoy ever-growing GDP and thus consumption. This view was comparatively harmless, as long as the biosphere was sufficiently resilient to supply the demands humanity made of it. This is no longer the case, and it has far-reaching implications for contemporary models of economic possibilities that many still work with and draw policy conclusions from (Dasgupta and Ramanathan 2014 ; Dasgupta 2021 ).

The intertwined planet of people and nature

The Anthropocene is characterized by a tightly interconnected world operating at high speeds with hyper-efficiency in several dimensions. These dimensions include the globalized food production and distribution system, extensive trade and transport systems, strong connectivity of financial and capital markets, internationalized supply and value chains, widespread movements of people, social innovations, development and exchange of technology, and widespread communication capacities (Helbing 2013 ) (Fig. 2 ).

(Credit: Globaïa). Reprinted with permission

A snapshot of the interconnected globalized world, showing the human influence in terms of settlements, roads, railways, air routes, shipping lanes, fishing efforts, submarine cables, and transmission lines

In the Anthropocene biosphere, systems of people and nature are not just linked but intertwined, and intertwined across temporal and spatial scales (Reyers et al. 2018 ). Local events can escalate into global challenges, and local places are shaped by global dynamics (Adger et al. 2009 ; Crona et al. 2015 , 2016 ; Liu et al. 2016 ; Kummu et al. 2020 ). The tightly coupled human interactions of globalization that allow for the continued flow of information, capital, goods, services, and people, also create global systemic risk (Centeno et al. 2015 ; Galaz et al. 2017 ). However, this interplay is not only global between people and societies but co-evolving also with biosphere dynamics shaping the preconditions for human wellbeing and civilizations (Jörgensen et al. 2018 ; Keys et al. 2019 ). For example, extreme-weather and geopolitical events, interacting with the dynamics of the food system (Cottrell et al. 2019 ), can spill over multiple sectors and create synchronous challenges among geographically disconnected areas and rapidly move across countries and regions (Rocha et al. 2018 ). The rise of antibiotic resistance, the rapid spread of the corona-pandemic, or altered moisture recycling across regions expose the intertwined world. Probabilities and consequences of the changes are not only scale dependent, but also changing over time as a result of human actions, where those actions can either exacerbate or mitigate the likelihood or consequences of a given event.

In the twenty-first century, people and planet are truly interwoven and coevolve, shaping the preconditions for civilizations. Our own future on Earth, as part of the biosphere, is at stake. This new reality has major implications for human wellbeing in the face of climate change, loss of biodiversity, and their interplay, as elaborated in the next section.

Climate change and loss of biodiversity

Contemporary climate change and biodiversity loss are not isolated phenomena but symptoms of the massive expansion of the human dimension into the Anthropocene. The climate system plays a central role for life on Earth. It sets the boundary for our living conditions. The climate system is integral to all other components of the Earth system, through heat exchange in the ocean, albedo dynamics of the ice sheets, carbon sinks in terrestrial ecosystems, cycles of nutrients and pollutants, and climate forcing through evapotranspiration flows in the hydrological cycle and greenhouse pollutants. Together these interactions in the Earth system interplay with the heat exchange from the sun and the return flow back to space, but also in significant ways with biosphere-climate feedbacks that either mitigate or amplify global warming. These global dynamics interact with regional environmental systems (like ENSO or the monsoon system) that have innate patterns of climate variability and also interact with one another via teleconnections (Steffen et al. 2020 ). The living organisms of the planet’s ecosystems play a significant role in these complex dynamics (Mace et al. 2014 ).

Now, human-induced global warming alters the capacity of the ocean, forests, and other ecosystems in sequestering about half of the CO 2 emissions, as well as storing large amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) in soils and peatlands (Steffen et al. 2018 ). Increased emissions of GHG by humans are creating severe climate shocks and extremes already at 1.2° warming compared to pre-industrial levels (WMO 2020 ). In addition, human homogenization and simplification of landscapes and seascapes cause loss of biosphere resilience, with subsequent erosion of the role of the fabric of nature in generating ecosystem services (Diaz et al. 2018 ) and serving as insurance to shocks and surprise and to tipping points and regime shifts (Nyström et al. 2019 ).

Climate change—stronger and faster than predicted

Earth has been oscillating between colder and warmer periods over a million years (the entire Pleistocene), but the average mean temperature has never exceeded 2 °C (interglacial) above or 6 °C below (deep ice age) the pre-industrial temperature on Earth (14 °C), reflecting the importance of feedbacks from the living biosphere as part of regulating the temperature dynamics of the Earth (Willeit et al. 2019 ) (Fig. 3 b).

The Holocene epoch and Earth’s resilience. A) Vostok ice-core data, Antarctica, from the last 100 000 years in relation to human migration and civilization. The red circle marks the last 11 000 years of the accommodating Holocene epoch. B) Global temperature the last 3 million years oscillating within + 2 °C and -6 °C relative to pre-industrial temperature (the 0 line). Observations from ice-core and tree ring proxy data in black and modelling results in blue reflecting interactions between the biosphere and the broader Earth system. Evidence suggests that current levels of anthropogenic warming have forced the Earth system out of the Holocene climate conditions into the Anthropocene. There is increasing consensus that pushing the Earth system to more than 2 °C warming compared to pre-industrial levels constitutes unknown terrain for contemporary societies and a threat to civilization (Steffen et al. 2018 ). Figure 3A by W. Steffen, source and data from Petit et al. ( 1999 ) and Oppenheimer ( 2004 ). Figure 3B adapted from Willeit et al., Sci. Adv. 2019; 5 : eaav7337. © The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee AAAS. Distributed under a CC BY 4.0 license

Human-induced global warming is unparalleled. For 98% of the planet’s surface, the warmest period of the past 2000 years occurred in the late twentieth century (Neukom et al. 2019 ) and has steadily increased into the twenty-first century with the average global temperature for 2015–2020 being the warmest of any equivalent period on record (WMO 2020 ). Already now at 1.2 °C warming compared to pre-industrial levels, we appear to be moving out of the accommodating Holocene environment that allowed agriculture and complex human societies to develop (Steffen et al. 2018 ) (Fig. 3 a). Already within the coming 50 years, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to experience living conditions that are outside of the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6000 years (Xu et al. 2020 ).

Currently, some 55% of global anthropogenic emissions causing global warming derive from the production of energy and its use in buildings and transport. The remaining 45% comes from human emissions that arise from the management of land and the production of buildings, vehicles, electronics, clothes, food, packaging, and other goods and materials (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2019 ). The food system itself accounts for about 25% of the emissions (Mbow et al. 2019 ). Human-driven land-use change through agriculture, forestry, and other activities (Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011 ) causes about 14% of the emissions (Friedlingstein et al. 2020 ). Cities account for about 70% of CO 2 emissions from final energy use and the highest emitting 100 urban areas for 18% of the global carbon footprint (Seto et al. 2014 ; Moran et al. 2018 ). About 70% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions are linked to 100 fossil-fuel producing companies (Griffin and Hede 2017). Collectively, the top 10 emitting countries account for three quarters of global GHG emissions, while the bottom 100 countries account for only 3.5% (WRI 2020 ). As a consequence of the pandemic, global fossil CO 2 emission in 2020 decreased by about 7% compared to 2019 (Friedlingstein et al. 2020 ).

Climate change impacts are hitting people harder and sooner than envisioned a decade ago (Diffenbaugh 2020 ). This is especially true for extreme events, like heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, extreme precipitation, floods, storms, and variations in their frequency, magnitude, and duration. The distribution and impacts of extreme events are often region specific (Turco et al. 2018 ; Yin et al. 2018 ). For example, Europe has experienced several extreme heat waves since 2000 and the number of heat waves, heavy downpours, and major hurricanes, and the strength of these events, has increased in the United States. The risk for wildfires in Australia has increased by at least 30% since 1900 as a result of anthropogenic climate change (van Oldenborgh et al. 2020 ). The recent years of repeated wildfires in the western U.S. and Canada have had devastating effects (McWethy et al. 2019 ). Extreme events have the potential to widen existing inequalities within and between countries and regions (UNDP 2019 ). In particular, synchronous extremes are risky in a globally connected world and may cause disruptions in global food production (Cottrell et al. 2019 ; Gaupp et al. 2020 ). Pandemics, like the COVID-19 outbreak and associated health responses, intersect with climate hazards and are exacerbated by the economic crisis and long-standing socioeconomic and racial disparities, both within countries and across regions (Phillips et al. 2020 ).

Some of these changes will happen continuously and gradually over time, while others take the form of more sudden and surprising change (Cumming and Peterson 2017 ). In addition, some are to some extent predictable, others more uncertain and unexpected. An analysis of a large database of social-ecological regime shifts (large shifts in the structure and function of social-ecological systems, transitions that may have substantial impacts on human economies and societies), suggests that in the intertwined world one change may lead to another, or that events can co-occur because they simply share the same driver (Rocha et al. 2018 ). Large-scale transitions can unfold when a series of linked elements are all close to a tipping point, making it easier for one transition to set off the others like a chain reaction or domino effect (Scheffer et al. 2012 ; Lenton et al. 2019 ).

With increased warming, humanity risks departing the glacier-interglacial dynamics of the past 2.6 million years (Burke et al. 2018 ). If efforts to constrain emissions fail, the global average temperature by 2100 is expected to increase 3–5 °C (IPCC 2014 ) above pre-industrial levels. Although higher global temperatures have occurred in deep geological time, living in a biosphere with a mean annual global temperature exceeding 2 °C of the pre-industrial average (Fig. 3 ) is largely unknown terrain for humanity and certainly novel terrain for contemporary society.

The climate and the biosphere interplay

The relation between climate and the biosphere is being profoundly altered and reshaped by human action. The total amount of carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems is huge, almost 60 times larger than the current annual emissions of global GHG (CO 2 equivalents, 2017) by humans, and with the major part, about 70% (1500–2400 Gt C) found in soil (Ciais et al. 2013 ). The ocean holds a much larger carbon pool, at about 38 000 Gt of carbon (Houghton 2007 ). Thus far, terrestrial and marine ecosystems have served as important sinks for carbon dioxide and thereby contribute significantly to stabilizing the climate. At current global average temperature, the ocean absorbs about 25% of annual carbon emissions (Gruber et al. 2019 ) and absorbs over 90% of the additional heat generated from those emissions. Land-based ecosystems like forests, wetlands, and grasslands bind carbon dioxide through growth, and all in all sequester close to 30% of anthropogenic CO 2 emissions (Global Carbon Project 2019).

The biosphere’s climate stabilization is a critical ecosystem service, or Earth system service, which cannot be taken for granted. Recent research has shown that not only human land-use change but also climate impacts, like extreme events and temperature change, increasingly threaten carbon sinks. For example, the vast fires in Borneo in 1997 released an equivalent of 13–40% of the mean annual global carbon emissions from fossil fuels at that time (Page et al. 2002 ; Folke et al. 2011 ). The devastating forest fires of 2019 in Australia, Indonesia, and the Amazon triggered emissions equivalent to almost 40% of the annual global carbon sink on land and in the ocean ( www.globalfiredata.org ).

The Earth system contains several biophysical sub-systems that can exist in multiple states and which contribute to the regulation of the state of the planet as a whole (Steffen et al. 2018 ). These so-called tipping elements, or sleeping giants (Fig. 4 ), have been identified as critical in maintaining the planet in favourable Holocene-like conditions. These are now challenged by global warming and human actions, threatening to trigger self-reinforcing feedbacks and cascading effects, which could push the Earth system towards a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate global warming and cause escalating climate change along a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced (Steffen et al. 2018 ). Observations find that nine of these known sleeping giants, thought to be reasonably stable, are now undergoing large-scale changes already at current levels of warming, with possible domino effects to come (Lenton et al. 2019 ).

Tipping elements central in regulating the state of the planet, and identified interactions among them that, for humanity, could cause serious cascading effects and even challenge planetary stability (based on Steffen et al. 2018 ; Lenton et al. 2019 ). In addition, ocean acidification, deoxygenation, tropical cyclones, ocean heat waves, and sea level rise are challenging human wellbeing (Pörtner et al. 2019 )

The significance of the challenge of holding global warming in line with the Paris climate target is obvious. As a matter of fact, the challenge is broader than climate alone. It is about navigating towards a safe-operating space that depends on maintaining a high level of Earth resilience. Incremental tweaking and marginal adjustments will not suffice. Major transformations towards just and sustainable futures are the bright way forward.

The living biosphere and Earth system dynamics

The interactions and diversity of organisms within and across the planet’s ecosystems play critical roles in the coevolution of the biosphere and the broader Earth system. For example, major biomes like tropical and temperate forests and their biological diversity transpire water vapour that connects distant regions through precipitation (Gleeson et al. 2020a , b ). Nearly a fifth of annual average precipitation falling on land is from vegetation-regulated moisture recycling, with several places receiving nearly half their precipitation through this ecosystem service. Such water connections are critical for semi-arid regions reliant on rain-fed agricultural production and for water supply to major cities like Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro (Keys et al. 2016 ). As many as 19 megacities depend for more than a third of their water supply on water vapour from land, a dependence especially relevant during dry years (Keys et al. 2018 ). In some of the world's largest river basins, precipitation is influenced more strongly by land-use change taking place outside than inside the river basin (Wang-Erlandsson et al. 2018 ).

The biosphere contains life-supporting ecosystems supplying essential ecosystem services that underpin human wellbeing and socioeconomic development. For example, the biosphere strongly influences the chemical and physical compositions of the atmosphere, and biodiversity contributes through its influence in generating and maintaining soils, controlling pests, pollinating food crops, and participating in biogeochemical cycles (Daily 1997 ). The ocean’s food webs, continental shelves, and estuaries support the production of seafood, serve as a sink for greenhouse gases, maintain water quality, and hedge against unanticipated ecosystem changes from natural or anthropogenic causes (Worm et al. 2006 ). These services represent critical life-supporting functions for humanity (Odum 1989 ; Reyers and Selig 2020 ) and biological diversity plays fundamental roles in these nature’s contributions to people (Diaz et al. 2018 ).

Biodiversity performing vital roles in biosphere resilience

Organisms do not just exist and compete, they perform critical functions in ecosystem dynamics and in creating and providing social-ecological resilience (Folke et al. 2004 ; Hooper et al. 2005 ; Tilman et al. 2014 ) (Fig. 5 ). Resilience refers to the capacity of a system to persist with change, to continue to develop with ever changing environments (Reyers et al. 2018 ).

Biodiversity plays significant roles in biosphere resilience. Puma, Kay Pacha 2017, painting, and courtesy of Angela Leible

Biodiversity plays significant roles in buffering shocks and extreme events, and in regime shift dynamics (Folke et al. 2004 ). The diversity of functional groups and traits of species and populations are essential for ecosystem integrity and the generation of ecosystem services (Peterson et al. 1998 ; Hughes et al. 2007 ; Isbell et al. 2017 ). Variation in responses of species performing the same function is crucial in resilience to shocks or extreme events (Chapin et al. 1997 ). Such “response diversity”, serves as insurance for the capacity of ecosystems to regenerate, continue to develop after disturbance and support human wellbeing (Elmqvist et al. 2003 ).

The Amazon rainforest is a prime example. Conserving a diversity of plants species may enable the Amazon forests to adjust to new climate conditions and protect the critical carbon sink function (Sakschewski et al. 2016 ). Frequent extreme drought events have the potential to destabilize large parts of the Amazon forest especially when subsoil moisture is low (Singh et al. 2020 ), but the risk of self-amplified forest loss is reduced with increasing heterogeneity in the response of forest patches to reduced rainfall (Zemp et al. 2017 ). However, continuous deforestation and simultaneous warming are likely to push the forest towards tipping points with wide-ranging implications (Hirota et al. 2011 ; Staver et al. 2011 ; Lovejoy and Nobre 2018 ). Also, with greater climate variability, tree longevity is shortened, thus, influencing carbon accumulation and the role of the Amazon forest as a carbon sink (Brienen et al. 2015 ). A large-scale shift of the Amazon would cause major impacts on wellbeing far outside the Amazon basin through changes in precipitation and climate regulation, and by linking with other tipping elements in the Earth system (Fig. 4 ).

Hence, the resilience of multifunctional ecosystems across space and time, and in both aquatic and terrestrial environments, depends on the contributions of many species, and their distribution, redundancy, and richness at multitrophic levels performing critical functions in ecosystems and biosphere dynamics (Mori et al. 2013 ; Nash et al. 2016 ; Soliveres et al. 2016 ; Frei et al. 2020 ). Biodiversity and a resilient biosphere are a reflection of life continuously being confronted with uncertainty and the unknown. Diversity builds and sustains insurance and keeps systems resilient to changing circumstances (Hendershot et al. 2020 ).

Homogenization, hyper-connectivity, and critical transitions

Conversion and degradation of habitats have caused global biodiversity declines and defaunation (human-caused animal loss), with extensive cascading effects in marine, terrestrial, and freshwater ecosystems as a result, and altered ecosystem functions and services (Laliberte et al. 2010 ; Estes et al. 2011 ). Over the past 50 years of human acceleration, the capacity of nature to support quality of life has declined in 78% of the 18 categories of nature’s contributions to people considered by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Diaz et al. 2018 ).

Much of the Earth’s biosphere has been converted into production ecosystems, i.e. ecosystems simplified and homogenized for the production of one or a few harvestable species (Nyström et al. 2019 ). Urbanization is a force in homogenizing and altering biodiversity in landscapes and seascapes (Seto et al. 2012b ), and over the past decade land-use change (Meyfroidt et al. 2018 ) accounted for nearly a quarter of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (Arneth et al. 2019 ).

The increase in homogeneity worldwide denotes the establishment of a global standard food supply, which is relatively species rich at the national level, but species poor globally (Khoury et al. 2014 ). Globally, local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals are disappearing (Diaz et al. 2018 ). Land-use intensification homogenizes biodiversity in local assemblages of species worldwide (Newbold et al. 2018 ) and counteracts a positive association between species richness and dietary quality. It also affects ecosystem services and wellbeing in low- and middle-income countries (Lachat et al. 2018 ; Vang Rasmussen et al. 2018 ). In much of the world more than half, up to 90%, of locally adapted varieties of major crop species (e.g. wheat and rice) have been lost due to replacement by single high-yielding varieties (Heal et al. 2004 ).

The simplification and intensification of production ecosystems and their tight connectivity with international markets have yielded a global production ecosystem that is very efficient in delivering goods to markets, but globally homogeneous, highly interconnected, and characterized by weakened internal feedbacks that mask or dilute the signals of loss of ecosystem resilience to consumers (Nyström et al. 2019 ; Ortiz et al. 2021 ). In addition, the global food trade network has over the past 20 years become progressively delocalized as a result of globalization (that is, modularity has been reduced) and as connectivity and homogeneity increase, shocks that were previously contained within a geographical area or a sector are becoming globally contagious and more prevalent (Tamea et al. 2016 ; Tu et al. 2019 ; Kummu et al. 2020 ).

Homogenization reduces resilience, the capacity to live and develop with change and uncertainty, and therby the diversity of ways in which species, people, sectors, and institutions can respond to change as well as their potential to functionally complement each other (Biggs et al. 2012 ; Grêt-Regamey et al. 2019 ; Nyström et al. 2019 ). In addition, homogeneous landscapes lack the diversity of ecosystem types for resilient responses when a single homogeneous landscape patch, such as a production forest or crop, is devastated by pathogens or declines in economic value. In addition, such ecosystem simplification and degradation increase the likelihood of disease emergence, including novel viruses (Myers and Patz 2009 ). In parallel, people, places, cultures, and economies are increasingly linked across geographical locations and socioeconomic contexts, making people and planet intertwined at all scales.

Evidence suggests that homogenization, simplification, intensification, strong connections, as well as suppression of variance, increase the likelihood of regime shifts, or critical transitions with thresholds and tipping points (Scheffer et al. 2012 ; Carpenter et al. 2015 ). These shifts may interact and cascade, thereby causing change at very large scales with severe implications for the wellbeing of human societies (Hughes et al. 2013 ; Rocha et al. 2018 ). Comparison of the present extent of biosphere conversion with past global-scale regime shifts suggests that global-scale biosphere regime shift is more than plausible (Barnosky et al. 2012 ). The biotic hallmark for each earlier biosphere regime shifts was pronounced change in global, regional, and local assemblages of species (Barnosky et al. 2012 ).

Planetary boundaries and a safe-operating space for humanity

It is in the self-interest of humanity to avoid pushing ecosystems or the entire Earth system across tipping points. Therefore, a major challenge is to enhance biosphere resilience and work towards stabilizing the Earth system and its biosphere in a state that, hopefully, is safe for humanity to operate within, albeit a warmer state than the Holocene and one with a human-dominated biosphere. Clearly, the climatic system and the biological diversity and functional integrity of the biosphere, as well as their interplay, are foundational for cultivating a resilient Earth system.

Climate and biosphere integrity constitute the two fundamental dimensions of the Planetary Boundaries framework, which delineates a Holocene-like state of the Earth system, the state that has enabled civilizations to emerge and flourish (Fig. 6 ). Four of the nine boundaries, including climate and biodiversity, are estimated to already have been transgressed. The framework provides a natural-science-based observation that human forcing has already, at the planetary scale, rapidly pushed the Earth system away from the Holocene-like conditions and onto an accelerating Anthropocene trajectory (Steffen et al. 2018 ).

(adapted from Steffen et al. 2015 ). Reprinted with permission

The nine identified planetary boundaries. The green zone is the safe-operating space (below the boundary), yellow represents the zone of uncertainty (increasing risk), and red is the high-risk zone. In these potentially dangerous zones of increasing risk, there are likely continental and global tipping points for some of the boundaries, although not for all them. The planetary boundary itself lies at the inner heavy circle. A proposed boundary does not represent a tipping point or a threshold but is placed upstream of it, that is, well before the risk of crossing a critical threshold. The intent of this buffer between the boundary and a potential threshold in the dangerous zone is to allow society time to react to early warning signs of approaching abrupt or risky change. Processes for which global-level boundaries are not quantified are represented by grey wedges

In recent years, there have been several efforts to further investigate and deepen the understanding of planetary boundaries and the safe-operating space for humanity. These include updates on the biodiversity boundary, the freshwater boundary, the biogeochemical flows (Carpenter and Bennett 2011 ; de Vries et al. 2013 ; Mace et al. 2014 ; Newbold et al. 2016 ; Gleeson et al. 2020b ), multiple regime shifts and possible links between regional and planetary tipping points (Anderies et al. 2013 ; Hughes et al. 2013 ), regional perspectives on the framework (Häyhä et al. 2016 ; O’Neill et al. 2018 ), and creating safe-operating spaces (Scheffer et al. 2015 ). Attempts to quantify interactions between planetary boundaries suggest that cascades and feedbacks predominantly amplify human impacts on the Earth system and thereby shrink the safe-operating space for human actions in the Anthropocene (Lade et al. 2020 ).

There are also propositions for integrating the planetary boundaries framework with economic, social, and human dimensions (Raworth 2012 ; Dearing et al. 2014 ; Downing et al. 2019 ) as well as tackling the policy and governance challenges associated with the approach (Biermann et al. 2012 ; Galaz et al. 2012 ; Sterner et al. 2019 ; Pickering and Persson 2020 ; Engström et al. 2020 ). The global food system is also placed within the framework of the planetary boundaries (Gordon et al. 2017 ), like in the EAT-Lancet Commission’s report on healthy diets from sustainable food systems for nearly 10 billion people by 2050 (Willett et al. 2019 ).

In light of the profound challenges of navigating the future of human societies towards a stabilized Earth state, it becomes clear that modest adjustments on current pathways of societal development are not very likely to guide humanity into sustainable futures (Kates et al. 2012 ). Stabilizing the Earth system in a safe-operating space will require transformative changes in many dimensions of human actions and relations (Westley et al. 2011 ; Sachs et al. 2019 ).

Inequality and global sustainability

Inequality describes an unequal distribution of a scarce resource, benefit, or cost and does not necessarily represent a normative statement. Inequity is a more normative term that evokes an unfair or unjust distribution of privileges across society. There are complex interconnections between inequality, the biosphere, and global sustainability (Hamann et al. 2018 ) (Fig. 7 ) that go beyond unequal distribution of income or wealth, like distributional, recognitional, and procedural inequities (Leach et al. 2018 ). Distributional equity refers to how different groups may have access to resources, and how costs, harms, and benefits are shared. Recognitional equity highlights the ongoing struggle for recognition of a diversity of perspectives and groups, e.g. referring to nationality, ethnicity, or gender, whereas procedural equity focuses on how different groups and perspectives are able to engage in and influence decision-making processes and outcomes (Leach et al. 2018 ). Approaches to sustainability generally include some form of equality, universal prosperity, and poverty alleviation. Global environmental change and unsustainable practices may exacerbate inequalities (Hamann et al. 2018 ). Greater inequality may lead to weaker economic performance and cause economic instability (Stiglitz 2012 ). Increasing income inequality may also lead to more societal tension and increase the odds of conflict (Durante et al. 2017 ).

(adapted from Hamann et al. 2018 ). Reprinted with permission

Examples of pathways of interactions between inequality and the biosphere in intertwined systems of people and nature

Rising inequality

The majority of countries for which adequate data exist have seen rising inequality in income and wealth over the past several decades (Piketty 2014 ). In the U.S., Europe, and China, the top 10% of the population own 70% of the wealth, while the bottom 50% own only 2%. In the U.S., the share of income going to the top 1% rose from around 11% in 1980 to above 20% in 2016 (World Inequality Report 2018), and the share of wealth of the top 0.1% more than tripled between 1978 and 2012, and is roughly equal to the share of wealth of the bottom 90% (Saez and Zucman 2016 ). Also, the wealthiest 1% of the world’s population have been responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the poorest half of humanity (Kartha et al. 2020 ). Seventy-five per cent of the world’s cities have higher levels of income inequalities than two decades ago, and the spatial concentration of low-income unskilled workers in segregated residential areas acts as a poverty trap (UN-Habitat 2016 ). About 10% of the world population in 2015, or some 740 million people, were living in extreme poverty (World Bank 2019 ).

Inequality can impact the sense of community, common purpose, and trust (Jachimowicz et al. 2017 ) and influences successful management of common pool resources in different ways (Baland et al. 2007 ). Inequality may give rise to perceptions, behaviour, and social norms about status and wealth, and disparities in worth and cultural membership between groups in a society—so-called “recognition gaps” (Lamont 2018 ).

Inequalities and the environment

Greater inequality can lead to more rapid environmental degradation, because low incomes lead to low investment in physical capital and education. Such situations often cause excessive pressure and degradation of natural capital leading to declining incomes and further degradation in a downward spiral, a poverty trap (Bowles et al. 2006 ). Furthermore, interventions that ignore nature and culture can reinforce poverty traps (Lade et al. 2017 ), and economic and environmental shocks, food insecurity, and climate change may force people back into poverty (lack of resources and capacities to fulfil basic needs) (Kates and Dasgupta 2007 ; Wood et al. 2018 ).

Gender, class, caste, and ethnic identities and relationships, and the specific social, economic and political power, roles and responsibilities they entail, shape the choices and decisions open to individuals and households in dealing with the climate and environmental risks they face (Rao et al. 2020 ). Gender inequality has important reinforcing feedbacks with environmental change (Fortnam et al. 2019 ) and has, for example, been shown to change with shifts in tropical land use in Indonesia (Maharani et al. 2019 ) or with changes in levels of direct use of local ecosystem services by households in South Africa (Hamann et al. 2015 ). Climate change is projected to disproportionally influence disadvantaged groups, especially women, girls, and indigenous communities (Islam and Winkel 2017 ).

People with less agency and fewer resources at their disposal are more vulnerable to climate change (Althor et al. 2016 ; Morton 2007 ) and to environmental shocks and extreme events such as floods and droughts (Hallegatte et al. 2016 ; Jachimowicz et al. 2017 ). The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the inequality in vulnerability to shocks among communities that lack the financial resources and essentials for a minimum standard of living, feeding off existing inequalities and making them worse (Drefahl et al. 2020 ; Stiglitz 2020 ). There is significant concern that climate-driven events exacerbate conflict because they affect economic insecurity which, in itself, has been shown to be a major cause of violent conflict and unrest (Mach et al. 2019 ; Ide et al. 2020 ).

Vulnerability to climate change is also due to many low-income countries’ location in low latitudes where further warming pushes these countries ever further away from optimal temperatures for climate-sensitive economic sectors (King and Harrington 2018 ). Examples include countries with high numbers of vulnerable, poor or marginalized people in climate-sensitive systems like deltas, semi-arid lands, and river basins dependent on glaciers and snowmelt (Conway et al. 2019 ). Changes to glaciers, snow and ice in mountains will likely influence water availability for over a billion people downstream by mid-century (Pihl et al. 2019 ). Under future scenarios of land-use and climate change, up to 5 billion people face higher water pollution and insufficient pollination for nutrition, particularly in Africa and South Asia. Hundreds of millions of people face heightened coastal risk across Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas (Chaplin-Kramer et al. 2019 ).

Ocean inequity

In the ocean, inequity manifests, for example, in skewed distribution of commercial fish catches, limited political power of small-scale fishers, particularly women and other minority groups, limited engagement of developing nations in high-seas activities and associated decision making, and consolidated interests of global supply chains in a few transnational corporations, with evidence of poor transparency and human rights abuses (Österblom et al. 2019 ). The results of inequity include a loss of livelihoods and limited financial opportunities, increased vulnerabilities of already marginalized groups, who are facing nutritional and food security challenges, and negative impacts on marine ecosystems (Harper et al. 2013 ; Hicks et al. 2019 ).

Coastal communities are sensitive to climate-induced shifts in the distribution and abundance of fish stocks crucial to their livelihoods and nutrition (Blasiak et al. 2017 ). This accentuated sensitivity is coupled with comparatively low levels of adaptive capacity, as remote coastal communities often have limited access to education, health services and alternative livelihoods, all of which could buffer the projected negative impacts from climate change (Cinner et al. 2018 ).

As a means to improve fish abundance for coastal communities of low-income nations, there have been suggestions of closing the high seas to fishing through groups of states that commit to a set of international rules. This would not only slow the pace of overfishing, but would also rebuild stocks that migrate into countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), which could reduce inequality by 50% in the distribution of fisheries benefits among the world’s maritime countries (Sumaila et al. 2015 ; Green and Rudyk 2020 ).

Inequities and sustainability

Alleviating inequality and poverty is a central objective of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals agreed to by national governments. Achieving global sustainability is another important set of objectives in the Sustainable Development Goals. The relation between inequality and sustainability is the outcome of this dynamics and not simply of cause and effect, but rather unfolding in different places, as experienced and understood by the people living there. Supporting and enhancing the emergence of capacities for dealing with shocks and surprises as part of strategies for learning and developing with change in the turbulent times of the Anthropocene will be central to confront inequality and advance wellbeing (Biggs et al. 2012 ; Clark and Harley 2020 ). Multiple inequities and sustainabilities will require diverse forms of responses, attuned to diverse contexts (Leach et al 2018 ; Clark and Harley 2020 ) (Fig. 8 ) and framed by transformations towards global sustainability as embedded in the biosphere (Westley et al. 2011 ).

(adapted from Leach et al. 2018 ). Reprinted with permission

Alternative social-ecological development pathways over time, navigated by efforts like the SDGs and emergent outcomes for equity and sustainability, with an “equitable sustainability space” highlighted

Societal transformation and technological change

By transformation, we refer to the capacity to create fundamentally new systems of human–environmental interactions and feedbacks when ecological, economic, or social structures make the continuation of the existing system untenable (Folke et al. 2010 ). It involves multiple elements, including agency, practices, behaviours, incentives, institutions, beliefs, values, and world views and their leverage points at multiple levels (Abson et al. 2017 ; Moore and Milkoreit 2020 ). Understanding transformation goes beyond a focus on the triggers, to unravelling the capacities for reducing resilience of an undesired, status quo, system, and nurturing and navigating the emergence of new, desired systems (Elmqvist et al. 2019 ); to confront path-dependencies, build capacities for new shocks and risks, and shift towards sustainable pathways (Olsson et al. 2017 ).

Here, we stress that technological change and social innovation in relation to sustainability will need a deeper focus on intertwined social-ecological interactions and feedbacks of the Anthropocene, since that will be necessary to understand and achieve large-scale changes towards global sustainability. We start this section with the role of emerging technologies and social media in this context, followed by findings from social innovation and transformation research and with an emphasis on the significance of narratives of hope for shifting towards sustainable futures.

Emerging technologies and sustainability

Most likely, technological change such as information technology, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology will drastically change economies, human relations, social organization, culture and civilization, creating new unknown futures. However, technological change alone will not lead to transformations towards sustainability. It could lead humanity in diverse directions, pleasant and unpleasant ones, and with different social and environmental impacts. For example, rapid advances in sequencing technologies and bioinformatics have enabled exploration of the ocean genome, but the capacity to access and use sequence data is inequitably distributed among countries and companies (Blasiak et al. 2018 , 2020 ). The technological dimension of development has to be deliberately and strategically guided, to contribute to just and sustainable futures and guided how and by whom as a central challenge (Galaz 2014 ; van der Leeuw 2018).

On the other hand, it is most unlikely that transformations to sustainability will happen without the deployment of technologies that, e.g. help build resilience and development on the ground (Brown 2016 ), support transformations of current food production and innovation systems (Gordon et al. 2017 ; Costello et al. 2020 ), and contribute to a shift towards carbon neutral (or even negative) energy systems (Rockström et al. 2017 ).

The following categories of new technologies are already having bearing on global sustainability: the diversity of existing and emerging renewable energy technologies, like solar cells, hydrogen energy, wind generators, or geothermal heating; technologies that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere; the digital transformation, with Artificial Intelligence (AI), satellite remote sensing, quantum computing, and precision agriculture; synthetic biology, including biotechnology and genetic and molecular engineering, by redesigning and using organisms to solve problems in medicine, manufacturing and agriculture; mechanical engineering, like robotics and also nanotechnology. Their development, as embedded in the larger social-ecological systems, should be connected to and become part of ways forward when designing transformative pathways towards sustainability within planetary boundaries.

As human pressures on the biosphere increase, so does the hope that rapid advances in AI (including automated decision making, data mining, and predictive analytics) in combination with rapid progresses in sensor technology and robotics, will be able to increase society’s capacities to detect, adapt, and respond to climate and environmental change without creating new vulnerabilities (Joppa 2017 ). Such technologies are applied in a number of research fields related to the environment and climate change, including environmental monitoring, conservation, and “green” urban planning (Hino et al. 2018 ; Ilieva and McPhearson 2018 ; Wearn et al. 2019 ; Reichstein et al. 2019 ). While nascent in terms of both scale and impact, such technological “niche-innovations” have the potential to rapidly upscale and shape ecosystems and institutions in multiple geographies (Geels et al. 2017 ). Such innovations have been claimed to be central for a “digital revolution for sustainable development” (Sachs et al. 2019 ).

Applications of these technologies have effects that span beyond climate and environmental research and monitoring, and more efficient natural resource use. AI-supported recommender systems as an example, influence consumer choices already today (André et al. 2018). Targeted attacks in social media by social bots, applications of computer algorithms that automatically produce content and interact with humans on social media, “trying to emulate and possibly alter their behavior" (Ferrara et al. 2016 ; Grinberg et al. 2019 ), also influence conversations in social media about climate and environmental issues and affect institutions for deliberative democracy (Dryzek et al. 2019 ).

So far, the technological changes to our social systems have not come about with the purpose of promoting global sustainability (van der Leeuw 2019 ). This remains true of recent and emerging technologies, such as online social media and information technology, causing changes that are increasingly far-reaching, ambiguous, and largely unregulated (Del Vicario et al. 2016 ). For example, “online social networks are highly dynamic systems that change as a result of numerous feedbacks between people and machines”. Algorithms suggest connections, to which users respond, and the algorithms, trained to optimize user experience, adapt to the responses. “Together, these interactions and processes alter what information people see and how they view the world” (Bergstrom and Bak-Coleman 2019 ).

Hence, applications of novel technologies stemming from advancements in AI could at best be benevolent and lead to improved stewardship of landscapes, seascapes, water, or climate dynamics, through improved monitoring and interventions, as well as more effective resource use (Chaplin-Kramer et al. 2019 ). Negative impacts of novel technologies on vulnerable groups (Barocas et al. 2017 ) are also pertinent since they diffuse rapidly into society, or when used in sectors with clear impacts on the climate, or on land and ocean ecosystems. This issue needs to be taken seriously as technological changes influence decisions with very long-term climatic and biosphere consequences (Cave and Óhéigeartaigh 2019 ).

Social media and social change

The participatory nature of social media gives it a central role in shaping individual attitudes, feelings, and behaviours (Williams et al. 2015 ; Lazer et al. 2018 ), can underpin large social mobilization and protests (Steinert-Threlkeld et al. 2015 ), and influence social norms and policy making (Barbier et al. 2018 ; Stewart et al. 2019 ). It is well known that dire warnings can lead to disconnect of the audience if it is not accompanied by a feasible perspective for action (Weber 2015 ). Social media changes our perception of the world, by promoting a sense of crisis and unfairness. This happens as activist groups seek to muster support (Gerbaudo and Treré 2015 ) and lifestyle movements seek to inspire alternative choices (Haenfler et al. 2012 ). For instance, social media catalysed the Arab spring among other things by depicting atrocities of the regime (Breuer et al. 2015 ), and veganism is promoted by social media campaigns highlighting appalling animal welfare issues (Haenfler et al. 2012 ).

On the worrying side, isolationism stimulated by social-media-boosted discontent may hamper global cooperation needed to curb global warming, biodiversity loss, wealth concentration, and other trends. On the other hand, social media has powered movements such as school strikes, extinction rebellion, voluntary simplicity, bartering, flight shame, the eat-local movement and veganism to promote a steadily rising global awareness of pressing issues that may ultimately shift social norms (Nyborg et al. 2016 ), trigger reforms towards sustainability (Otto et al. 2020 ) and perhaps also towards wealth equalization at all institutional levels (Scheffer et al. 2017 ).

The combination of discontent and self-organization not only promotes rebellion against the old way of doing things, as in street protests, populist votes, radicalization, and terrorism, but also catalyses the search for alternative ways, as in bartering and sharing platforms, or voluntary simplicity and other lifestyle movements (Haenfler et al. 2012 ; Carpenter et al. 2019 ).

The rise of social media and technologies such as bots and profiling has been explosive, and the mere rate of change has made it difficult for society to keep pace (Haenfler et al. 2012 ). Crowd-sourced fact checking may be combined with computer-assisted analyses and judgements from professionals (Hassan et al. 2019 ), and labelling quality of media sources ranging from internet fora to newspapers and television stations may alert users to the risk of disinformation and heavy political bias (Pennycook and Rand 2019 ). With time, such approaches together with legislation, best-practice agreements, and individual skills of judging the quality of sources may catch up to control some of the negative side-effects (Walter et al. 2019 ).

The emerging picture is that social media have become a global catalyst for social change by facilitating shifts on scales ranging from individual attitudes to broad social norms and institutions. It remains unclear, however, whether this new “invisible hand” will move the world on more sustainable and just pathways. Can the global, fast moving capacity for information sharing and knowledge generation through social media help lead us towards a just world where future generations thrive within the limits of our planet’s capacity?

Social innovation and transformation

Transformations towards sustainability in the Anthropocene cannot be achieved by adaptation alone, and certainly not by incremental change only, but rather that more fundamental systemic transformations will be needed (Hackmann and St. Clair 2012 ; Kates et al. 2012 ; O’Brien 2012 ). Transformation implies fundamentally rewiring the system, its structure, functions, feedbacks, and properties (Reyers et al. 2018 ). But, despite such changes, there is hope for systemic transformations with dignity, respect and in democratic fashions (Olsson et al. 2017 ), in contrast to large-scale disruptive or revolutionary societal transformations like those of earlier civilizations (van der Leeuw 2019 ). It will require trust building, cooperation, collective action, and flexible institutions (Ostrom 2010 ; Westley et al. 2011 ).

A characteristic feature of transformations is that change across different system states (trajectories or pathways) is not predetermined but rather emerges through diverse interactions across scales and among diverse actors (Westley et al. 2011 ). Therefore, the literature on transformations towards sustainability emphasize framing and navigating transformations rather than controlling those. Work on socio-technical sustainability transitions, social-ecological transformations, and social innovation provide insights into these dynamics (Geels et al. 2017 ; Olsson et al. 2017 ; Westley et al. 2017 ).

These literatures have illustrated the importance of connectivity and cross-level interactions for understanding the role of technological and social innovation and transformative systemic change. The work emphasizes the importance of fostering diverse forms of novelty and innovations at the micro-level, supported by the creation of “transformative spaces”, shielded from the forces of dominant system structures. These allow for experimentation with new mental models, ideas, and practices that could help shift societies onto more desirable pathways (Loorbach et al. 2017 ; Pereira et al. 2018a , b ). The examples of the “Seeds of a Good Anthropocene” project reflect ongoing local experiments that, under the right conditions, could accelerate the adoption of pathways to transformative change (Bennett et al. 2016 ). As multiple demands and stressors degrade the ocean, transformative change in ocean governance seems required, shifting current economic and social systems towards ocean stewardship, e.g. through incorporation of niche innovations within and across economic sectors and stakeholder communities (Brodie Rudolph et al. 2020 ).

It has been shown that real-world transformations come about through the alignment of mutually reinforcing processes within and between multiple levels. For example, the alignment of “niche innovations” or “shadow networks’ (which differ radically from the dominant existing system but have been able to gain a foothold in particular market niches or geographical areas) with change at broader levels and scales can create rapid change. Both slow moving trends (e.g., demographics, ideologies, accumulation of GHG) and sudden shocks (e.g. elections, economic crises, pandemics, extreme events) can start to weaken or disturb the existing social-ecological system and create windows-of-opportunity for niche innovations—new practices, governance systems, value orientations—to become rapidly dominant (Olsson et al. 2004 , 2006 ; Chaffin and Gunderson 2016 ; Geels et al. 2017 ) (Fig. 9 ).

adapted from Pereira et al. 2018b ). Reprinted with permission

The transformation process. A social innovation, a seed, matures to the extent that the initiative becomes prepared for change . And when change happens, when the window-of-opportunity unlocks at broader levels of governance, often in relation to a shock or disturbance, the new initiative can be skilfully navigated through the window and transitioned into a new development pathway, making it possible to transform the governance system and start building resilience of the new situation and taking it to scale (based on Olsson et al. 2004 , Geels et al. 2002 and

Hence, turbulent times may unlock gridlocks and traps and open up space for innovation and novelty (Gunderson and Holling 2002 ). Crises or anticipated risks can trigger people to experiment with new practices and alternative governance modes and key individuals, often referred to as policy, institutional or moral entrepreneurs, mobilize and combine social networks in new ways, preparing the system for change (Folke et al. 2005 ; Westley et al. 2013 ; O’Brien 2015 ). The preparation phase seems particularly important in building capacity to transform rather than simply returning to the status quo and reinforcing existing power structures following change. Bridging organizations tend to emerge, within or with new institutions, connecting governance levels and spatial and temporal scales (Cash et al. 2006 ; Hahn et al. 2006 ; Brondizio et al. 2009 ; Rathwell and Peterson 2012 ). In several cases, the broader social contexts provide an enabling environment for such emergence, for example, through various incentive structures or legal frameworks. When a window opens, there is skilful navigation of change past thresholds or tipping points and, thereafter, a focus on building resilience of the transformed system (Gelcich et al. 2010 ).

In general, the resulting transformation goes beyond the adoption of a new technology or a local social innovation alone. Instead it includes a portfolio of actions like investment in new infrastructures, establishment of new markets, changes in incentives, development of new social preferences, or adjustment of user practices. Furthermore, transformations gain momentum when multiple innovations are linked together, improving the functionality of each and acting in combination to reconfigure systems (Geels et al. 2017 ; Westley et al. 2017 ).

Successful social innovations are recognized by their capacity to radically shift broad social institutions (economies, political philosophies, laws, practices, and cultural beliefs) that provide structure to social life. In addition, social innovations seldom unfold in a deterministic manner, but with a kind of punctuated equilibrium, first languishing and then accelerating at times of opportunity or crisis. There is also the need for awareness of the shadow side of all innovation, the consequences of intervention in a complex system (Holling et al. 1998 ; Ostrom 2007 ). This is unavoidable but manageable if caught early, but needs attention, particularly in times of rapid change (Westley et al. 2017 ).

Social innovation is currently underway in many domains linked to climate change, like renewable energy (Geels et al. 2017 ) or agriculture (Pigford et al. 2018 ) and highlight the importance of innovations not only in science and technology, but also in institutions, politics, and social goals for sustainability. Substantial attention is also directed towards sustainability of the ocean, where policy makers, industries, and other stakeholders are increasingly engaged in collaboration (Österblom et al. 2017 ; Brodie Rudolf et al. 2020 ; UNGC 2020 ) and innovations (McCauley et al. 2016 ; Blasiak et al. 2018 ; Costello et al. 2020 ), aimed to create new incentives (Lubchenco et al. 2016 ; Jouffray et al. 2019 ; Sumaila et al. 2020 ) for action. However, for these to have transformative impact, shifts in cultural repertoires (schemas, frames, narratives, scripts, and boundaries that actors draw on in social situations) (Lamont et al. 2017 ) similar to those that accelerated the anti-smoking movement and the LGBTQ movement need to occur (Marshall et al. 2012 ; Moore et al. 2015 ; Nyborg et al. 2016 ).

There are suggestions for social tipping interventions to activate large-scale systemic shifts through, for example, rapidly spreading of technologies, shifts in social norms and behaviors, or structural reorganization of sectors, corporations, and societies (Folke et al. 2019 ; Otto et al. 2020 ). There are signs that such shifts are underway in western cultures, a desire for fundamental change towards a more sustainable way of life (Wibeck et al. 2019 ) aided by social movements such as the youth-led Extinction Rebellion, as well as a strong move to more healthy and sustainable diets (Willet et al. 2019 ). Again, all these changes unfold as part of cultural evolution, which needs attention as urgently as the decarbonization of our economy (Waring et al. 2015 ; Creanza et al. 2017 ; Jörgensen et al. 2019 ).

Narratives of action for the future

Social innovation and transformation require an individual and collective attention on the future. There are many documented obstacles to such future focus, from cognitive myopia to present-biased individual and institutional incentives and norms (Weber and Johnson 2016 ; Weber 2017 , 2020 ). Choice architecture provides tools that reduce status-quo bias and encourage more foresightful decisions in specific circumstances (Yoeli et al. 2017 ), but rapid and systemic change will require more fundamental shifts in narratives at a collective level (Lubchenco and Gaines 2019 ).

Narratives are ways of presenting or understanding a situation or series of events that reflects and promotes a particular point of view or set of values. Narratives can serve as meaning‐making devices, provide actors with confidence to act and coordinate action. They are of significance in shaping and anchoring worldviews, identities, and social interactions (van der Leeuw 2020 ).

Narratives of hope have proven essential for social resilience (Lamont 2019 ). Social resilience refers to the capacity of individuals, groups, communities, and nations “to secure favourable outcomes (material, symbolic, emotional) under new circumstances and when necessary by new means, even when this entails significant modifications to behaviour or to the social frameworks that structure and give meaning to behaviour” (Hall and Lamont 2012 ).

Transforming towards sustainable futures will require broadening cultural membership by promoting new narratives that resonate, inspire, and provide hope centred on a plurality of criteria of worth and social inclusion. Here, we are concerned with the challenge of motivating a collective recognition of our interdependence with the biosphere (Schill et al. 2019 ) and economic and political action based on that recognition.

Collective conceptions of the future have many aspects. They include (1) whether the future is conceived as near or far and is understood in terms of long, medium and short-term rewards; (2) what is likely and possible and how contingent these outcomes are; (3) whether the future will be good or bad; (4) how much agency individuals have on various aspects of their individual and collective future (concerning for instance, politics, societal orientation, personal and professional life; (5) who can influence the collective future (e.g., the role of the state policies and various societal forces in shaping them); (6) whether the future is conceived as a cyclical or as a linear progression; (7) how stable peoples’ conceptions of the future are and how they are influenced by events (terrorist attacks, recessions, pandemics); and (8) whether aspirations are concealed or made public.

Behind these various issues, one finds other basic conceptions about agency (to what extent are individuals master of their fate), the impact of networks (to what extent is fate influenced by peers, family, and others), the impact of social structure (what is the impact of class, race, gender, place of origin) on where we end up, and how much does our environment (segregation, resource availability, environmental conditions) influence our opportunities. Therefore, it is important to remember that, although individuals play essential roles in narratives of hope, such images of the future are seldom creations of individuals alone but shaped by many cultural intermediaries working in the media, in education, in politics, in social movements, and in other institutions.

Cultural scripts represent commonly held assumptions about social interaction, which serve as a kind of interpretive background against which individuals position their own acts and those of others (Lamont et al. 2017 ). Narratives of hope as cultural scripts are more likely to become widely shared if they offer possible course of action, something that reasonable people can aspire to. Such sharing bolsters people’s sense of agency, the perception that they can have an impact on the world and on their own lives that they can actually achieve what is offered to them (Lamont et al. 2017 ). In contrast to doomsday or climate-denying narratives, these scripts feed a sense of active agency. Such “fictional expectations”, anchored in narratives that are continually adapted, are at the core of market dynamics confronted with an uncertain future affecting money and credit, investment, innovation, and consumption (Beckert 2016 ).

Narratives of hope represent ideas about "imagined futures" or alternative ways of visualizing and conceptualizing what has yet to happen and motivate action towards new development pathways (Moore and Milkoreit 2020 ). As they circulate and become more widely shared, such imagined futures have the potential to foster predictable behaviours, and stimulate the emergence of institutions, investments, new laws, and regulations. Therefore, decisions under uncertainty are not only technical problems easily dealt with by rational calculation but are also a function of the creative elements of decision‐making (Beckert 2016 ).

There is a rich literature on scenarios for sustainable futures, narratives articulating multiple alternative futures in relation to critical uncertainties, increasingly emphasizing new forms of governance, technology as a bridge between people and the deep reconnection of humanity to the biosphere, and engaging diverse stakeholder in participatory processes as part of the scenario work (Carpenter et al. 2006 ; Bennett et al. 2016 ). The implication of inherent unpredictability is that transformations towards sustainable and just futures can realistically be pursued only through strategies that not only attend to the dynamics of the system, but also nurture our collective capacity to guide development pathways in a dynamic, adaptive, and reflexive manner (Clark and Harley 2020 ; Freeman et al. 2020 ). Rather than striving to attain some particular future it calls for a system of guided self-organization. It involves anticipating and imagining futures and behaving and acting on those in a manner that does not lead to loss of opportunities to live with changing circumstances, or even better enhances those opportunities, i.e. builds resilience for complexity and change (Berkes et al. 2003 ).

In order to better understand the complex dynamics of the Anthropocene and uncertain futures, work is now emerging on human behaviour as part of complex adaptive systems (Levin et al. 2013 ), like anticipatory behaviour (using the future in actual decision processes), or capturing behaviour as both “enculturated” and “enearthed“ and co-evolving with socio-cultural and biophysical contexts (Boyd et al. 2015 ; Waring et al. 2015 ; Poli 2017 ; Merçon et al. 2019 ; Schill et al. 2019 ; Schlüter et al. 2019 ; Haider et al. 2021 ), illustrating that cultural transmission and evolution can be both continuous and abrupt (Creanza et al. 2017 ).

Narratives of hope for transformations towards sustainable futures are in demand. Clearly, technological change plays a central role in any societal transformation. Technological change has been instrumental in globalization and will be instrumental for global sustainability. No doubt, the new era of technological breakthroughs will radically change the structure and operation of societies and cultures. But, as has been made clear here, the recipe for sustainable futures also concerns cultural transformations that guide technological change in support of a resilient biosphere; that reconnect development to the biosphere foundation.

Biosphere stewardship for prosperity

Transformation towards sustainability in the Anthropocene has at least three systemic dimensions. First, it involves a shift in human behaviour away from degrading the life-support foundation of societal development. Second, it requires management and governance of human actions as intertwined and embedded within the biosphere and the broader Earth system. Third, it involves enhancing the capacity to live and develop with change, in the face of complexity and true uncertainty, that is, resilience-building strategies to persist, adapt, or transform. For major pathways for such a transformation are presented in Box 2 .

BOX 2 Four major pathwys towards global sustainability

Recognize and act on the fact that societal development is embedded in and critically dependent on the biosphere and the broader Earth system for prosperity and wellbeing.

Create incentives and design policies that enable societies to collaborate towards just and sustainable futures within planetary boundaries.

Transform the current pathways of social, economic, cultural development into stewardship of human actions that enhance the resilience of the biosphere.

Make active use of emerging and converging technologies for enabling the societal stewardship transformation.

Biosphere stewardship incorporates economic, social, and cultural dimensions with the purpose of safeguarding the resilience of the biosphere for human wellbeing and fostering the sustainability of a rapidly changing planet. Stewardship is an active shaping of social-ecological change that integrates reducing vulnerability to expected changes, fostering resilience to sustain desirable conditions in the face of the unknown and unexpected, and transforming from undesirable pathways of development when opportunities emerge (Chapin et al. 2010 ). It involves caring for, looking after, and cultivating a sense of belonging in the biosphere, ranging from people and environments locally to the planet as a whole (Enqvist et al. 2018 ; Chapin 2020 ; Plummer et al. 2020 ).

Such stewardship is not a top-down approach forced on people, nor solely a bottom-up approach. It is a learning-based process with a clear direction, a clear vision, engaging people to collaborate and innovate across levels and scales as integral parts of the systems they govern (Tengö et al. 2014 ; Clark et al. 2016 ; Norström et al. 2020 ).

Here, we focus on biosphere stewardship in relation to climate change, biodiversity, and transformations for sustainable futures.

From emission reductions alone to biosphere stewardship

Global sustainability involves shifting into a renewable energy-based economy of low waste and greater circularity within a broader value foundation. Market-driven progress combined with technological change certainly plays an important role in dematerialization (Schmidheiny 1992 ; McAfee 2019 ) but does not automatically redirect the economy towards sustainable futures. Public awareness, responsible governments, and international collaborations are needed for viable economic developments, acknowledging that people, nations, and the global economy are intertwined with the biosphere and a global force in shaping its dynamics.

Since climate change is not an isolated phenomenon but a consequence of the recent accelerating expansion of human activities on Earth, the needed changes concern social organization and dynamics influencing the emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, technologies, and policies for reducing such emissions, and various approaches for carbon capture and storage. However, to reduce the effects of climate change, it will not be sufficient to remove emissions only. The resilience of the biosphere and the Earth system needs to be regenerated and enhanced (Nyström et al. 2019 ). This includes governance of critical biosphere processes linked to climate change, such as in agriculture, forestry, and the ocean. In addition, guarding and enhancing biodiversity will help us live with climate change, mitigating climate change by storing and sequestering carbon in ecosystems, and building resilience and adaptive capacity to the inevitable effects of unavoidable climate change (Dasgupta 2021 ).

The global pandemic caused a sharp fall in CO 2 emissions in 2020 (Le Quéré et al. 2020 ), while the cumulative emissions continue to rise (Friedlingstein et al. 2020 ). The fall was not caused by a long-term structural economic shift so it is unlikely to persist without strong government intervention. Political action is emerging from major nations and regions and on net-zero GHG emissions within decades. Shifts towards renewable energy are taking place in diverse sectors. Carbon pricing through taxes, tariffs, tradeable permits, as well as removal of fossil-fuel subsidies and incentives for renewable energy and carbon sequestration (e.g. CCS techniques) are on the table and increasingly implemented. There are substantial material and emission gains to be made from altered consumption patterns, infrastructure changes, and shifts towards a circular economy. Voluntary climate action among some large corporations is emerging (Vandenbergh and Gilligan 2017 ). There is general agreement that the pace of these promising changes must rapidly increase in order to meet the Paris climate target (Fig. 10 ).

(adapted from Rockström et al. 2017 ). Reprinted with permission

A Roadmap for Rapid Decarbonization—without deep emissions cuts the world takes a high-risk strategy (currently the default strategy) of over-reliance on risky negative emissions technologies in the near future. Avoiding this trap means cutting emissions by half every decade—the Carbon Law trajectory. Meeting the Paris Agreement goals will require bending the global curve of CO 2 emissions by 2020 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. It furthermore depends on rising anthropogenic carbon sinks, by transitioning world agriculture from a major carbon source (red) to become a major carbon sink by the 2nd half of this century, carbon sinks from bioenergy and other forms of carbon capture and storage (BECCS), engineering (grey) and land use (light blue), as well as sustained biosphere carbon sinks, to stabilize global temperatures. Green represents natural carbon sinks, which will shrink as emissions decrease

In addition, active biosphere stewardship of critical tipping elements and carbon sinks, as in forests, agricultural land, savannas, wetlands, and marine ecosystems is crucial to avoid the risk of runaway climate change (Steffen et al. 2018 ). Such stewardship involves protecting, sustaining, restoring, and enhancing such sinks. The existence of connections between finance actors, capital markets, and the tipping elements of tropical and boreal forests has also gained attention and needs to be acted upon in policy and practice (Galaz et al. 2018 ).

Furthermore, ecosystem restoration has the potential to sequester large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere derived from destroyed and degraded land is roughly equal to the carbon that remains in ecosystems on land (about 450 billion tonnes of carbon) (Erb et al. 2018 ). The amount of degraded lands in the world is vast, and restoring their productivity, biodiversity, and ecosystem services could help keep global temperature increases within acceptable levels (Lovejoy and Hannah 2018 ). It has been estimated that nature-based solutions on land (from agriculture to reforestation and afforestation) have the potential to provide over 30% of the emission reductions needed by 2050 to keep global temperature increases to not more than 2 °C (Griscom et al. 2017 ; Roe et al. 2019 ).

There is scope for new policies and practices for nature-based solutions (Kremen and Merenlender 2018 ; Diaz et al. 2018 ). These solutions will require shifts in governance towards active stewardship of water and ecosystem dynamics and processes across landscapes, precipitation sheds, and seascapes (Österblom et al. 2017 ; Plummer et al. 2020 ), reconfiguring nation state governance, empowering the commons through justice, equity and knowledge, and making ownership regenerative by integrating rights with responsibilities (Brodie Rudolph et al. 2020 ). Also, the so-called “social tipping interventions” towards biosphere stewardship have the potential to activate contagious processes of rapidly spreading technologies, behaviors, social norms, and structural reorganization, where current patterns can be disrupted and lead to fast reduction in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (Otto et al. 2020 ). The window of opportunity for such shifts may emerge in times of turbulence and social discontent with the status quo (Carpenter et al. 2019 ). Creating conditions for processes of deliberate democracy may guide such transformative change (Dryzek et al. 2019 ).

Resilience and biosphere stewardship

Societal development needs to strengthen biosphere capacity for dealing with extreme events, both climate driven and as a consequence of a tightly coupled and complex globalized world in deep interplay with the rest of the biosphere (Helbing 2013 ; Reyers et al. 2018 ). For example, the challenge of policy and practice in satisfying demands for food, water and other critical ecosystem services will most likely be set by the potential consequences of the emergent risk panorama and its consequences, rather than hard upper limits to production per se (Cottrell et al. 2019 ; Nyström et al. 2019 ; Xu et al. 2020 ).

In this sense, a resilience approach to biosphere stewardship becomes significant. Such an approach is very different from those who understand resilience as return to the status quo, to recover to business-as-usual. Resilience in relation to stewardship of complex adaptive systems concerns capacities to live with changing circumstances, slow or abrupt, predictable or surprising. It becomes especially relevant for dealing with the uncertain and unknown and is in stark contrast to strategies that support efficiency and effectiveness for short term gain at the expense of redundancy and diversity. Such strategies may work under relatively stable and predictable conditions but, as stressed here, will create vulnerability in periods of rapid change, during turbulent times, and are ill-suited to confront the unknown (Carpenter et al. 2009 ; Walker et al. 2009 ). Financial crises and pandemics serve as real-world examples of such vulnerabilities and make explicit the tension between connectivity and modularity in complex adaptive systems (Levin 1999 ).

In contrast, intertwined systems of people and nature characterized by resilience will have the capacity, whether through strategies like portfolio management, polycentric institutions, or building trust and nurturing diversity (Costanza et al. 2000 ; Ostrom 2010 ; Biggs et al. 2012 ; Carpenter et al. 2012 ), to confront turbulent times and the unknown. Policy decisions will no longer be the result of optimization algorithms that presuppose quantifiable uncertainty, but employ decision-making procedures that iteratively identify policy options most robust to present and future shocks under conditions of deep uncertainty (Polasky et al. 2011 ). Resilience provides capacities for novelty and innovation in times of change, to turn crises into opportunities for not only adapting, but also transforming into sustainable futures (Folke et al. 2016 ).

The immediate future will require capacities to confront challenges that we know we know little about (Kates and Clark 1996 ). Given the global connectivity of environmental, social, and economic systems, there is no scale at which resource pooling or trade can be used to hedge against all fluctuations at smaller scales. This begs the question of what types of investments may lead to a generalized capacity to develop with a wide range of potential and unknown events (Polasky et al. 2011 ). One strategy is to invest in global public goods common to all systems, e.g., education, capacity to learn and collaborate across sectors, multi-scale governance structures that enable systems to better detect changes and nimbly address problems by reconfiguring themselves through transformative change. Such strategies, often referred to as building “general resilience”, easily erode if not actively supported (Biggs et al. 2012 ; Carpenter et al. 2012 ; Quinlan et al. 2015 ). General resilience is critical for keeping options alive to face an uncertain turbulent world (Walker et al. 2009 ; Elmqvist et al. 2019 ).

Collaborating with the biosphere

Clearly, a shift in perspective and action is needed (Fig. 11 ) that includes extending management and governance from the focus on producing food, fibre, and timber in simplified ecosystems to rebuilding and strengthening resilience through investing in portfolios of ecosystem services for human wellbeing in diversity-rich social-ecological systems (Reyers et al. 2013 ; Bennett et al. 2015 ; Isbell et al. 2017 ).

(adapted from Mace 2014 ). Reprinted with permission

Reconfiguring the human–nature relationship over time

Numerous activities protecting, restoring, and enhancing diversity are taking place in this direction ranging from traditional societies, local stewards of wildlife habitats, marine systems, and urban areas, to numerous NGOs, companies and enterprises, and various levels of government, to international collaborations, agreements, and conventions (Barthel et al. 2005 ; Forbes et al. 2009 ; Raymond et al. 2010 ; Andersson et al. 2014 ; Barrett 2016 ; Brondizio and Le Tourneau 2016 ; Österblom et al. 2017 ; Barbier et al. 2018 ; Bennett et al. 2018 ).

Examples include widespread use of marine protected areas from local places to marine spatial planning to proposals for protecting the open ocean, enhancing marine biodiversity, rebuilding fisheries, mitigating climate change, and shifting towards ocean stewardship (Worm et al. 2009 ; Sumaila et al. 2015 ; Lubchenco and Grorud-Colvert 2015 ; Lubchenco et al. 2016 ; Sala et al. 2016 ; Gaines et al. 2018 ; Tittensor et al. 2019 ; Cinner et al. 2020 ; Duarte et al. 2020 ; Brodie Rudolph et al. 2020 ). The latter is the focus of the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, with 14 heads of state and more than 250 scientists engaged. They aim to stimulate transformative change for the ocean by committing to sustainably managing 100% of their own waters by 2030 (Stuchtey et al. 2020 ).

There are major restoration programmes of forests, wetlands, and abandoned and degraded lands and even revival of wildlife and rewilding of nature (Perino et al. 2019 ). Other efforts include “working-lands conservation” like agroforestry, silvopasture, diversified farming, and ecosystem-based forest management, enhancing livelihoods and food security (Kremen and Merenlender 2018 ).

The world’s ecosystems can be seen as essential capital assets, if well managed, their lands, waters, and biodiversity yield a flow of vital life-support services (Daily et al. 2009 ). Investing in natural capital has become a core strategy of agencies and major nations, like China, for wellbeing and sustainability, providing greater resilience to climate change (Guerry et al. 2015 ; Ouyang et al. 2016 ). It involves combining science, technology, and partnerships to develop nature-based solutions and enable informed decisions for people and nature to thrive and invest in green growth (Mandle et al. 2019 ).

There are several examples of adaptive management and adaptive governance systems that have transformed social-ecological dynamics of landscapes and seascapes into biosphere stewardship (Chaffin et al. 2014 ; Schultz et al. 2015 ; Walker 2019 ; Plummer et al. 2020 ). Stewardship of diversity as a critical feature in resilience building is about reducing vulnerability to change and multiplying the portfolio of options for sustainable development in times of change. Stewardship shifts focus from commodity to redundancy to response diversity for dealing with change (Elmqvist et al. 2003 ; Grêt-Regamey et al. 2019 ; Dasgupta 2021 ).

Clearly, the economic contributions of biodiversity are highly significant as reflected in the many efforts to expose and capture economic values of biodiversity and ecosystem services (Daily et al. 2000 ; Sukhdev et al. 2010 ; Kinzig et al. 2011 ; Costanza et al. 2014 ; Naeem et al. 2015 ; Barbier et al. 2018 ; Dasgupta 2021 ). Inclusive (or genuine) wealth aims at capturing the aggregate value of natural, human, and social capital assets to provide a comprehensive, long-term foundation for human wellbeing (Dasgupta and Mäler 2000 ; Polasky et al. 2015 ). Inclusive wealth provides a basis for designing incentives for more sustainable market transactions (Dasgupta 2014 ; Clark and Harley 2020 ).

Also, the role of the cultural context is fundamental (Diaz et al. 2018 ) and biocultural diversity, and coevolution of people and nature is gaining ground as a means to understand dynamically changing social-ecological relations (Barthel et al. 2013 ; Merçon et al. 2019 ; Haider et al. 2019 ). Broad coalitions among citizens, businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies have the power to transform how we view and act on biosphere stewardship and build Earth resilience. Science has an important new role to play here as honest broker, engaging in evidence-informed action, and coproduction of knowledge in collaboration with practice, policy, and business (Reyers et al. 2015 ; Wyborn et al. 2019 ; Norström et al. 2020 ).

In this context, work identifying leverage points for anticipated and deliberate transformational change towards sustainability is gaining ground, centred on reconnecting people to nature, restructuring power and institutions, and rethinking how knowledge is created and used in pursuit of sustainability (Abson et al. 2017 ; Fischer and Riechers 2019 ). Such actions range from direct engagements between scientists and local communities (Tengö et al. 2014 ) or through the delivery of scientific knowledge and method into multi-stakeholder arenas, such as boundary or bridging organizations (Cash et al. 2003 ; Hahn et al. 2006 ; Crona and Parker 2012 ) where it can provide a basis for learning and be translated into international negotiations (Biermann and Pattberg 2008 ; Galaz et al. 2016 ; Tengö et al. 2017 ). It includes efforts to accelerate positive transformations by identifying powerful actors, like financial investors or transnational corporations, and articulating key domains with which these actors need to engage in order to enable biosphere stewardship (Österblom et al. 2017 ; Galaz et al. 2018 ; Folke et al. 2019 ; Jouffray et al. 2019 ). The International science-policy platform for biodiversity and ecosystem services (IPBES), an international body for biodiversity similar to the IPCC for the climate, has proposed key features for enabling transformational change (Fig. 12 ). These efforts serve an increasingly important space for scientists to engage in, helping hold corporations accountable, stimulating them to take on responsibility for the planet and develop leadership in sustainability. Such science-business engagement will become increasingly important to ensure that companies’ sustainability agendas are framed by science rather than the private sector alone (Österblom et al. 2015 ; Barbier et al. 2018 ; Blasiak et al. 2018 ; Galaz et al. 2018 ; Folke et al. 2019 ; Jouffray et al. 2019 ).

(adapted from Diaz et al. 2018 ). Reprinted with permission

Collaborative implementation of priority interventions (levers) targeting key points of intervention (leverage points representing major indirect drivers) could enable transformative change from current trends towards more sustainable ones. Effectively addressing these levers and leverage points requires innovative governance approaches and organizing the process around nexuses, representing closely interdependent and complementary goals

The rapid acceleration of current Earth system changes provides new motivations for action. Climate change is no longer a vague threat to some distant future generation but an environmental, economic, and social disruption that today’s youth, communities, corporations, and governments are increasingly experiencing. This provides both ethical and selfish motivations for individuals and institutions to launch transformative actions that shape their futures rather than simply reacting to crises as they emerge. Shaping the future requires active stewardship for regenerating and strengthening the resilience of the biosphere.

Given the urgency of the situation and the critical challenge of stabilizing the Earth system in Holocene-like conditions, the pace of current actions has to rapidly increase and expand to support a transformation towards active stewardship of human actions in concert with the biosphere foundation. It will require reform of critical social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions (Tallis et al. 2018 ; Diaz et al. 2018 ; Barrett et al. 2020 ).

Concluding remarks

The success of social organization into civilizations and more recently into a globalized world has been impressive and highly efficient. It has been supported by a resilient biosphere and a hospitable climate. Now, in the Anthropocene, a continuous expansion mimicking the development pathways of the past century is not a viable option for shifting towards sustainable futures.

Humanity is embedded within, intertwined with, and dependent upon the living biosphere. Humanity has become a global force shaping the operation and future of the biosphere and the broader Earth system. Climate change and loss of biodiversity are symptoms of the situation. The accelerating expansion of human activities has eroded biosphere and Earth system resilience and is now challenging human wellbeing, prosperity, and possibly even the persistence of societies and civilizations.

The expansion has led to hyper-connectivity, homogenization, and vulnerability in times of change, in contrast to modularity, redundancy, and resilience to be able to live with changing circumstances. In the Anthropocene, humanity is confronted with turbulent times and with new intertwined dynamics of people and planet where fast and slow change interplay in unexperienced and unpredictable ways. This is becoming the new normal.

Our future on our planet will be determined by our ability to keep global warming well below 2 °C and foster the resilience of the living biosphere. A pervasive thread in science is that building resilient societies, ecosystems, and ultimately the health of the entire Earth system hinges on supporting, restoring and regenerating diversity in intertwined social and ecological dimensions. Diversity builds insurance and keeps systems resilient to changing circumstances. Clearly, nurturing resilience is of great significance in transformations towards sustainability and requires collective action on multiple fronts, action that is already being tested by increasing turbulence incurred by seemingly unrelated shocks.

Equality holds communities together, and enables nations, and regions to evolve along sustainable development trajectories. Inequality, in terms of both social and natural capitals, are on the rise in the world, and need to be addressed as an integral part of our future on Earth.

We are facing a rapid and significant repositioning of sustainability as the lens through which innovation, technology and development is driven and achieved. What only a few years ago was seen as a sacrifice is today creating new purposes and meanings, shaping values and culture, and is increasingly seen as a pathway to novelty, competitiveness and progress.

This is a time when science is needed more than ever. Science provides informed consensus on the facts and trade-offs in times of misinformation and polemics. The planetary challenges that confront humanity need governance that mobilizes the best that science has to offer with shared visions for sustainable futures and political will and competence to implement choices that will sustain humanity and the rest of the living world for the next millennium and beyond.

There is scope for changing the course of history into sustainable pathways. There is urgent need for people, economies, societies and cultures to actively start governing nature’s contributions to wellbeing and building a resilient biosphere for future generations. It is high time to reconnect development to the Earth system foundation through active stewardship of human actions into prosperous futures within planetary boundaries.

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Acknowledgements

We dedicate this article to our late colleague and friend Paul Crutzen, a pioneer in clarifying the human global imprint on planet Earth and who coined the concept of the Anthropocene. Work with this White Paper was supported by the Kjell and Märta Beijer Foundation, the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation, and the Erling-Persson Family Foundation. Figures by J. Lokrantz/Azote unless else stated.

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Mother Earth Essay

Earth has many natural resources to help people live healthier lives. Mother Earth provides us with air, water, food and shelter. Writing a mother Earth essay helps children know the importance of protecting our planet.

Earth is a planet that hosts life and is inhabited by humans and other living beings. It is made out of rocks, metals, and gases. Earth is the only planet in our solar system where life can sustain and live on. Mother Earth is the third planet from the Sun and is home to more than seven billion people.

The Earth is a vital resource for life. We depend on it to grow plants, trees, and food. When we destroy the planet, we start destroying many things like the environment, our health and other things that help us survive. There are many ways to protect it, such as planting more trees, adopting a sustainable lifestyle etc.

The Earth is an amazing planet with various landscapes, ecosystems, and natural resources. It is essential to preserve them to ensure that future generations can enjoy the same unique beauty that we do now. To ensure this, it is crucial to have conservation programmes across the world. Environmental organisations have been around for decades, trying their best to protect the Earth’s biodiversity and promote environmental awareness.

Save Mother Earth

There are many ways to save this planet. Reducing our plastic consumption is one huge step that doesn’t require a lot of effort. By creating awareness about the consequences of our actions, we can save Mother Earth from global warming and other ecological problems.

The Earth is our home, and we should care for it. Our planet is precarious as a result of global warming, pollution, and a decreasing water level. It’s time to stop being complacent and take action.

Our planet is changing soon, and we need to act quickly. The best way to save Mother Earth is by reducing our carbon footprint. By setting sustainability goals and sticking to them, we can help make a difference in the planet’s health.

Another way to help save the planet is to reduce our carbon emissions. Governments around the world have already adopted various plans and laws to achieve this, but it is not easy.

Today, people are starting to realise their everyday actions that affect the Earth. They also recognise the need to start doing more responsible things to protect their future. Fortunately, there is a way for everyone to make a positive difference in the world: by adopting recycling and other eco-friendly strategies. While going green sounds difficult, it has become easier with advancements in today’s technology.

Frequently Asked Questions on Mother Earth Essay

How to save mother earth.

Saving our planet is everyone’s duty. We can start doing this by segregating wet and dry waste, avoiding mining activities, reducing plastic usage and stopping deforestation.

What are the causes of pollution?

The causes of pollution are industrial emissions, usage of harmful chemicals, plastic usage, mining and agricultural activities, transportation and many more.

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Entertainment

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet Movie Analysis Essay

Climate change is a controversial topic that has been an issue for many years now, but is it a fact or a myth? We get answers to a few of our questions from David Attenborough's documentary film, “A life on our planet.”

This documentary is truly an eye-opening experience, the audience gets the chance to understand what is going on and how it affects us as a human race. Climate change is a serious issue that has only escalated throughout the years that we have ignored, but what is climate change? Climate change is “a change in global or regional climate patterns, in particular, a change apparent from the mid to late 20th century onwards and attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels.” Both natural and human causes affect this reaction. Some human causes are burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and developing land for farms, cities, etc. All of these actions cause the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Some natural causes are changes in the earth's orbit, volcanic activity, and the sun's intensity.

There are multiple ways we can help our planet before it becomes too late. Some of the actions we can take are as simple as recycling and picking up after ourselves. Group activities such as beach clean-ups are also a great way to help. Our next step should be trying to decrease as much pollution as possible and start the process of reforestation. Not would this help natural life grow, it would also be beneficial to human health.

In conclusion, unless we can ignore the facts stated, climate change is real. It is our future actions that will determine whether or not life on earth will be possible. David Attenborough used an abandoned city in Ukraine as an example of what our planet could become, and I rather not see it come to that.

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Perspectives

The Science of Sustainability

Can a unified path for development and conservation lead to a better future?

October 13, 2018

Aerial view of roads cutting through a forest of trees.

A False Choice
Two Paths to 2050
What's Possible
The Way Forward
Engage With Us

The Cerrado may not have the same name recognition as the Amazon , but this vast tropical savannah in Brazil has much in common with that perhaps better-known destination. The Cerrado is also a global biodiversity hotspot, home to thousands of species only found there, and it is also a critical area in the fight against climate change, acting as a large carbon pool.

But Brazil is one of the two largest soy producers in the world—the crop is one of the country’s most important commodities and a staple in global food supplies—and that success is placing the Cerrado in precarious decline. To date, around 46% of the Cerrado has been deforested or converted for agriculture.

Producing more soy doesn’t have to mean converting more native habitat, however. A new spatial data tool is helping identify the best places to expand soy without further encroachment on the native landscapes of the Cerrado. And with traders and bankers working together to offer preferable financing to farmers who expand onto already-converted land, Brazil can continue to produce this important crop, while protecting native habitat and providing more financial stability for farmers.

The Cerrado is just one region of a vast planet, of course, but these recent efforts to protect it are representative of a new way of thinking about the relationship between conservation and our growing human demands. It is part of an emerging model for cross-sector collaboration that aims to create a world prepared for the sustainability challenges ahead.

Is this world possible? Here, we present a new science-based view that says “Yes”—but it will require new forms of collaboration across traditionally disconnected sectors, and on a near unprecedented scale.

Thumbnail of The Science of Sustainability download

Download a PDF version of this feature. Click to see translated versions of this page.

I. A False Choice

Many assume that economic interests and environmental interests are in conflict. But new research makes the case that this perception of development vs. conservation is not just unnecessary but actively counterproductive to both ends. Achieving a sustainable future will be dependent on our ability to secure both thriving human communities and abundant and healthy natural ecosystems.

The Nature Conservancy partnered with the University of Minnesota and 11 other organizations to ask whether it is possible to achieve a future where the needs of both people and nature are advanced. Can we actually meet people’s needs for food, water and energy while doing more to protect nature?

The perception of development vs. conservation is not just unnecessary, but actively counterproductive to both ends.

To answer this question, we compared what the world will look like in 2050 if economic and human development progress in a “business-as-usual” fashion and what it would look like if instead we join forces to implement a “sustainable” path with a series of fair-minded and technologically viable solutions to the challenges that lie ahead.

In both options, we used leading projections of population growth and gross domestic product to estimate how demand for food, energy and water will evolve between 2010 and 2050. Under business-as-usual, we played out existing expectations and trends in how those changes will impact land use, water use, air quality, climate, protected habitat areas and ocean fisheries. In the more sustainable scenario, we proposed changes to how and where food and energy are produced, asking if these adjustments could result in better outcomes for the same elements of human well-being and nature. Our full findings are described in a peer-reviewed paper— “An Attainable Global Vision for Conservation and Human Well-Being” —published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment .

These scenarios let us ask, can we do better? Can we design a future that meets people’s needs without further degrading nature in the process?

Our answer is “yes,” but it comes with several big “ifs.” There is a path to get there, but matters are urgent—if we want to accomplish these goals by mid-century, we’ll have to dramatically ramp up our efforts now. The next decade is critical.

Furthermore, changing course in the next ten years will require global collaboration on a scale not seen perhaps since World War II. The widely held impression that economic and environmental goals are mutually exclusive has contributed to a lack of connection among key societal constituencies best equipped to solve interconnected problems—namely, the public health, development, financial and conservation communities. This has to change.

The good news is that protecting nature and providing water, food and energy to a growing world do not have to be either-or propositions. Our view, instead, calls for smart energy, water, air, health and ecosystem initiatives that balance the needs of economic growth and resource conservation equally. Rather than a zero-sum game, these elements are balanced sides of an equation, revealing the path to a future where people and nature thrive together.

View of the English Bay in Vancouver, Canada at sunset.

II. Two Paths to 2050

This vision is not a wholesale departure from what others have offered. A number of prominent scientists and organizations have put forward important and thoughtful views for a sustainable future; but often such plans consider the needs of people and nature in isolation from one another, use analyses confined to limited sectors or geographies, or assume that some hard tradeoffs must be made, such as slowing global population growth, taking a reduction in GDP growth or shifting diets off of meat. Our new research considers global economic development and conservation needs together, more holistically, in order to find a sustainable path forward.

What could a different future look like? We’ve used as our standard the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 measures for “a world where all people are fed, healthy, employed, educated, empowered and thriving, but not at the expense of other life on Earth.” Our analysis directly aligns with ten of those goals. Using the SDGs as our guideposts, we imagine a world in 2050 that looks very different than the one today—and drastically different from the one we will face if we continue in business-as-usual fashion.

A sustainable future is possible.

To create our assessment of business-as-usual versus a more sustainable path, we looked at 14 measurements including temperature change, carbon dioxide levels, air pollution, water consumption, food and energy footprints, and protected areas.

Business as usual compared to conservation pathway showing changes in temperature, air quality, fisheries, and protected land.

Over the next 30 years, we know we’ll face rapid population growth and greater pressures on our natural resources. The statistics are sobering—with 9.7 billion people on the planet by 2050, we can expect a 54 percent increase in global food demand and 56 percent increase in energy demand. While meetings these growing demands and achieving sustainability is possible, it is helpful to scrutinize where the status quo will get us.

The World Health Organization, World Economic Forum and other leading global development organizations now say that air pollution and water scarcity—environmental challenges—are among the biggest dangers to human health and prosperity. And our business-as-usual analysis makes clear what many already fear: that human development based on the same practices we use today will not prepare us for a world with nearly 10 billion people.

To put it simply, if we stay on today’s current path, we risk being trapped in an intensifying cycle of scarcity—our growth opportunities severely capped and our natural landscapes severely degraded. Under this business-as-usual scenario, we can expect global temperature to increase 3.2°C; worsened air pollution affecting 4.9 billion more people; overfishing of 84 percent of fish stocks; and greater water stress affecting 2.75 billion people. Habitat loss continues, leaving less than 50 percent of native grasslands and several types of forests intact.

However, if we make changes in where and how we meet food, water and energy demands for the same growing global population and wealth, the picture can look markedly different by mid-century. This “sustainability” path includes global temperature increase limited to 1.6°C—meeting Paris Climate Accord goals—zero overfishing with greater fisheries yields, a 90 percent drop in exposure to dangerous air pollution, and fewer water-stressed people, rivers and agricultural fields. These goals can be met while natural habitats extend both inside and outside protected areas. All signatory countries to the Aichi Targets meet habitat protection goals, and more than 50 percent of all ecoregions’ extents remain unconverted, except temperate grasslands (of which over 50 percent are already converted today).

Behind the Science

Discover how TNC and its partners developed the models for 2050.

Aerial view of wind turbines on agricultural land.

III. What's Possible

Achieving this sustainable future for people and nature is possible with existing and expected technology and consumption, but only with major shifts in production patterns. Making these shifts will require overcoming substantial economic, social and political challenges. In short, it is not likely that the biophysical limits of the planet will determine our future, but rather our willingness to think and act differently by putting economic development and the environment on equal footing as central parts of the same equation.

Climate, Energy and Air Quality

Perhaps the most pressing need for change is in energy use. In order to both meet increased energy demand and keep the climate within safe boundaries, we’ll need to alter the way we produce energy, curtailing emissions of carbon and other harmful chemicals.

Under a business-as-usual scenario, fossil fuels will still claim a 76 percent share of total energy in 2050. A more sustainable approach would reduce that share to 13 percent by 2050. While this is a sharp change, it is necessary to stanch the flow of harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The reduction in carbon-based energy could be offset by increasing the share of energy from renewable sources to 54 percent and increasing nuclear energy to one third of total energy output—delivering a total of almost 85 percent of the world’s energy demand from non-fossil-fuel sources.

Additionally, we will only achieve the full extent of reduced climate impacts if we draw down existing carbon from the atmosphere. This can be done through greater investment in carbon capture and storage efforts, including natural climate solutions—land management strategies such as avoiding forest loss, reforestation, investments in soil health and coastal ecosystem restoration.

The net benefit of these energy redistribution efforts is twofold. First, they lower the rate at which greenhouse gases are flowing into the air—taking atmospheric carbon projections down to 442 parts per million, compared to business-as-usual estimates that put the level closer to 520 ppm.

Second, these energy source shifts would create a marked decline in particulate air pollution. Our models show that the higher fossil fuel use in the business-as-usual scenario is likely to expose half the people on the planet to poorer air quality by 2050. Under the sustainable scenario, that figure drops to just 7 percent of the world’s inhabitants, thanks to lower particulate emissions from renewable and nuclear energy sources.

Case Studies:

Forests That Fight Climate Change: Brazil’s Serra da Mantiqueira region demonstrates how reforestation can tackle climate change, improve water supplies, and increase incomes in rural communities. Learn More
Can Trees Be a Prescription for Urban Health?: Conservationists, community organizations and public health researchers joined forces to plant trees in Louisville, Kentucky and monitor their impact on air quality and residents’ health. Learn More

Food, Habitat and City Growth

Meeting the sustainable targets we propose requires a second front on land to shift how we use available real estate and where we choose to conduct necessary activities. Overall, the changes we include in our more sustainable view allow the world to meet global food, water and energy demands with no additional conversion of natural habitat for those needs—an outcome that is not possible under business as usual.

While transitioning away from fossil fuels is essential to meet climate goals, new renewable energy infrastructure siting will present land-use challenges. Renewable energy production takes up space, and if not sited well it can cause its own negative impacts on nature and its services to people. In our more sustainable path, we address this challenge by preferencing the use of already converted land for renewables development, lessening the impact of new wind and solar on natural habitat. We also exclude expansion of biofuels, as they are known to require extensive land area to produce, causing conflicts with natural habitat and food security.

Perhaps most encouraging, we show that it is possible to meet future food demands on less agricultural land than is used today. Notably, our scenario keeps the mix of crops in each growing region the same, so as not to disrupt farmers’ cultures, technologies, capacity or existing crop knowledge. Instead, we propose moving which crops are grown where within growing regions, putting more “thirsty” crops in areas with more water, and matching the nutrient needs of various crops to the soils available.

Unlike some projections used by others, for this scenario we left diet expectations alone, matching meat consumption with business-as-usual expectations. If we were able to reduce meat consumption, especially by middle- and high-income countries where nutritional needs are met, reducing future agricultural land, water and pollution footprints would be even easier.

Meanwhile, on the land protection front, our analysis is guided by the Convention on Biological Diversity, the leading global platform most countries have signed. Each signatory country has agreed to protect up to 17 percent of each habitat type within its borders. While many countries will fall short of this goal under business as usual, it can be achieved in our more sustainable option.

Use already degraded land for energy development.

By making changes in food, water and energy use, we can better protect nearly all habitat types.

We acknowledge 17 percent is an imperfect number, and many believe more natural habitat is needed to allow the world’s biodiversity to thrive. Looking beyond protected areas, we see additional differences in the possible futures we face. Our more sustainable option retains 577 million hectares more natural habitat than business as usual, much of it outside of protected areas. Conservation has long focused on representation—it is not only important to conserve large areas, but to represent different kinds of habitat. Under business as usual, we will lose more than half of several major habitat types by mid-century, including temperate broadleaf and mixed forests, Mediterranean forest, and temperate grassland. Flooded and tropical grasslands approach this level of loss as well.

But with the proposed shifts in food, water and energy use, we can do better for nearly all habitats in our more sustainable scenario. The one exception is temperate grasslands, a biome that has already lost more than 50 percent of its global extent today. In all, the more sustainable scenario shows a future that would be largely compatible with emerging views that suggest protecting half of the world’s land system.

Case Study:

Managing Sprawling Soy: A partnership between businesses and nonprofit groups in Brazil will help farmers plant soy in the areas where it is has the smallest impact on natural habitats. Learn More

The gravel bottoms and braided channels of rivers leading into Iliamna Lake in southwest Alaska are ideal for the many king salmon that spawn in the lake's waters.

Drinking Water, River Basins and Fisheries

Water presents a complex set of challenges. Like land, it is both a resource and a habitat. Fresh water resources are dwindling while ocean ecosystems are overburdened by unregulated fishing and pollution. Business-as-usual projections estimate that 2.75 billion people will experience water scarcity by 2050 and 770 water basins will experience water stress. Africa and Central Asia in particular would see fewer water stressed basins in the sustainable scenario.

Changes in energy sources and food production (see above sections) would lead to significant water savings by reducing use of water as a coolant in energy production and by moving crops to areas where they need less irrigation. Thanks to these changes, our more sustainable option for the future would relieve 104 million people and biodiversity in 25 major river basins from likely water stress.

Meanwhile, in the seas, we find an inspiring possibility for fisheries. Continuing business-as-usual fisheries management adds further stress to the oceans and the global food system as more stocks decline, further diminishing the food we rely on from the seas. But more sustainable fisheries management is possible, and our projections using a leading fisheries model shows that adopting sustainable management in all fisheries by mid-century would actually increase yield by over a quarter more than we saw in 2010.

And, while we know that aquaculture is a certain element of the future of fish and food, many questions remain about precisely how this industry will grow, and how it can be shaped to be a low-impact part of the global food system. Given these unknowns, we kept aquaculture growth the same in both our views of the future.

Case Studies:

Cities and Farmers Find Common Ground on Water: Smarter agricultural practices in the Kenya’s Upper Tana River Watershed are resulting in better yields for farmers and more reliable water supplies for the city of Nairobi. Learn More
Technology Offers a Lifeline for Fish: A new mobile application being piloted in Indonesia is helping fill a crucial gap in fisheries management—providing accurate data about what species are being caught where. Learn More

The land meets the sea in Uruma City, Japan

IV. The Way Forward

This analysis does not represent a panacea for the growing need for economic development across the planet or for the environmental challenges that are ahead. But it does provide an optimistic viewpoint and an integrated picture that can serve as a starting point for discussion.

Our goal is to apply new questions—and ultimately new solutions—to our known problems. We present one of many possible paths to a different future, and we welcome like-minded partners and productive critics to share their perspectives with us. We encourage people from across society to join the conversation, to fill gaps where they exist, and to bring other important considerations to our attention. Most of all, we call on the development (e.g. energy, agriculture, infrastructure), health, and financial communities—among others—to work with us to find new ways of taking action together.

Ultimately, by illustrating a viable pathway to sustainability that serves both the needs of economic and environmental interests—goals that many have long assumed were mutually exclusive—we hope to inspire the global community to engage in the difficult but necessary social, economic and political dialogue that can make a sustainable future a reality.

Protecting nature and providing water, food and energy to the world can no longer be either-or propositions. Nature and human development are both central factors in the same equation. We have at our disposal the cross-sector expertise necessary to make informed decisions for the good of life on our planet, so let’s use it wisely. Our science affirms there is a way.

Join us as we chart a new path to 2050 by helping people and nature thrive—together.

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Opportunities to Engage

Designing strategies to address global challenges for people and nature requires integration of diverse bodies of evidence that are now largely segregated. As actors across the health, development and environment sectors pivot to act collectively, they face challenges in finding and interpreting evidence on sector interrelationships, and thus in developing effective evidence-based responses.

Learn more about these emerging coalitions that offer opportunities to engage and connect with shared resources.

Bridge Collaborative

The Bridge Collaborative unites people and organizations in health, development and the environment with the evidence and tools to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges. Learn More

Science for Nature and People Partnership

SNAPP envisions a world where protecting and promoting nature works in concert with sustainable development and improving human well-being. Learn More

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Essay on Save Environment for Future Generation

The Earth, our home, is facing an urgent challenge: the need to save our environment for the benefit of future generations. It’s a call to action that requires our immediate attention and collective effort. In this essay, we will explore the reasons behind the importance of saving the environment, the consequences of neglect, and the ways we can take meaningful steps to secure a sustainable future.

The Gift of a Healthy Environment

Our environment provides us with clean air to breathe, fresh water to drink, and fertile soil to grow our food. Preserving these resources ensures that future generations can enjoy a high quality of life.

The Impact of Human Activities

Human activities, such as deforestation, pollution, and overconsumption, are harming the environment. These actions threaten the delicate balance of ecosystems and endanger the future of our planet.

Climate Change and Global Warming

One of the most pressing environmental issues is climate change. The burning of fossil fuels and the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere are causing temperatures to rise, leading to more extreme weather events and rising sea levels.

Biodiversity Loss

The loss of biodiversity is another critical concern. Habitats are being destroyed, leading to the extinction of numerous plant and animal species. Biodiversity is essential for the health and stability of ecosystems.

Consequences for Future Generations

If we fail to act, future generations will inherit a world with polluted air, water scarcity, and the devastating effects of climate change. This is an inheritance we must strive to prevent.

Our Responsibility

As caretakers of the Earth, we have a moral and ethical responsibility to protect our environment. It is our duty to ensure that future generations can thrive on a healthy planet.

The Importance of Conservation

Conservation efforts, such as reforestation, waste reduction, and sustainable practices, play a crucial role in saving the environment. These actions help mitigate the damage we have caused.

Renewable Energy and Sustainable Practices

Transitioning to renewable energy sources, reducing plastic waste, and practicing sustainable agriculture are all steps we can take to lessen our impact on the environment.

Education and Advocacy

Education is a powerful tool for change. By raising awareness and advocating for environmental protection, we can inspire others to take action and make a difference.

Conclusion of Essay on Save Environment for Future Generation

In conclusion, the call to save our environment for future generations is not just a responsibility but a moral imperative. The consequences of neglecting our environment are far-reaching and affect all aspects of life on Earth. It’s our duty to take immediate and sustained action to mitigate these challenges and secure a sustainable future. Through conservation, sustainable practices, education, and advocacy, we can protect our planet and leave a legacy of environmental stewardship for the generations to come. Let us remember that the Earth is not just our home; it belongs to future generations as well. Our actions today will determine the world they inherit, and it is our responsibility to ensure that it is a world worth inheriting.

Also Check: The Essay on Essay: All you need to know

Essay on Future Of Our Planet

Students are often asked to write an essay on Future Of Our Planet in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Future Of Our Planet

Our planet’s health.

The Earth is like a giant home for plants, animals, and humans. Just as we keep our houses clean, we must also take care of our planet. If we pollute less and use less plastic, our Earth will be healthier. Trees are Earth’s lungs; planting more can help it breathe better.

Animals and Their Homes

Many animals are losing their homes because forests are cut down. We need to protect these places so that tigers, elephants, and birds can live safely. When we save animal homes, we also protect the air and water for everyone.

Energy for Tomorrow

We use a lot of energy every day. In the future, we should use energy from the sun, wind, and water more because they don’t run out like oil and coal. These clean energies will help keep our skies blue and our waters clear.

Working Together

Every person on Earth can help make a better future. When we recycle, save water, and turn off lights we’re not using, we make a big difference. Countries can work together to make rules that protect our planet so it’s a great place for everyone.

250 Words Essay on Future Of Our Planet

Our planet’s tomorrow.

Thinking about the future of our Earth is like trying to picture the next chapter of a long story. The Earth has been around for billions of years, and it’s up to us to make sure it stays healthy and beautiful.

Protecting Nature

Trees, animals, and oceans make our planet special. To keep them safe, we need to treat nature better. This means not cutting down too many trees, making sure animals have homes, and keeping the water clean. If we look after nature, it will look after us.

Using Resources Wisely

We all use things from the Earth like water, coal, and oil. But we can’t use them too fast or they will run out. We must learn to use less and find new things to use instead, like the sun and wind to make electricity. This is called renewable energy, and it’s a big part of our planet’s future.

No one can save the planet alone. Every country and person on Earth needs to work as a team. We can all do small things to help, like recycling or riding bikes instead of cars. When we work together, big changes can happen.

Our Choices Matter

The choices we make every day shape our planet’s future. By being kind to Earth, we make sure it’s a good home for us and for all the creatures we share it with. It’s like taking care of a big garden that gives us everything we need. If we do our part, the future can be bright and full of life.

500 Words Essay on Future Of Our Planet

Thinking about what lies ahead for Earth can be exciting and a bit scary. Our planet has been home to many forms of life for millions of years, and it’s up to us to make sure it stays a good home for the future. This essay will talk about what might happen to our world and what we can do to keep it healthy.

Climate Change and Its Impact

One of the biggest challenges we face is climate change. This means that the Earth’s weather patterns are changing because of things like pollution and cutting down too many trees. If the Earth gets too warm, ice at the poles will melt, causing sea levels to rise. This could flood cities near the coast. Animals and plants might also find it hard to survive if their homes change too much.

But there is good news! People all over the world are working to slow down climate change. By using less energy, recycling more, and planting trees, we can help keep the Earth’s temperature just right.

Caring for Nature and Wildlife

Our planet is full of amazing animals and plants. To make sure they stick around for a long time, we need to take care of their homes. This means protecting forests, oceans, and rivers. When we keep these places clean and safe, animals and plants can thrive.

Kids can help, too! Learning about nature and sharing what you know with others can make a big difference. When everyone understands how important nature is, they’re more likely to protect it.

Technology and Innovation

In the future, new inventions and smart ways of doing things could help our planet. For example, cars that don’t pollute the air and ways to make energy from the sun and wind are already being used. As more people use these technologies, the Earth will become a cleaner place.

Scientists are also coming up with ways to grow food without harming the environment. This means we can feed more people without cutting down forests or using too many chemicals.

Working Together for a Better Future

The best way to make sure our planet has a bright future is by working together. This means countries, companies, and people like you and me need to agree on how to take care of the Earth. When we all do our part, big changes can happen.

Schools can teach students about how to live in a way that’s good for the planet. Families can make choices that are better for the environment, like walking instead of driving sometimes. And governments can make rules that protect the air, water, and land.

The future of our planet is in our hands. By understanding the challenges like climate change, taking care of nature, using new technologies, and working together, we can make sure the Earth stays a beautiful and healthy place for everyone. It’s like a big team project, and everyone, including kids, has an important role to play. Let’s promise to do our best to keep our planet safe and sound for many years to come!

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Essay on Expression On The Internet
Essay on Future Of Internet
Essay on Fundamental Rights And Duties

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

The planet’s outlook is in our hands. Which future will we incentivize?

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aims to phase out $500 billion in harmful subsidies by 2030 and mobilize $200 billion annually for biodiversity conservation. Image: Alonso Reyes/Unsplash

.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo{-webkit-transition:all 0.15s ease-out;transition:all 0.15s ease-out;cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;outline:none;color:inherit;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:hover,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:focus,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-focus]{box-shadow:0 0 0 3px rgba(168,203,251,0.5);} Carlos Correa

.chakra .wef-9dduvl{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-9dduvl{font-size:1.125rem;}} Explore and monitor how .chakra .wef-15eoq1r{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;color:#F7DB5E;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-15eoq1r{font-size:1.125rem;}} Climate Crisis is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;color:#2846F8;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{font-size:1.125rem;}} Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:, climate crisis.

Governments allocate $1.8 trillion annually to environmentally harmful subsidies, which leads to an additional $5 trillion in private funding for industries like fossil fuels and industrial agriculture.
Policymakers can leverage fiscal policy, establish new markets through emissions trading systems, and implement conservation payments to redirect private funding towards nature conservation efforts.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aims to phase out $500 billion in harmful subsidies by 2030 and mobilize $200 billion annually for biodiversity conservation.

When governments allocate money, they send a message. The power of that message ripples through economies, often triggering a wave of private spending. That effect rings true for biodiversity, on which governments have long made their message clear: Companies and citizens should feel free to prioritize activities that destroy our planet rather than sustain it.

Governments spend at least $1.8 trillion on environmentally harmful subsidies each year. That $1.8 trillion leads to another $5 trillion in private funding to the same deleterious industries — fossil fuel extraction, mining, commercial fishing, and industrial agriculture. The result is that nearly 7% of global GDP is dedicated to wrecking our natural world.

Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, CEO of the Global Environment Facility, put the problem simply “There is not a single country today that invests more in protecting nature than it spends on activities that destroy it. This has to change.”

Climate change poses an urgent threat demanding decisive action. Communities around the world are already experiencing increased climate impacts, from droughts to floods to rising seas. The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report continues to rank these environmental threats at the top of the list.

To limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C and as close as possible to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, it is essential that businesses, policy-makers, and civil society advance comprehensive near- and long-term climate actions in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

The World Economic Forum's Climate Initiative supports the scaling and acceleration of global climate action through public and private-sector collaboration. The Initiative works across several workstreams to develop and implement inclusive and ambitious solutions.

This includes the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, a global network of business leaders from various industries developing cost-effective solutions to transitioning to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy. CEOs use their position and influence with policy-makers and corporate partners to accelerate the transition and realize the economic benefits of delivering a safer climate.

Change starts with a shared vision, and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) aligns countries on the path forward. Target 18 of the GBF calls for substantial and progressive elimination, phase out, or reform of $500 billion in annual subsidies that are harmful to biodiversity. With a target of 2030, the GBF has a mandate to mobilize at least $200 billion annually for biodiversity conservation.

Policymakers now have a rare opportunity to leverage their market influence to facilitate a massive reallocation of private money toward saving nature — and there is no shortage of paths to pursue.

These include:

Fiscal policy

Designing fiscal policy — how governments apply and spend tax revenues — is a widely available and immediate avenue for developing positive incentives. For example, India’s Ecological Fiscal Transfers programme uses ecological indicators to determine how public funding is distributed from federal to state governments — with states rewarded for protecting and restoring forest cover.

The setup renders conservation a potential source of income for local governments. This incentive worked in India: localities self-disciplined, voluntarily increasing state forestry budgets by 19% in the three years following the programme’s introduction to attract federal funding.

Environmental taxes are another vehicle for positive ecological incentives. Colombia implemented a carbon tax in 2016 that started at $5 per tonne of carbon. The tax quickly produced hundreds of millions for biodiversity, and it is set to be a key source of revenue for a new national biodiversity fund that aims to manage nearly $1 billion by 2026.

What’s the World Economic Forum doing about deforestation?

Halting deforestation is essential to avoiding the worst effects of global climate change.

The destruction of forests creates almost as much greenhouse gas emissions as global road travel, and yet it continues at an alarming rate.

In 2012, we brought together more than 150 partners working in Latin America, West Africa, Central Africa and South-East Asia – to establish the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 : a global public-private partnership to facilitate investment in systemic change.

The Alliance, made up of businesses, governments, civil society, indigenous people, communities and international organizations, helps producers, traders and buyers of commodities often blamed for causing deforestation to achieve deforestation-free supply chains.

The Commodities and Forests Agenda 2020 , summarizes the areas in which the most urgent action is needed to eliminate deforestation from global agricultural supply chains.

The Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 i s gaining ground on tackling deforestation linked to the production of four commodities: palm oil, beef, soy, and pulp and paper.

Get in touch to join our mission to halt to deforestation.

New markets

Governments can establish new markets through Emissions Trading Systems (ETS) that set a maximum level of greenhouse gas emissions with tradable permits distributed among emitters. This is an increasingly popular solution: OECD data shows over 40% of greenhouse gas emissions covered by carbon pricing in 2021, an 8% increase from 2018.

The EU’s ETS was the world’s first carbon market and remains one of the largest. It’s also a beacon of success: By putting a cap on emissions that decrease annually, EU businesses are investing in clean-energy technologies, helping reduce emissions from the power and industry sectors by 37.3% since 2005.

While carbon markets may be the most well-known application, resource use rights can also be capped and traded. In Argentina, for example, the government introduced a quota in 2010 on allowable catch of high-value seafood. The has effectively stabilized previously overfished stocks while boosting export prices.

Conservation payments

Direct payments to landowners for conservation is another critical tool.

Ecuador, for example, provides economic incentives to rural landowners who conserve native forests as alternatives to unsustainable land-use practices, such as logging and mining. Over 15 years, Socio Bosque has helped protect more than 4 million hectares by providing landowners with direct payments through an established 20-year conservation agreement.

The success of Socio Bosque and other initiatives has helped bolster the credibility of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), with more than 500 programmes worldwide generating tens of billions of dollars in transactions each year.

PES systems have proven, in several cases, to drastically reduce deforestation rates. During the 1970s and 1980s, for example, Costa Rica had one of the highest deforestation rates in the world, with forest cover dropping from over 50% of the land in 1950 to 24.4% by 1985. In 1996, the government introduced a PES programme. Today, forest spans over half of the country's total land area, largely due to the programme’s success.

Critically, well-designed PES programmes often have important co-benefits, including support for local and Indigenous populations to protect their land tenure and secure their rights.

Have you read?

Global risks report 2024.

Governments have spent decades encouraging the destruction of our ecosystems, but we are now at a turning point. Environmental leadership is emerging from every corner of the planet, uniting wealthy, and poorer countries around a shared cause.

Through the GBF, governments around the world took the first step in denouncing the status quo. Destroying nature will only succeed in destroying ourselves. But words only take us so far. With no shortage of solutions at their disposal, governments must now signal to companies, citizens, and the rest of the world that they are committed to protecting our planet.

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License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

.chakra .wef-1dtnjt5{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;} More on Nature and Biodiversity .chakra .wef-17xejub{-webkit-flex:1;-ms-flex:1;flex:1;justify-self:stretch;-webkit-align-self:stretch;-ms-flex-item-align:stretch;align-self:stretch;} .chakra .wef-nr1rr4{display:-webkit-inline-box;display:-webkit-inline-flex;display:-ms-inline-flexbox;display:inline-flex;white-space:normal;vertical-align:middle;text-transform:uppercase;font-size:0.75rem;border-radius:0.25rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;line-height:1.2;-webkit-letter-spacing:1.25px;-moz-letter-spacing:1.25px;-ms-letter-spacing:1.25px;letter-spacing:1.25px;background:none;padding:0px;color:#B3B3B3;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;box-decoration-break:clone;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;}@media screen and (min-width:37.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:0.875rem;}}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:1rem;}} See all

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What do we owe future generations? And what can we do to make their world a better place?

Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Australian Catholic University

Disclosure statement

Michael Noetel receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and Sport Australia. He is a Director of Effective Altruism Australia.

Australian Catholic University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Your great grandchildren are powerless in today’s society. As Oxford philosopher William MacAskill says:

They cannot vote or lobby or run for public office, so politicians have scant incentive to think about them. They can’t bargain or trade with us, so they have little representation in the market, And they can’t make their views heard directly: they can’t tweet, or write articles in newspapers, or march in the streets. They are utterly disenfranchised.

But the things we do now influence them: for better or worse. We make laws that govern them, build infrastructure for them and take out loans for them to pay back. So what happens when we consider future generations while we make decisions today?

Review: What We Owe the Future – William MacAskill (OneWorld)

This is the key question in What We Owe the Future . It argues for what MacAskill calls longtermism: “the idea that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time.” He describes it as an extension of civil rights and women’s suffrage; as humanity marches on, we strive to consider a wider circle of people when making decisions about how to structure our societies.

MacAskill makes a compelling case that we should consider how to ensure a good future not only for our children’s children, but also the children of their children. In short, MacAskill argues that “future people count, there could be a lot of them, and we can make their lives go better.”

Read more: Friday essay: 'I feel my heart breaking today' – a climate scientist's path through grief towards hope

Future people count

It’s hard to feel for future people. We are bad enough at feeling for our future selves. As The Simpsons puts it: “That’s a problem for future Homer. Man, I don’t envy that guy.”

We all know we should protect our health for our own future. In a similar vein, MacAskill argues that we all “know” future people count.

Concern for future generations is common sense across diverse intellectual traditions […] When we dispose of radioactive waste, we don’t say, “Who cares if this poisons people centuries from now?” Similarly, few of us who care about climate change or pollution do so solely for the sake of people alive today. We build museums and parks and bridges that we hope will last for generations; we invest in schools and longterm scientific projects; we preserve paintings, traditions, languages; we protect beautiful places.

There could be a lot of future people

Future people count, and MacAskill counts those people. The sheer number of future people might make their wellbeing a key moral priority. According to MacAskill and others, humanity’s future could be vast : much, much more than the 8 billion alive today.

While it’s hard to feel the gravitas, our actions may affect a dizzying number of people. Even if we last just 1 million years, as long as the average mammal – and even if the global population fell to 1 billion people – then there would be 9.1 trillion people in the future.

We might struggle to care, because these numbers can be hard to feel . Our emotions don’t track well against large numbers. If I said a nuclear war would kill 500 million people, you might see that as a “huge problem”. If I instead said that the number is actually closer to 5 billion , it still feels like a “huge problem”. It does not emotionally feel 10 times worse. If we risk the trillions of people who could live in the future, that could be 1,000 times worse – but it doesn’t feel 1,000 times worse.

MacAskill does not argue we should give those people 1,000 times more concern than people alive today. Likewise, MacAskill does not say we should morally weight a person living a million years from now exactly the same as someone alive 10 or 100 years from now. Those distinctions won’t change what we can feasibly achieve now, given how hard change can be.

Instead, he shows if we care about future people at all, even those 100 years hence, we should simply be doing more . Fortunately, there are concrete things humanity can do.

Read more: Labor's climate change bill is set to become law – but 3 important measures are missing

We can make the lives of future people better

Another reason we struggle to be motivated by big problems is that they feel insurmountable. This is a particular concern with future generations. Does anything I do make a difference, or is it a drop in the bucket? How do we know what to do when the long-run effects are so uncertain ?

Even present-day problems can feel hard to tackle. At least for those problems we can get fast, reliable feedback on progress. Even with that advantage, we struggle. For the second year in a row, we did not make progress toward our sustainable development goals, like reducing war, poverty, and increasing growth. Globally, 4.3% of children still die before the age of five. COVID-19 has killed about 23 million people . Can we – and should we – justify focusing on future generations when we face these problems now?

MacAskill argues we can. Because the number of people is so large, he also argues we should. He identifies some areas where we could do things that protect the future while also helping people who are alive now. Many solutions are win-win.

For example, the current pandemic has shown that unforeseen events can have a devastating effect. Yet, despite the recent pandemic, many governments have done little to set up more robust systems that could prevent the next pandemic. MacAskill outlines ways in which those future pandemics could be worse.

Most worrying are the threats from engineered pathogens, which

[…] could be much more destructive than natural pathogens because they can be modified to have dangerous new properties. Could someone design a pathogen with maximum destructive power—something with the lethality of Ebola and the contagiousness of measles?

He gives examples, like militaries and terrorist groups, that have tried to engineer pathogens in the past.

The risk of an engineered pandemic wiping us all out in the next 100 years is between 0.1% and 3%, according to estimates laid out in the book.

That might sound low, but MacAskill argues we would not step on a plane if you were told “it ‘only’ had a one-in-a-thousand chance of crashing and killing everyone on board”. These threaten not only future generations, but people reading this – and everyone they know.

MacAskill outlines ways in which we might be able to prevent engineered pandemics, like researching better personal protective equipment, cheaper and faster diagnostics, better infrastructure, or better governance of synthetic biology. Doing so would help save the lives of people alive today, reduce the risk of technological stagnation and protect humanity’s future.

The same win-wins might apply to decarbonisation , safe development of artificial intelligence , reducing risks from nuclear war , and other threats to humanity.

Read more: Even a 'limited' nuclear war would starve millions of people, new study reveals

Things you can do to protect future generations

Some “longtermist” issues, like climate change, are already firmly in the public consciousness. As a result, some may find MacAskill’s book “common sense”. Others may find the speculation about the far future pretty wild (like all possible views of the longterm future).

MacAskill strikes an accessible balance between anchoring the arguments to concrete examples, while making modest extrapolations into the future. He helps us see how “common sense” principles can lead to novel or neglected conclusions.

For example, if there is any moral weight on future people, then many common societal goals (like faster economic growth) are vastly less important than reducing risks of extinction (like nuclear non-proliferation). It makes humanity look like an “imprudent teenager”, with many years ahead, but more power than wisdom:

Even if you think [the risk of extinction] is only a one-in-a-thousand, the risk to humanity this century is still ten times higher than the risk of your dying this year in a car crash. If humanity is like a teenager, then she is one who speeds around blind corners, drunk, without wearing a seat belt.

Our biases toward present, local problems are strong, so connecting emotionally with the ideas can be hard. But MacAskill makes a compelling case for longtermism through clear stories and good metaphors. He answers many questions I had about safeguarding the future. Will the future be good or bad? Would it really matter if humanity ended? And, importantly, is there anything I can actually do?

The short answer is yes, there is. Things you might already do help, like minimising your carbon footprint – but MacAskill argues “other things you can do are radically more impactful”. For example, reducing your meat consumption would address climate change, but donating money to the world’s most effective climate charities might be far more effective.

Beyond donations, three other personal decisions seem particularly high impact to me: political activism, spreading good ideas, and having children […] But by far the most important decision you will make, in terms of your lifetime impact, is your choice of career.

MacAskill points to a range of resources – many of which he founded – that guide people in these areas. For those who might have flexibility in their career, MacAskill founded 80,000 Hours , which helps people find impactful, satisfying careers. For those trying to donate more impactfully, he founded Giving What We Can. And, for spreading good ideas, he started a social movement called Effective Altruism .

Longtermism is one of those good ideas. It helps us better place our present in humanity’s bigger story. It’s humbling and inspiring to see the role we can play in protecting the future. We can enjoy life now and safeguard the future for our great grandchildren. MasAskill clearly shows that we owe it to them.

Climate change
Generations
Future generations
Effective altruism
longtermism

Program Manager, Teaching & Learning Initiatives

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, Earth System Science (School of Science)

Sydney Horizon Educators (Identified)

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Associate Professor, Occupational Therapy

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Essay about "our planet, our future"
Essay about "our planet, our future" - 29993519. answered Essay about "our planet, our future" See answer Advertisement Advertisement 2018003878 2018003878 Answer: The future of our planet lies within our hands. The earth is 4.5 billion years old and yet it is now in the most troubled condition it has ever been. ... Get the Brainly App
Short Essay on Our Planet Earth [100, 200, 400 words] With PDF
Earth is a unique planet as it is the only planet that sustains life. Life is possible on Earth because of many reasons, and the most important among them is the availability of water and oxygen. Earth is a part of the family of the Sun. It belongs to the Solar System. Earth, along with seven other planets, revolves around the Sun.
What will the planet look like in 50 years? Here's how climate
Hausfather, along with co-author Schmidt, compared 17 model projections of global average temperature developed between 1970 and 2007 with actual changes in global temperature observed through the ...
What will the world look like in 2050?
The difference in this path to 2050 was striking. The number of additional people who will be exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution declines to just 7% of the planet's population, or 656 million, compared with half the global population, or 4.85 billion people, in our business-as-usual scenario.
One Planet, Two Crises: Tackling Climate Change and Biodiversity in the
Our future is in our hands, and together, I know, we can turn the tide. This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of ...
Essay on Save Earth for Students and Children
500+ Words Essay on Save Earth. Earth and the resources of earth make life possible on it. If we were to imagine our lives without these resources, that would not be possible. As life cannot function without sunshine, air, vegetation, and water. However, this is soon going to be our reality if we do not save the earth now.
Our Planet
1:32. Our Planet, Their Future. Explore the natural treasures on your doorstep and discover what you can do to help restore and protect wildlife all around the world. Together, you can save our planet. 1:32.
Our Planet. Our Future
The health of our planet and humanity's future are inseparable. Both are in serious danger. Multiple threats. I often talk about the multiple threats facing people and planet. Climate change is eating into our well-being, economic development, peace and stability, and unfortunately unless we take action, it will only get worse.
Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere
The first Nobel Prize Summit, Our Planet, Our Future, is an online convening to discuss the state of the planet at a critical juncture for humanity.The Summit brings together Nobel Laureates and other leading scientists with thought leaders, policy makers, business leaders, and young people to explore solutions to immediate challenges facing our global civilization: mitigate and adapt to the ...
Reflections On: Our Planet and Its Life, Origins, and Futures
The theme of the 175th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), "Our Planet and Its Life, Origins, and Futures," celebrated an enormous breadth of scientific accomplishments that transcends many subdisciplines of the natural and social sciences. It was intended to be both a reflection on what has been learned and a look forward to what must yet be ...
What does the Our Planet, Our Future means? Give a four or ...
Basically, this means that without our planet, there's no future for us. Our future depends on our collective ability to become effective stewards of the global commons. If something happened to our planet, it also affect our future. The health of our planet and humanity's future are inseparable. Both are in serious danger. If our planet died ...
Mother Earth Essay
Mother Earth provides us with air, water, food and shelter. Writing a mother Earth essay helps children know the importance of protecting our planet. Earth is a planet that hosts life and is inhabited by humans and other living beings. It is made out of rocks, metals, and gases. Earth is the only planet in our solar system where life can ...
David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet Movie Analysis Essay
We get answers to a few of our questions from David Attenborough's documentary film, "A life on our planet.". This documentary is truly an eye-opening experience, the audience gets the chance to understand what is going on and how it affects us as a human race. Climate change is a serious issue that has only escalated throughout the years ...
A Sustainable Future: Two Paths to 2050
The statistics are sobering—with 9.7 billion people on the planet by 2050, we can expect a 54 percent increase in global food demand and 56 percent increase in energy demand. While meetings these growing demands and achieving sustainability is possible, it is helpful to scrutinize where the status quo will get us.
Essay on Save Environment for Future Generation
Conclusion of Essay on Save Environment for Future Generation. In conclusion, the call to save our environment for future generations is not just a responsibility but a moral imperative. The consequences of neglecting our environment are far-reaching and affect all aspects of life on Earth. It's our duty to take immediate and sustained action ...
Essay on Future Of Our Planet
The future of our planet is in our hands. By understanding the challenges like climate change, taking care of nature, using new technologies, and working together, we can make sure the Earth stays a beautiful and healthy place for everyone. It's like a big team project, and everyone, including kids, has an important role to play.
The planet's outlook is in our hands. Which future will we incentivize?
Nature and Biodiversity. The planet's outlook is in our hands. Which future will we incentivize? Apr 22, 2024. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aims to phase out $500 billion in harmful subsidies by 2030 and mobilize $200 billion annually for biodiversity conservation. Image: Alonso Reyes/Unsplash.
earth our planet essay
Earth our planet essay Get the answers you need, now! govindm900010 govindm900010 10.04.2021 Science ... we will lose the chance of seeing our future generations flourish forever. Everyone must come together for the same causes, as we are inhabitants of this planet firstly and then anything else. ... Get the Brainly App
The Future Of Our Planet
1. This essay sample was donated by a student to help the academic community. Papers provided by EduBirdie writers usually outdo students' samples. Cite this essay. Download. The future of our planet lies within our hands. The earth is 4.5 billion years old and yet it is now in the most troubled condition it has ever been. Just a slight ...
What do we owe future generations? And what can we do to make their
Longtermism is one of those good ideas. It helps us better place our present in humanity's bigger story. It's humbling and inspiring to see the role we can play in protecting the future. We ...
essay writing on our water our future
Answer. Answer: Our water our future. Water is the most important and valuable natural resource on Earth. It sustains all life. There is no life without water. Water is not only important for human beings but for the entire ecosystem. Without enough water, the existence of humans, as well as animals, is next to impossible. After fresh air ...
Essay on Our Water, our Future, word limit is 150 words
Essay on Our Water, our Future, word limit is 150 words - 56961961. Brainly User Brainly User 20.06.2023 Geography Secondary School answered ... It is Water that helps us to lead a comfortable life on this planet. Our bodies are made up of 70% water, which is why Water is such an important compound for us. We use Water for so many purposes.