Introduction to Part VII

Abstract

We simply have to admit it. Just as Georgina Mace highlights at the outset of her chapter on biodiversity, we have, despite the fact that biodiversity loss is perceived as a concern and has many advocates, largely failed to touch the hearts of citizens at large. The role that nature and climate – in essence, a stable planet – plays in our lives and the lives of our children on Earth has failed to become a driving force behind individual and global action for most people, in most parts of the world. Despite significant progress in our awareness, understanding, and policy engagement in actions to solve global environmental challenges, manifested not least in UN conventions such as the Convention on Biodiversity (UNCBD) and the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted almost 30 years ago, we now face a planetary emergency. The aggregate human pressures on the planet fuelling this emergency are not only continuing to rise, they are reaching dangerous levels, putting us at risk of triggering irreversible loss of ecological functions and a manageable climate (Steffen et al., 2018). Perhaps a central reason for this failure to reach only a minority (< 20 percent) of citizens in countries around the world is our tendency to communicate the climate and nature crises as environmental problems, instead of talking about humans and solutions (Pihl et al., 2019). The coronavirus crisis is a devastating global health shock causing the most abrupt slowdown of the world economy since the global recession in the 1930s. It is also a major moment of learning and reckoning for all citizens in the world. If the world, from political leaders to city dwellers, is able to rise so fast, mobilizing collective action and trillions of US dollars in financial bail-out programmes to address one crisis – COVID-19 – why are we not able to rise in the face of the global climate crisis and nature crisis? These crises, unlike the coronavirus crisis, are putting the future of humanity on Earth at risk. As proposed by François Gemenne and Anneliese Depoux, we need to focus much more on communicating the direct impacts of climate change on human well-being and health. After all, how many recall today that over a time span of only a few excessively hot months in the summer of 2003, 70 000 Europeans (Robine et al., 2008), predominantly elder and weak citizens, died as a result of the most devastating heatwave on record, very likely