No Sustainability Without Regeneration: A Manifesto from an Entrepreneurial Viewpoint

Abstract

Sustainability means perpetuating the living conditions on our planet. All living conditions, no one excluded, are produced by ecosystem services, including the environmental stability and the physiological equilibrium that protect our health. Nature perpetuates these ecosystem services by spontaneously regenerating the biosphere. A corollary of these enunciations is that there cannot be sustainability without regeneration or, in other words, that sustainability is just regeneration. It is, therefore, urgent to address and quantify the regenerative capacity of the planet, which is the difference between the net primary production and human extraction of resources. Natural capital depletion is also a cause of poverty and inequality, due to its impacts on food security and on the economy in general. A second corollary of our diagnosis is that, due to its multisystem complexity—economic, social and environmental—sustainability must be managed with a systemic approach; in other words, it cannot be managed from a reductionist angle. The paper is structured in sections that address the transition from Holocene to Anthropocene and its implications, i.e. the fact that a clear-cut distinction between nature and culture no longer holds, while humans need to support the regeneration of lost natural capital. Then a section follows that addresses the close links between the social crisis (increasing inequalities) and the environmental crisis, and explains why any attempt to regenerate lost ecosystem services requires also action to fight inequalities and improve well-being of all. An analysis of the deep drivers of the environmental and social crisis is followed by a conceptual discussion of regeneration and its relationships with sustainability. This leads to the formulation of some proposals for a regenerative commitment of society, including in particular entrepreneurs and scientists, in the form of a Manifesto with five policy recommendations.